Service Corporation of America

Service Corporation of America. (later known as SCA Services, Incorporated) was a Boston-based waste and environmental services company in North America. The company was later a subsidiary of Waste Management, Inc., active from 1970-1984.

SCA was unique in that it was not originally supposed to be a waste hauler. SCA was incorporated by Berton Steir as a diversified conglomerate, providing building maintenance, vending, food, travel, and waste disposal service. SCA's first acquisition was of seven vending companies, a building maintenance company, and a single waste hauler. By the time its stock was placed on the NYSE, it had decided to focus on waste disposal instead. Similar to many of the other firms around this time, it would purchase companies with its stock. In the early 1970s, SCA absorbed 87 independent contractors. As part of the deals, SCA would keep the current management in control. The Harvard-educated Steir naïvely acquired New Jersey trash companies, with disguised ownership, which subsequently caused SCA problems. Berton Steir left the company in 1976.

SCA was the first major trash hauler to enter New Jersey, which proved to be highly unstable for the company. To combat this, Tom Viola and his firm were enlisted to soften up the market. Viola also brought his criminal connections with him, but despite this, he was made SCA's vice president. Another waste hauler, based out of Utica, New York, was owned by Anthony Bentro. Anthony was infamous for his connections to Anthony Provenzano, a mobster linked with plots to murder Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa. Months after Hoffa's assassination, prominent members of SCA's New York team were indicted for planning a $300,000 kickback to mobsters and Teamsters.

SCA had grown to become the third largest waste hauler amidst all this internal turmoil. Its territory stretched from Boston, Massachusetts, all the way to California. By 1976, the company's sales were $660,000,000, including all of its subsidiaries. SCA's fleet of garbage trucks had swelled to 1,800 in 90 cities. It had 39 landfills, 100 municipal contracts, 110,000 commercial accounts and 100,000 dumpsters. SCA's data center in Somerville, MA provided information technology ("IT") services to its haulers, many of which had no IT capability prior to acquisition by SCA in the 1980s.

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