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Martin Environmental Services is set to take over sanitation services in Troup County on Saturday. With the change comes the closure of all but four of the county’s convenience centers, which Martin will operate through its exclusive franchise contract. Customers will also have the option to subscribe to curbside pickup.

Martin will take over the Knott Road, Hillcrest, Lloyd-Tatum and Work Camp convenience centers. The remaining convenience centers will close.

Brandon Hurst, Martin’s President and CEO, said the company will take over the sites and they will be open on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Subscribers will have the option to drop off up to a 95-gallon cart of trash and up to 5 cubic yards of bulky waste once per week at no charge. Non-subscribers can pay as they throw at a rate of $10 per 95-gallon cart or $9 per cubic yard for bulky items.

Hurst said customers who have their curbside pickup scheduled on Tuesday will still receive service on the July 4 holiday.

The company has been working through the weekend, getting out trash carts to late signups. Hurst said they came in on Monday to about 150 people signing up overnight. The company has about 3,000 signups or more so far, he said.

The vast majority of the signup is for curbside service, Hurst said. A few people have signed up for the monthly fee to drop off their trash at a convenience center. He said that most of those live near a convenience center and just want to keep doing what they are used to.

Hurst said they are working to ensure everyone has their trash carts.

“We’re just delivering every day as people sign up. I think we were pretty much caught up on deliveries as of Saturday,” Hurst said. “We have four people that that’s all they’re doing is making sure everyone gets their carts.”

Hurst said they have been hiring a lot of local people, but they want to make sure they get the right people with the right personality.

“We’re kind of over hiring because we want to make sure we have extra people when we first start. We’re actually going to be bringing some people in from our team in Dothan to help with the sites because nobody knows what to expect over the holiday weekend,” Hurst said.

The company is still operating out if its leased offices in the Troup County Government Center. Hurst said they will likely be there for a few more months as they look for a site for their permanent operations.

Hurst said that signups have started increasing as the turnover looms. He also encourages people to go ahead and signup to make sure they get their cart in time.

“We encourage people to get signed up because we can only process so many people per day. That’s why we started signing people up months ago,” Hurst said. “Unfortunately, with all the back and forth, it delayed people from signing up and now they really are signing up.”

Hurst said they have seen a lot of gratitude from elderly people who will now have the option for backdoor service. Under the contract, Martin provides a backdoor service at no additional charge to households with disabled people who are unable to bring their carts to the road.

“We do have a lot of backdoor services signed up for those people and they are excited,” Hurst said.

Many are still upset with the change from county ran sanitation, but Hurst said some people are coming around.

“The whole attitude has really flipped,” Hurst said. “It’s just completely different than it was in the first 40 days into this.”