Allan Appel Photo
“Some women go to the gym. I go to work.”
That’s the early-morning mantra of Janice Parker Crudup, who has broken the gender barrier among New Haven’s “refuse laborers.”
Crudup, Shepard, and Swet take a moment for a team photo.
Tuesday morning marked her first month on the job, and she was loving it. She is the only female garbage hauler in town, and believed to the be first ever.
Crudup hauled the garbage-filled toters on Willis Street from the curb, loaded them on the toter-lifter device at the back of the big white public works truck, dragged the cans back to the sidewalk, and moved on to the next set of cans and the next and the next. (The crew covers one whole street every ten minutes or so.) As she toiled, her fellow workers, six-year-man Lonnie Shepard and the the real veteran of the group, driver Vic Sweat, pronounced the rookie’s work more than “A‑OK.”
“The guys are nice, respectful. They don’t treat me different because I’m a woman, although if they feel something’s too heavy, they help. They enjoy working with me,” she said.
As they moved around 8 a.m. along the 50 streets in the Newhallville neighborhood on the department’s Route 2, not much appeared too heavy for Crudup.
“I’m used to heavy work. In catering” she said.
A tall woman who smiles often, Crudup modestly admitted, when pressed, that she had also been a power forward on the women’s varsity basketball team at Hillhouse High School, from 1982 to 1986.
For the last five years she has been a seasonal worker with the city’s parks department, where she developed a reputation as a hard worker and a go-getter, said her new boss, Public Works Director Jeff Pescosolido.
So when she applied for the refuse job, she came with that reputation, and she was hired.
Technically Crudup is a “refuse worker/seasonal,” which means for now she can work for up to 120 days in a year and get training. If a full-time position opens up, she’ll be in a great position to nab it, Pescosolido said.
Everything about the job suits her, she said, as the truck moved along West Ivy Street.
That includes going to bed at 8 or 9 p.m. so she can rise at 3:40 a.m., get to the garage on Middletown Avenue by 4:45 a.m., check in and get the day’s assignment — whether picking up refuse or recylcables — and join her crew.
They do about 50 streets in ten or so minutes per street. Thet then bring the truck back to the garage, unload the garbage, and power wash truck. They are done for the day by 10 a.m.
That allows Crudup to pursue her second career, a business selling organic energy and dietary supplements from her home.
She practices what she preaches. A fit “46 going on 47,” as she described herself, “I take energy supplements in the morning, and I’m ready to go.”
Like many people who break barriers, Crudup didn’t set out to become the first woman in her job. She simply noticed an opening for the position at the city employee bulletin board at 200 Orange St.
The job description stated that applicants “had to be able to lift at least 50 to 75 pounds,” she recalled. “I knew I could do that. I used to be a catering person. I lifted trays for weddings. I’d always been a physical worker, and I also [had] watched [pick-ups] out my window. You really don’t have to lift; you pull the can over in front of the truck, and you press a knob, and it lifts. It was easy once I saw.”
With old and admiring friends Milton Jackson, left, and Kevin Horn.
On Monday, when she was on a route in Westville, “one lady was stunned” to see her, Crudup reported.
“Yes I’m a woman,” Crudup told the onlooker.
“I’m so proud of you,’” the woman responded.
On West Ivy Street this Tuesday morning, an old friend, Kevin Horn, who had not seen Crudup in years, stopped to admire his old friend from Congress Avenue, where they grew up together. He gave her a huge hug.
He said back in the day he never expected to see his friend doing this traditionally male job.
His verdict? “A beautiful idea,” he said.
Along the route Crudup and Shepard continually made eye-contact and signaled each other whether cars were coming or when to indicate to Sweat to move the truck forward a bit. They realized all the teamwork in the name of forward motion was perhaps a little like moving a ball against resistance down a field.
“The driver protects us,” Crudup explained as she took her position at the back on one side of the truck and Shepard hopped on opposite her.
“He [Sweat] blows his horn if someone, and if we don’t give an OK,” one from each of the crew, then the truck does not move to its next location on the street without those thumbs-up.
People used to be injured on the job from lifting, Sweat said. The new wheely-style toters and mechanized lifters on the back of the truck have cut down on those injuries.Still, workers in the past year have been hit by cars; teamwork is key to prevent that.
It was 8:20, and the truck had many more stops to make. Sweat in the driver’s seat was not sweating, but Shepard was. He said the position makes going to the gym unnecessary for him, as it is for Crudup. “This is my cardio,” he said.
Like his new colleague, Shepard is freed up to work a second job. He drives an 18-wheeler for about four hours direct from this job.
“That’s the incentive, the early hours,” he said of the refuse job.
Pescolido said when Crudup came on board, he didn’t see the need for any special orientation for Shepard, Sweat, or any of the 45 refuse laborers in the heretofore all-male division.
“We expect the guys to be courteous to each other and the public. That’s what we strive for,” he said.
Crudup has passed her probationary period “with flying colors,” Pescosolido said.
If there’s any hitch on the route, it appears to be so many people noticing her.
“I’m happy so many women see me. They clap . Women are starting to inquire” about the position,” Crudup added.
After such exchanges, Crudup said, her patient crew members turn to her and say, “Hey superstar, can we get going now?”
Pescosolido said to his knowledge no other women are in the pipeline for the position. “It’s going to be fun having her on board, and we’ll see what the future brings,” he said.
Why was she alone of the crew wearing a yellow rain suit?
“Don’t want to get my hair wet,” Crudup said, and paused.
“Just joking,” she added.
“I’m in it for the long haul,” she said and she hopped back onto her truck, as it moved off toward Dorman Street.
Beautiful Story. Congrats Crudup!