Every load of garbage collected in Pinellas County is delivered to a St. Petersburg address. The county’s Solid Waste Disposal Complex, at 3095 114th Ave. N., receives all garbage collected in the county, and its waste-to-energy plant burns an average of 2,700 tons a day. The city’s own sanitation operation serves more than 5,900 commercial accounts with container collection 6 days a week and runs roll-off service on top of that. PSTA’s headquarters and bus operations base sits on Scherer Drive. And the Gateway area, which St. Petersburg shares with Pinellas Park, holds much of the county’s economic activity, including Jabil’s headquarters. For private fleets working in the middle of all that, RDI Fleet, RDI Power’s fleet program, offers planned maintenance at your yards, carried out by technicians who drive down from Brooksville.
Every Pinellas load ends on 114th Avenue North
If your trucks haul garbage anywhere in the county, the disposal complex is part of their day. That duty cycle is hard on a truck in 2 directions at once: hours of stop-and-go collection with constant braking and idling, then a loaded run across the county to 114th Avenue North.
An RDI Fleet plan for a refuse or roll-off truck focuses on the chassis systems that duty punishes:
- Brakes. Measured and adjusted on every visit, with air system leak checks.
- Cooling. Radiators, hoses and belts, since slow, heavy work in Florida heat leaves little margin.
- Aftertreatment. Soot load, regen history and DEF system health, because crawling from stop to stop keeps exhaust temperatures too low for the DPF to clean itself well.
- Electrical. Batteries, charging and the wiring that takes a beating on a truck that starts and stops all day.
- Engine hours. Collection trucks go on hour-based intervals, not mileage.
For a collection truck, the hard part is finding the hours. PM gets booked into the gaps in the route calendar, so the truck is serviced on its lightest day instead of the day it fails.
Buses on Scherer Drive and what they teach about PM
PSTA’s consolidated headquarters and bus base on Scherer Drive, completed in 2005, covers 35 acres and was sized for up to 300 buses. In 2022 PSTA launched the SunRunner, the Tampa Bay Area’s first bus rapid transit line, from downtown St. Petersburg to St. Pete Beach. Transit at that scale runs on scheduled maintenance, because a bus that fails mid-route strands its passengers as well as its driver.
A private operator running shuttles, charter coaches or church buses in St. Petersburg needs the same discipline on a smaller scale. RDI Fleet plans put each bus on calendar-based PM timed around its service days, with attention to brakes, doors, suspension, steering and the electrical load a passenger vehicle carries. Our bus service and repair page covers the repair side.
Gateway area manufacturers and their trucks
Much of St. Petersburg’s economic activity sits in the Gateway area, where Jabil, the Fortune 500 electronics manufacturer, has its headquarters; the city’s 2019 financial report listed Jabil among its largest private employers with 2,000 workers. I-275 carries about 14,430 trucks a day near the city by FDOT’s 2025 count, and CSX still serves nearby industries with spur tracks from its small yard northwest of downtown. If your trucks supply, service or move product for Gateway businesses and split their time between I-275 miles and short hops between docks, that mix gets per-unit intervals: miles for the interstate runners, engine hours for the dock shuttles, the calendar for trailers and backup units. Each unit’s annual DOT inspection rides on the same St. Petersburg visit as its PM.
How a St. Petersburg plan handles several yards
A city this size often means more than one yard. An RDI Fleet plan records where each unit parks overnight and schedules visits site by site, often servicing several units at a stop. The service history follows the truck, so a technician at your Gateway lot knows what was found at your south side yard last month. Each unit gets a digital inspection report after every visit: photos, technician notes and findings split into repairs to approve now and items to plan for. If a unit needs a lift for an engine or transmission job, it gets a slot in the Brooksville shop that fits your week.
Records, warranty and after-hours cover for St. Petersburg accounts
When something fails between visits, St. Petersburg fleet accounts go to the front of the line. Fleet repairs come with a warranty of 2 years or 24,000 miles, and fleet customers can get roadside help day or night, whether a truck stops on I-275 at night or on 54th Avenue South on a holiday.
St. Petersburg operators can see everything the program covers in our RDI Fleet program overview. Operators near Boca Ciega Bay can compare fleet maintenance in Gulfport, and breakdowns between visits are covered under mobile diesel repair in St. Petersburg. Call (352) 433-3800 to plan maintenance for your St. Petersburg units.