Carmen Barbato, Senior, was born in a little town east of Naples, Italy called Montesarchio. In 1949, at age 11, he came to the United States with his 14-year-old sister, Filomena. They first lived in Albany with their aunt, but following his aunt’s passing, Carmen was placed in three different foster homes.

To earn spending money he had several odd jobs. In the spring and summer he mowed lawns (no power mowers then). In the fall he raked leaves, and in the winter he went around the neighborhood to see if anyone wanted their sidewalks shoveled. Several years later his sister married and moved to Hillsdale; she brought Carmen with her. Here he got an early morning paper route and caddied at Copake Lake Golf Course on weekends. He also raised chickens and went around the village selling eggs, saving what he could. When he was old enough to drive and still in high school, he invested some savings in an old red Buick station wagon which he cut the back off of to make a “pick-up”, using it on weekends to take trash he picked up from residents in the village to the town dump. Later he worked at Pine Lane Poultry Farm before and after school while still picking up garbage each week. He saved enough money to buy a 1-ton dump truck. With this larger truck, in addition to garbage, he started hauling gravel, sand and stones. It was not long before he was able to buy a tractor with a bucket so he could load the truck himself, working both days of the weekend.

In the fall of his senior year of high school, after having worked before and after school every weekday, plus every weekend and every vacation, he had saved enough money for a down payment on a brand-new Ford Galaxy ‘hardtop’ convertible. This proud purchase was for pleasure.

Following graduation, he was employed as a truck driver during the week and did his own hauling on the weekends. He married a year later to his wife of more than 65 years, Elaine, and gradually reduced his other employment while devoting more time to grow his own business.

Carmen learned how to run a backhoe and bulldozer, and how to blacktop driveways. He saved to buy a trailer to haul his backhoe and small bulldozer. The blacktop spreader hooked on behind a larger 2.5 ton dump truck. He started employing summer and fall help for the excavating and blacktopping. In 1968 he incorporated and bought land just east of the traffic light on Route 23 in Hillsdale, just 2 miles from the NY/MA border, to build his first garage. About this time, he also did his first asphalt tennis court in North Hillsdale for a New York City doctor, which is still in use today. He has resurfaced it only once. In 1969 his household garbage customers had increased in number enough for him to buy a small 10-cubic-yard garbage truck.

Tired of training new men each spring to help with the blacktopping and excavating, (and because the NYSDEC was starting to close all the landfills in Columbia County), he found someone in Craryville who wanted to sell a garbage company. Carmen bought part of it and was then able to keep his few employees working year-round collecting garbage and plowing snow in the winter. During the winter months they also worked on repairing and replacing worn parts on all the equipment. Over the years he bought out a few smaller garbage companies expanding up to New Lebanon and continued to purchase smaller family-run companies and expanded into Southern Berkshire County MA, and Greene County NY. In 1985, he started buying large dumpster and roll-off trucks for use in construction and cleanouts. This eventually expanded to serving commercial businesses as well.

His company workforce and fleet of vehicles and equipment continues to increase. The original pole-barn garage was expanded, torn down, and replaced with a steel building with an office added. Since then that building has expanded a few times, and new buildings built. Cumulating a year-long process, permits were obtained to open a transfer station.

His wife Elaine, an operating room nurse for 30 years in Hudson, NY worked nights and weekends in the business doing the books. When she retired, she joined her husband full time and still works in the business today. After finishing college and occupations elsewhere, Carmen’s two older sons, who had started working in the business at a very young age, returned to work with their dad. His daughter and youngest son have also worked in the business over the years at different capacities, with his daughter most often on a consulting basis in advertising and marketing. In most recent years, the third generation of Barbatos have also joined the company in the office and on the trucks. Today, sons Carmen and Mark supervise the refuse and transfer station end of the business. Nevertheless, Carmen Sr. is never too far away. On Thursdays you can still find him out on a garbage route with his son Mark, still keeping busy!

Carmen Sr. wrote in his senior yearbook under his black and white photo, “Be Someone.” With that focus and determination, he went on to pave many driveways, build several outdoor tennis, basketball, skate and hockey courts, private roads, ponds, septic systems, many foundations and household cleanouts, demolished hundreds of houses, sheds and barns, and plowed many driveways in the Hillsdale, Ancram, Craryville, Austerlitz, and Copake area. He also is blessed with over 3,000 loyal residential customers for which he still picks up garbage in New York: Columbia, Greene, and Dutchess counties; Massachusetts: Southern Berkshire County, and Connecticut: Litchfield County. He also supplies dumpsters, roll-offs, compactor’s and serves the thousands that utilize his Transfer Station (which is open to the public) each year.

But it wasn’t just his focus and determination that made him a trusted, successful businessman, it was also how he conducts business and his involvement in the community. Carmen served as a town councilman for Hillsdale for over 34 years. During that time, he saved the town a significant amount of money and often went door to door to visit and hear resident’s concerns. He always served for the people rather than solely his political party. He approached his business the same way – always serving the customer as a neighbor. His accessibility to his customers, his generous nature and fair, honest prices, and the backing behind the quality of his workmanship, has always been top priority. Values he has instilled and passed on to employees and his generations of family members in the business today.

Excerpts from this article taken from an article in the Roe Jan Alumni Newsletter written by Bud Atwood.