The waste collection business in Gray County, Kansas, dates to 1965, when Eli Nightengale started with a dump truck. He later transitioned to rear load compactor trucks & eventually sold the business to Harold Hagan in 1974. Harold ran it until David Smith, together with three brothers, David, Keith & Terry Ensz, bought it from him in 1990. Up to that point it was mainly focused on the small towns in Gray County, and we saw an opportunity to expand into the rural areas. When we purchased the business there were about 75 rural customers, expanding to around 150 within a year.

About that time the Gray County commission chose to close their landfill for household waste due to costs of complying with new federal regulations. To prevent solid waste disposal problems from developing, they opted to provide a 2 cubic yard, every-other-week trash collection service to each residence in the county and fund it with property taxes. We won the bid on that contract in 1991, and since then have striven to provide the service needed for each business and rural residence within Gray County, personalized for individual needs & capacities. Currently servicing customers in 12 counties in SW Kansas, we have made regularly scheduled waste collection in rural areas our forte.

We also offer roll-off container service with 20, 30 & 40 cubic yard size boxes throughout our service area and continue to expand that part of our business. This fills a need for construction & demolition, estate disposal, commercial & ag waste, crop storage media disposal and other things.

David Smith retired & sold out to the Ensz brothers in 2013, and Terry bought out Keith’s shares in 2022, leaving Terry & David in the business. We look forward to continuing to provide the personalized waste collection services you need in the southwest Kansas area.