We're in the People Business: How Waste Connections Puts Culture Over Compliance Brandon Leonard is the Region Safety Manager at Waste Connections with over 20 years of fleet experience. He leads safety strategy across waste and recycling operations, emphasizing servant leadership, people-first culture, and empowering frontline employees to make safe decisions in complex operating environments. Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn: [1:11] How washing trucks at 17 led to a safety leadership career [4:45] What a day in the life of a waste collection driver actually looks like [7:46] Unique safety challenges in waste management operations [10:39] Balancing safety, performance, and service reliability [14:16] Interview questions that reveal safety mindset [17:48] Why onboarding never stops at day 15 [22:07] Using DriveCam to coach behavior, not punish outcomes [28:35] Managing change without overcomplicating safety programs [32:44] The one thing every safety leader must genuinely do In this episode… Waste collection drivers start their routes between midnight and 6 AM, navigating blind spots, hydraulic systems, and residential streets where impatient drivers create daily risks. They shake containers at 3 AM to check for sleeping occupants. They build relationships with customers multiple times every month. And they do this in every weather condition imaginable. This isn't typical fleet operations. This is waste management—and it demands a fundamentally different approach to safety. According to Brandon Leonard, the key isn't compliance checklists or disciplinary action. It's culture. It's hiring people who genuinely care. It's leaders who serve their teams instead of managing metrics. It's technology that prevents incidents instead of just reacting to them. After 6½ years in safety leadership, Brandon discovered something critical: Safety managers don't drive results directly. District managers, supervisors, and frontline leaders do. Brandon's job is to influence them and equip them with everything needed to keep their teams safe. His insight: Strong safety practices make consistent service possible. Reliability comes from drivers empowered to say "I'm not comfortable with this stop"—and meaning it. In this Roadrageous episode, Brandon reveals how Waste Connections builds safety cultures that scale, why "be safe but hurry up" creates dangerous pressure, and what happens when you genuinely care about people in an industry that never stops moving. Quotable Moments: "We're in the people business and we pick up trash. But who we are is we're in the people business." "If there's not a driver that reports directly to you, how do you affect change? Those are the ones you gotta influence." "We expect high performance, but never at the expense of safety. Never." "Telling people to be safe but to hurry up doesn't work. We have found that out time and time again." "We want to coach to prevent, not coach to react." "If you don't care about people, you shouldn't be in leadership." "Safety is more than compliance. You have to genuinely care about people." "Everybody wants to do great work. They're not doing it wrong because they want to do it wrong." Action Steps: Ask deep-diving interview questions that reveal authentic safety mindset—not yes/no answers Extend onboarding beyond day 15 by treating it as 90+ days of continuous check-ins Empower drivers to refuse unsafe stops by making it clear that saying "I'm not comfortable" is expected Use DriveCam to coach proactively, not react with discipline after the fact Defend drivers when AI gets it wrong by removing false positives and building trust in the system Train leaders on servant leadership, not just driver safety procedures Start change management by explaining "why" instead of just announcing policies Keep safety programs simple—complexity creates confusion and resistance Build teams that challenge you by creating psychological safety for difficult conversations Care genuinely about people while still measuring what matters The Hidden Complexity of Waste Collection When people think about waste collection, they picture a simple pickup. The reality is far more complex. Drivers conduct pre-trip inspections between midnight and 6 AM, then operate trucks with hydraulics, manage extreme blind spots, navigate tight alleys, and deal with an impatient public. On commercial routes, they face a unique challenge: people sleeping in dumpsters. Brandon explains the procedure: "We're servicing at 3 AM. We train to shake containers to make sure nobody's in there. There's a lot of time people are sleeping in there. That's scary for everyone." Beyond safety concerns, the job is intensely physical. Drivers work in all weather conditions, and they're also doing something critical: building customer relationships that lead to contract renewals. "They're not only picking up the trash," Brandon says. "They're getting contracts through