Our family’s long history in the waste industry started three generations ago, with Ray Lawrence. Ray started R.F. Lawrence Trucking shortly after coming back from fighting in World War Two, where he was based in the pacific. While working at a factory during the week, he began doing household cleanouts by himself on weekends in order to earn extra money for his family. He built that business into a full-service trash company. He was a hard worker, a visionary in our industry, and the true definition of the American Dream. Ray was an early pioneer of recycling, developing one of the first picking stations in order to separate items like cardboard and metal out of the waste stream in New England. Ray sold his company in the early 1970’s to BFI. Ray continued to work at BFI in various roles around the world until his retirement.

Jim Lawrence had been working at R.F. Lawrence Trucking along with the rest of his family since he was in high school. After his father sold the company, Jim stayed on with BFI, which later became Allied, for another 35 years. Jim literally learned the garbage business from the ground up. He inherited his great work ethic from his parents. He worked in the shop as a painter and welder and was a driver for several years. He then spent many years in sales, later becoming the sales manager and then district manager at BFI in Holliston. Over the following years, his position grew with his success and experience at BFI. In his last position there, he oversaw over 500 employees. That included waste and recycling operations for the entire state of Rhode Island, all the South Shore, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, as well as several transfer stations, recycling centers, and the Fall River Landfill.

With all that industry knowledge and expertise, Jim left BFI/Allied and returned home to Framingham in 2006, where his father’s company had started almost 60 years before. That year, Jim started Lawrence Waste Services, as a one-person startup company. Jim had grown tired of the way that big corporations in the waste industry treated their customers and employees. He had a vision of having a small waste business focused on great customer service, rather than being focused on making a stock price go up. He wanted to be able to provide his customers local service with honesty and integrity.

In 2009, with less than one hundred customers at the time, Jim welcomed his business partner and first full time employee to the team, by having his son Keith Lawrence join the family business. Like Jim, Keith also came to Lawrence Waste Services with many years of waste industry experience. That included nearly a decade of trash experience. That time had been split working in operations and sales at the major companies in the waste industry. Keith spent years in operations. He worked in different roles as a driver, in maintenance, as a safety manager, and later as an operations manager of a 24-7 transfer station & rail hauling facility. Keith then spent several years in temporary construction container sales and obtained his LEED AP from the United States Green Building Council. The first person in his family to graduate from college, Keith completed an MBA with a focus in Operations Management from Salve Regina University. He later continued his business education further at Bentley, completing an advanced graduate business certificate focused on Marketing Analytics.

Since 2006, Lawrence Waste Services has continued to grow consistently. The company has grown to manage the waste and recycling needs of several thousand customers throughout the Massachusetts and Rhode Island area. All our customers waste and recycling needs are different. By getting to know each of our customers businesses and goals, we’re able to help select the best waste and recycling solutions for them. Today, we are one of the largest independently owned and operated waste & recycling companies in the State of Rhode Island. We have been based at our facility located at 49 Alder Street in Medway, Massachusetts since 2013. We have a consistently growing fleet and staff that continue to provide first class service and equipment. That now includes nearly fifty waste collection vehicles as well as over a dozen support vehicles and transfer station heavy equipment.

While we continue to grow, we will always remain true to what has made us the successful company that we are today. Our customers appreciate being able to call one local phone number and speak directly to someone that knows them and their business needs personally. We will never have an outsourced customer service center, or even an automated phone system for that matter. We have been able to hand pick our fellow employees and currently have over seventy staff members here to serve our customers needs. Many of them have several decades of waste industry experience. They are the key to our success today and will be for many years to come. They share our values and our pride in being able to consistently provide the very best service in the waste industry.