At 5:00 on the evening of Friday, September 26, 2008, the world famous Queen Mary 2 had just pulled into port at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.  This stop was not on the travel plans for the cruise line, but it became necessary because of the extreme weather conditions up and down the east coast.  They would only be in port for 24 hours and with their holding tanks bursting, they needed to off load 71,000 gallons of wastewater right away. 

Margaret Zacharis, Head of Operations, for Cruiselink in NY, was aware of Russell Reid’s excellent reputation and knew she could count on them to take care of the famed ocean liner.  She contacted Russell Reid and spoke with Jordan Serenkin, VP of Sales, who immediately went to work on the project.

Throughout the evening, Russell Reid personnel developed a project plan involving the organization of all necessary men and equipment as well as disposal facilities.    The large scale project had to be incorporated into the company’s already full workload for the following day.   The amount of material that needed to be removed from the ship would require a substantial amount of the company’s resources.  By the following morning, all the work had been rearranged and the offloading of 71,000 gallons of wastewater from the QM2 had been added to the schedule.  The service would utilize (8) 7,000 gallon vacuum trucks and (3) 5,000 gallon vacuum trucks from the Russell Reid fleet to transport the wastewater for disposal. 

Due to the tight quarters of the pier, there was not enough room to maneuver the large vacuum trucks to directly offload the waste from the ship.  A plan was developed to utilize a smaller fleet of trucks to transfer the wastewater to the larger vehicles which would then transport the material to the disposal facility.   

When the wastewater was tested by the local disposal facility, it was determined to have a low PH level.  The facility refused to accept any more loads and new arrangements had to be made for alternate disposal.  Luckily, Russell Reid maintains excellent relationships with a large network of disposal facilities throughout its service area.  Arrangements were made to transport the waste to a facility in Allentown, PA which would accept all of the remaining loads.

Even with the normal challenges of performing a large scale emergency service over the course of a weekend, Russell Reid was able to work through additional hurdles of this project to satisfy the customer.   In a note of appreciation from Margaret Zacharis, of Cruiselink, she said “I’d like to thank you all for your assistance and commend your staff for their exceptional service and efforts in making this happen in such short notice today.”  In separate correspondence, David Latham, the ship’s Environmental Officer said “…A big thank-you for organizing the operation at such short notice, and I commend all your drivers for their exceptional service…. (Russell Reid) rose to the occasion admirably and made sure the very long day was successful.”