great service and great humanity." The "Be Safe But Hurry Up" Problem Every fleet struggles with the tension between safety and productivity. Brandon confronts it directly. "Productivity matters. Numbers matter. KPIs matter," he acknowledges. "But telling people to be safe but to hurry up doesn't work." The message creates cognitive dissonance and pressure where judgment lapses happen. But Brandon also challenges the inverse: "Slow doesn't automatically mean safer. If you're going 35 on a 75-mile-an-hour highway, that's not safe." The solution is empowerment. "We expect high performance, but never at the expense of safety. Reliability comes from drivers who feel empowered to make the right decisions all the time." This works because drivers see conditions supervisors don't. Construction changes traffic patterns. New buildings create visibility issues. What was safe last year might not be safe today. Hiring for Safety: The Questions That Matter Most safety failures don't start on the road. They start in the interview. "Don't just hire butts in seats," Brandon warns. "When you're down three or four drivers, it's easy to make those decisions. But usually you're just in a vicious cycle for six months to a year." Here's what doesn't work: "Is safety a value to you?"—followed by the expected answer "Yes" with zero information gained. Here's what works: "What does safety mean to you?" "Give me a time when you were unsafe, how that made you feel, and how you corrected it." "Have you seen coworkers do something unsafe, and how did you respond?" "You're asking questions and getting to know who they are," Brandon explains. "They're authentically answering because they don't expect those." The key hiring criterion isn't experience. It's genuine care about safety and others. Onboarding That Never Ends Waste Connections has a 15-day onboarding program with 23 modules. But Brandon's philosophy goes deeper: Onboarding doesn't stop at day 15. "You have to continuously talk to this employee to see how they're doing. Onboarding is 90 days, six months—it could be whatever it is." Instead of cramming modules, drivers complete two per day—a pace designed for retention, not just completion. "If you throw a whole bunch of knowledge at them, they're just starting, nervous, and they're never going to retain any of that information." The program prioritizes culture over tactics by teaching who the company is first, then how to do the job. "We want to get their buy-in, get their family's buy-in to who they are working for." DriveCam: Exoneration Over Discipline Brandon's approach separates average programs from exceptional ones. "DriveCam is one of our number one tools. But we want to coach to prevent, not coach to react." They view cameras as exoneration tools first, coaching tools second, and disciplinary tools last. "It exonerates our employees a lot more than it hurts them. When it can show everything they're doing right—because they do so much right—it helps them get confidence in the system." Brandon sees proof in driver behavior: drivers come in saying "Hey, this is what I did. Let's talk about it," or "Look at this incident I avoided by being alert and aware." That's trust, not fear. But this only works if leaders coach rather than just discipline. "If you use this as a disciplinary tool and don't put the time and energy to make them better—doing ride-alongs, taking them to lunch, getting to know them—you're failing them." When AI Gets It Wrong Brandon's response: Defend your drivers. "You can't allow AI to coach your employees. AI is not right 100% of the time. It's your job to defend your employees and say, 'This guy's doing everything right. We need to remove this.'" This builds invaluable respect and trust. He also warns against soft coaching, which destroys credibility. Either the behavior was unsafe and needs correction, or it wasn't and should be removed. Training Leaders, Not Just Drivers Most fleet safety programs focus exclusively on drivers. Waste Connections invests heavily in leadership development. "It's not just drivers you're training. It's district managers, division vice presidents. Training never stops for any of us." But the training isn't about safety procedures—it's about serving people. "We bring people to corporate for specific trainings—not how to be safer, how to get to know your people better. How do you serve your people that then will follow you to be safer?" Change Management: Start With Why Brandon's approach comes down to three principles: 1. Start with Why. "People need to understand why you're doing something—not just because it's a policy. People are far more willing to embrace change when they understand the reason behind it." 2. Get Input (Even If You Can't Change the Outcome). "If you get people's input, at least they had a word in it. Doesn't mean you have to do what they said, but you have to listen." 3. Keep It Simple. "Simple scales a lot better every
