Quiet Work, Big Impact: What a Pine River Trash Company Tells Us About Middle Minnesota’s Future

A cold morning, a quiet truck

At 4:30 on a January morning, when most of Pine River is still dark and the temperature sits somewhere south of reasonable, the first Waste Partners truck rumbles out of the yard. By the time many of us are pouring that second cup of coffee, several hundred garbage cans have already been emptied, straightened, and set back at the end of the driveway—just the way we expect them to be.

You don’t see the driver, but you notice what you don’t see: no garbage blowing across the road, no tipped carts lodged in the ditch, no mystery bags frozen into the snowbank. If everything goes right, their work is invisible.

That’s the odd thing about an “essential service.” During the pandemic, the federal government formally labeled waste collection a critical part of keeping the country running, second only to health care in exposure risk. But in places like Pine River, Backus, and the Brainerd Lakes Area, garbage has felt essential long before it showed up in a Department of Homeland Security memo.

And tucked inside the story of one small trash company is a bigger question for middle Minnesota: in a region built on tourism, tight‑knit towns, and aging infrastructure, what happens when the quiet, behind‑the‑scenes work gets harder to do—but more important than ever?

The Loge Name: Legacy or Liability?

When people around Pine River hear the name Loge, they think of a business, a teacher, and a grandpa nicknamed “Poor Gary” who once ran a small disposal company in the Brainerd area back in the 80’s. That history is stitched into Waste Partners, the garbage and recycling company Drey Loge now helps lead as a third‑generation owner.

His grandpa’s earlier company, Poor Gary’s Disposal, eventually sold into what became a national chain. Drey grew up watching that arc and now wears the pressure that comes with being “the third generation”—the one that, as he puts it, is often blamed for sinking the ship.

“I don’t want to lose the family‑owned aspect,” he says. “If you lose that family feel, you become a transactional business, and that’s not what I want to become.”

That tension—between scale and relationship, profit and place—is something many local businesses across Crow Wing and Cass counties are wrestling with right now. Tourism, health care, outdoor recreation, and back‑office jobs have helped the Brainerd Lakes micropolitan area grow to roughly 100,000 residents, with a modest but steady population increase in recent years. But keeping services local, and rooted, as the region grows is getting more complicated.

Essential work in a changing region

Managing waste  isn’t glamorous, but public health experts are blunt: if garbage stops moving, disease and blight follow. Federal guidance during COVID underscored that solid waste collection has to keep going “to ensure the effective removal, storage and disposal” of what households and businesses throw away.

In central Minnesota, that job is shaped by three big forces:

Tourism and seasonal homes. Crow Wing and Cass counties lean heavily on tourism, with resorts, vacation rentals, and recreation generating hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity each year.

Slow but steady regional growth. The Brainerd Lakes area shows a micropolitan population around 100,000, with modest annual growth and a mix of retirees, remote workers, and service industry employees.

Aging roads and tough winters. Sub‑zero mornings, ice storms, and rural gravel routes turn “just picking up garbage” into a safety and logistics puzzle half the year.

Drey describes his drivers as “authentic, local, salt‑of‑the‑earth people” who thrive on the fact that a perfect day means nobody notices them. Yet the stakes are high: his crews run between 400 and 900 stops a day, often on icy roads, and any breakdown in that system ripples through homes, cabins, and small businesses.

To keep up, the company has invested in safety and technology, including a recent move to vertically integrate more of its recycling transportation—a step Drey calls stressful but necessary, as markets shift and rural haulers get squeezed.

“We were kind of put between a rock and a hard place,” he says. “We decided, you know what, let’s take this into our own hands.”

Video Credit: Lakeland PBS

Local voices: what “essential” feels like on the ground

A region only works if the people doing the behind‑the‑scenes tasks feel seen. Here’s how a few local voices frame that idea.

“We’ve never had a day where we told Tuesday customers, ‘You’ll have to wait until next week.’ The job’s going to get done, come what may.” — Drey Loge, President at Waste Partners

In Pine River‑Backus, the Loge name was on classroom whiteboards and wrestling brackets long before it was the powerhouse behind Waste Partners. Drey’s mom spent years teaching seventh‑ and eighth‑grade math, so “Miss Loge” became a familiar name to almost every kid moving through the middle grades. Drey and his brother kept that name visible in academics and athletics, especially on the wrestling mat, which meant the family felt woven into the school day and after‑school life. That kind of familiarity helps explain why, for many neighbors, Waste Partners feels less like a distant utility and more like a local family doing necessary work.

Local officials see the connection, too. Former Nisswa city administrator Jenny Max once sent Drey a written thank‑you for the company’s help navigating a tricky city recycling site. What stuck with him wasn’t the policy detail; it was that someone else working in a “hidden” essential role noticed.

