Secret Santa?
By Peter Smith
Published: December 13, 2007
The Forecaster
PORTLAND – John Scott has carried a lot of bags. He drags them across sidewalks, through back alleys and into his truck.
His wife, Viola, said a boy once pointed at him and said, “How come Santa’s driving a garbage truck?”
“You know,” Scott told the boy, “I got to make some money so I can afford all those toys.”
Scott doesn’t run with Dancer and Dasher. He drives a Chevy L8000, a big white garbage truck known in the waste hauling industry as a “packer.” He runs routes through Portland and South Portland, picking up commercial waste from local businesses.
It’s a niche market filled by only a few remaining independent haulers. Most commercial waste businesses tend to have multiple trucks and accounts.
This summer, the Scotts considered selling their Windham-based business, Scott’s Disposal Service. It would have meant this Christmas would have been the last. But they didn’t sell and chances are Scott will continue turning heads during the holidays.
“A little heavy set. Full beard. Just like Santa,” said Rick Roghelia, who works at ecomaine’s scale house. “Real friendly all the time.”
“That’s ‘Scotty Santa,’” said Troy Moon, Portland’s solid waste coordinator.
“He has told me he exclusively keeps his beard because of that,” said Paul Chase, the owner of Old Port Pharmacy, a business that advertises on the side of Scott’s truck. “Either that, or he’s making a self-deprecating joke.”
In late December, Scott usually dons a red shirt and red hat. This year, his partner and brother, Stan Scott, said he may dress up as an elf. Sometimes, the grill of Scott’s truck gets an evergreen wreath. Some say Scott buys the wreath. Others say he finds it.
He’s found a lot of things a lot of places. His truck has stuffed animals. “He loves animals,” his wife said.
He once found a million dollars in the garbage. It was counterfeit. Another time, he found a dead body. “Deader’n hell,” he said in a 1998 interview. “Froze to death in the can.”
Scott also finds nickels – and the back of his truck has a separate bin for returnable bottles, which he redeems and donates to charity.
“What he does is what he does,” Viola Scott said. “It’s all for the glory of the Lord.”
Before Scott inherited the business, his father ran the truck. In 1998, when John Scott was 60, he told the Casco Bay Weekly he had been in the business 45 years. His wife said he started hauling at the age of 8.
Around the city, rumors persist about his age.
“I think he’s in his mid-70s,” Binga’s Wingas owner Alec Altman said last year. “I don’t know. I just see him all over town.”
Most enjoy Scott’s return appearances.
“He’s very giving and I can’t say any but good things about him,” Chase said.
But Scott is a low-key guy, his wife said. He wouldn’t want a story, and didn’t want to be interviewed.
“He’s a really nice guy. I’d say that even if he weren’t my husband,” she said. “He’s just not one to toot his own horn.”