Dallas’ new trash and recycling collections schedule has led to more complaints from residents, and the city’s struggles with on-time pickups one month since the change are expected to continue into the new year.

Citing drivers’ unfamiliarity with new routes, not enough trucks and fewer temporary workers, Jay Council, the city’s sanitation director, estimates it might be the end of January before most customers have their trash picked up on time.

The city provides garbage, recycling and bulk trash services to about 246,000 Dallas homes. Worker shortages and severe weather events have led to late pickups since at least 2020, and the new five-day a week collection schedule was put into place to help with that.

Council said the rollout of the new schedule, which went into effect Dec. 5 and forced at least 56% of customers to put out trash on new days, has been “a bit rough.” Not only have workers missed streets, but the shortage of trucks due to supply chain issues and freezing weather during Christmas week led to fewer temp workers being available, he said.

“There have been weeks before we realized there were streets we’ve missed, and we could have done better about that,” Council said. “But overall, it is definitely a workable schedule, much more sustainable for the department long-term, and the longer we work it, the more efficient and methodical we’ll be.”

He noted neighborhoods in Oak Cliff in southern Dallas among the areas with most frequently missed collections, but complaints to the city, overall, about sanitation collections have quadrupled since the schedule change.

According to the city’s 311 service request data on Tuesday, residents filed 2,899 complaints about missed garbage and recycling in November. That tally was 12,223 in December.

“I just want my trash picked up on time,” said Tee Swift, 25, who lives on Audrey Street in South Dallas. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask.”

He said his trash pickup days changed from Tuesday to Thursday, but his trash hasn’t been picked up in at least two weeks. He said when he notified the city a week ago about the miss, he was told it would be picked up the next week, but it wasn’t. The trash is still sitting in his garage, he said.

“We didn’t have any problems until they changed the days,” he said.

The city added Wednesdays to its sanitation collections schedule, increasing pickups to every weekday instead of four days a week.

In August 2021, city officials agreed to a five-year $54 million deal to hire a new temporary labor agency to help collect recycling on time after a previous vendor couldn’t provide enough workers.

The city has more than 200 drivers, but low pay helped lead to driver shortages. The city pay rate is now $20 an hour, but as of summer 2021, it was $16.50 an hour. At the time, that was up to $3.50 less than the local industry standard and up to $13.50 less an hour a private sector garbage or recycling truck driver could earn.

The new Monday through Friday collection schedule is expected to bring down the daily household count from around 62,500 to 50,000 homes a day. The average workday for collection workers would be eight hours. Council said staffers worked up to 12 hours before.

“Because our equipment is so limited right now, are we realizing all those goals? No, we’re not,” he said. “But there’s potential to get there if we can ever get our equipment to a better state of repair.”

He said the city has 30 new trucks that are in “various stages of the delivery process.”

He said the city has been ordering new trucks since fall 2021 and that they may not get all of them until December 2023.