“We’re both behind‑the‑scenes,” he recalls thinking. “For her to take the time, that one really resonated with me.”

Health and safety experts back up the stakes he feels. Studies of waste workers highlight a “significant risk” of infectious disease exposure from handling contaminated material, especially in pandemics or flu season. That risk is layered on top of the everyday rural hazards: blind driveways, black ice, and soft shoulders on back roads.

Lessons from a trash route: work, faith, and family

Drey’s story is also about what keeps people rooted here. After leaving Pine River for a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a job at a boom‑truck manufacturer, he never planned on coming back to run a family business.

Then his dad called, talking quietly about retirement and the future of the company. Around the same time, Drey’s wife Autumn—then a social worker—applied for a job at Pine River‑Backus. When the offer came through, the couple prayed on it and decided to move home, landing back in the area in early 2020, right as COVID began reshaping daily life.

That return hasn’t been simple. Autumn was diagnosed with breast cancer at 27, a jarring reality for a young working mom. The community rallied, organizing a benefit that Drey calls “eye‑opening” in its generosity. Out of that experience, Autumn and another local woman, Melissa Dooley, started Lakes Area Grit & Grace, a support group for women navigating cancer while working and raising families.

They host monthly gatherings—yoga in Pequot, juicing classes in Nisswa, informal meetups—to offer both community and practical tools. They are now working toward non‑profit status so they can expand financial and emotional support for women in treatment.

When Autumn’s cancer returned this December in metastatic form, she doubled down rather than step back. To Drey, that choice mirrors the ethic he tries to bring to the business: when life gets harder, you dig deeper into service, not away from it.

“These guys love the idea that if they did their job perfectly that day, no one knows it.” — Drey Loge

His own daily routine reflects that pull. The alarm goes off at 4:00 a.m. He reads one chapter of the Bible—“a lens for the day”—before heading in. He’s still wrestling, literally and figuratively, with how to be present at work from 4:30 a.m. to close while also showing up for two young daughters at home.
“I probably lose more sleep than I’d like over that balance,” he admits.

Practical takeaways for middle Minnesota neighbors

So what does all this mean for a busy parent in Brainerd or a retiree in Crosslake who just wants the trash gone and the roads safe? Here are a few practical ways to support the invisible systems that keep our towns running:

Know your pickup rhythm.
Mark collection days on a calendar or phone reminder, especially after holidays or storms, so drivers aren’t chasing carts or blocked by parked vehicles.

Think of your can as part of the road.
Place carts where drivers can safely reach them without backing into traffic or icy ditches; in winter, clear a small pad in the snow if you’re able.

Call about problems—and compliments.
Waste Partners tracks every compliment, from a driver “going the extra mile” to quietly cleaning up a bear‑tipped can. They logged around 60 formal compliments last year, with far more good deeds going unreported.

Ask where your recycling goes.
If you’re curious about how materials are handled, don’t be shy about asking your hauler or city office. Companies like Waste Partners have invested in new recycling transport systems precisely because customers worry about where their stuff ends up.

Support local when you can.
The Brainerd Lakes economy is increasingly diverse, with tourism, health care, manufacturing, and education all playing a role. Choosing local providers where it makes sense keeps decisions—and accountability—closer to home.

On the flip side, small operators have responsibilities, too. Drey points to their three pillars—customers, community, environment—as an ethical checklist. Are the trucks safe? Are workers treated fairly? Is the material handled in a way that doesn’t leave residents guessing about pollution or dumping?

Public‑health guidance suggests regular risk assessments, strong safety protocols, and clear communication can reduce the health risks waste workers face. For rural residents, asking basic questions—“What protections do your drivers have?” “How do you handle sharps or medical waste?”—isn’t being a nuisance; it’s part of being a neighbor.

Where we go from here

Underneath the rumble of that early‑morning truck is a bigger story about what kind of communities we want to be. The Brainerd Lakes region has spent more than a century evolving from hidden resorts in the trees to a year‑round mix of full‑time residents, retirees, and visitors. As more vacation homes convert to permanent housing and new families move north for a different pace of life, the quiet work—hauling garbage, leading support groups, and serving your neighbor—will only matter more.

Drey’s hope is simple: that Waste Partners stays a family business in more than name, and that his daughters see not just a logo on a truck, but a way of being rooted in a place. That hope echoes across a lot of middle Minnesota kitchens right now, whether the family business is trash, trucking, teaching, or running a small resort.

This article is based on an in‑depth interview with Drey Loge, local anecdotal perspectives, and regional data from state, federal, and academic sources on population, tourism, and essential services.

Here’s the question for all of us: as our towns change, will we still see—and support—the people whose best work we never notice?

I’d love to hear your thoughts or your own stories from behind the scenes of essential work. Email me at joshua@lakesareanewsletter.com and tell me what “quiet service” looks like where you live.