What was just under the Christmas tree is now on the curb and in the hands of Heberto Rodriguez, a residential garbage truck driver for Waste Management.

While many residents in the neighborhoods near York Way were just rubbing the post-holiday sleep from their eyes, Rodriguez was chaining up his Curotto front loader and preparing to pick up the Christmas refuse.

“It’s probably double,” Rodriguez said of the amount of garbage generated in the week after Christmas.

Waste Management spokesman Justin Caporusso placed the holiday increase between 25 and 30 percent.

With boxes and bubble wrap stacking up outside, Rodriguez was not daunted.

“But we pick up everything,” Rodriguez said. “Especially this time of year.”

In his blue flannel jacket and florescent green vest, Rodriguez spent Friday morning hoisting empty toy boxes and bags of wrapping paper into his big green truck.

The Waste Management driver has seen day-after-Christmas garbage in the same neighborhoods in Sparks for the past three years.

His recollection of his years in Sparks’ Christmas garbage business are filled with wrapping paper, empty boxes and the occasional tree.

“I wish they would cut up the bigger ones,” he said of the trees. “If it is more than 6-feet, cut it in half.”

The loose shreds of wrapping paper and flimsy cardboard, when mixed with a little wind, also give this driver a holiday headache.

“With the Christmas wrapping … everything flies around in the wind,” Rodriguez said, adding that he often is the one who picks it up. “If they could tie everything it not only helps us but keeps the neighborhood cleaner.”

Although there may be more waste this time of year, the excess is not really as significant as it first appears. Because the post-Christmas waste is often loose, it gives the curbside appearance of significant excess.

“It often looks like a lot more because it is high volume and low density,” Caporusso said. “Once it is compacted, it is less.”

Each of the trucks can pick up about 10,000 pounds of waste on each run, said Stefan Yocum, Waste Management’s route manager. Usually each truck will have to dump its load at least once at Waste Management’s transfer station on Commercial Row before heading out again.

During slow garbage seasons, Waste Management drivers will make two trips out from the main station on Commercial Row, Yocum said. However, more garbage after Christmas there could usually means more trips.

Although the load increases in the two weeks following Dec. 25, Yocum said that they will not be operating any more trucks or employing any more staff than usual.

“They will just make more trips,” Yocum said.

The post-Christmas garbage crush is comparable to the summer seasons when people start trimming their trees and cutting their grass, Yocum said.

“May through June is our really heavy season,” he said.

Regardless of the time of year, the average driver visits 700 homes per day. On denser routes, that number could be as high as 1,000. Waste Management is the sole service provider for residential garbage collection in Reno, Sparks and Washoe County, servicing about 124,000 customers per week. According to Yocum, Waste Management has 26 routes that use two employees per truck and 12 routes with one driver and an automated truck.

Rodriguez’s single-man truck has an automated loader on its front with a mechanical arm that grabs the garbage can and dumps it into a bin. Once that bin gets full, it is hoisted into the truck’s larger back bin.

Under a recently approved franchise agreement between the city of Sparks and Waste Management, which dictates the terms of garbage collection in Sparks, residents can only put out about seven 32-gallon bags along with their one 96-gallon can. But this time of year, Rodriguez said he feels charitable.

It is this driver’s unwritten rule that he will help take all the holiday garbage out any way he can.

“If someone has a little more (than what is allowed) I will take it,” Rodriguez said.

And according to Yocum, this policy is generally adopted by all of his drivers during the holiday season.

“You would be surprised at how many people know their drivers’ names,” Yocum said. “That is just his (Rodriguez’s) interaction with his customers.”

Sometimes, Rodriguez finds a little treasure among the trash.

Friday morning, a wine bottle was perched on the top of one resident’s garbage can, a token of thanks for Rodriguez’s work.

He looked at the bottle and then put it back with a small sigh.

“I am not allowed to have alcohol in the truck,” he said.

The bottle was only one of the many tokens of thanks Rodriguez has received over the years.

“Take care of your driver and he will take care of you,” Rodriguez said. “Most of my customers are very nice.”