The new garbage company for nearly half a million San Mateo County residents continues to field complaints over missed pickups more than a week into the job — and now has to deal with drivers who say they are overworked.

The union representing about 200 drivers at Recology, which began picking up garbage, recycling and composting between Burlingame and East Palo Alto on Jan. 3, said there are fewer drivers than before and the work is more arduous than expected. They’ve complained of trudging through 12-hour days and claim their smaller staff has caused many of the delayed and missed pickups.

“It’s chaos down here. I can’t get the material out fast enough,” said one veteran driver, who asked for his name not to be used because of job concerns. “The routes are too big, and there are not enough guys to cover them. For what they thought we could pull off, it’s just not going to work.”

It comes after about 14,000 confused, curious and at times angry residents called the company’s customer service line last week, many to complain that their trash had not been picked up. The previous garbage company, Allied Waste, said it received that many calls for the entire month of January 2010 and did not have a single report of a pickup delayed for more than 24 hours.

Recology officials said they have added workers to overcome the company’s “growing pains” and that only 3 percent of its 92,000 residential customers were left without their expected service. Calls of customers’ complaints are slowing, and service is improving, they said.

“It was an imperfect week, and we’re a company that shoots for perfection,” said Recology spokesman Adam Alberti. “So we’re trying to get better each and every day.”

Jim Furgas, a business representative for Teamsters 350, the Daly City-based union that represents the Recology drivers, said the company decided not to hire 25 drivers and five clerical workers employed under the previous contract with Allied.

Furgas said the ones that still have a job are struggling to keep up. Although the automated pickup arms on the new trucks were supposed to allow the drivers to stay seated on their routes, the workers frequently have to get out to rearrange the containers, a development that has slowed the routes considerably.

“They thought they were just going to drive by and stab the can and leave. That’s not how it is,” Furgas said. “They’re sweating bullets out there. These guys are going to be burned out.”

But Monica Devincenzi of Rethink Waste, which represents the cities, said morale “seems to be pretty positive across the board, from everyone from customer service to the drivers.”

“There have been some longer hours, but they’re less tired because they’re not having to manually handle as much material,” Alberti said. And having fewer drivers “helps to control costs for the municipalities.”

Still, the cost of the transition associated with the $50 million-plus annual contract — together with improved service provided in the deal, including weekly recycling pickup — has been high enough that the cities served by Recology San Mateo County are preparing their largest rate hikes in years. Many cities are putting the finishing touches on rate increases of about 20 percent, while officials in Atherton are preparing to charge residents 63 percent more, which amounts to $210 more a year.

Alberti said Recology drivers will become more familiar with the routes as time goes on and asked residents to properly put out their containers — two feet apart, on the street, with the wheels against the curb.

“There has to be some learning that has to happen, both from the customers and the drivers,” he said.

A recurring problem continues to be specialty pickup instructions, such as backyard pickup. Recology said the records it obtained from Allied were incomplete. However, Allied officials said this week that they forwarded their complete customer database to Recology 13 times throughout 2010.

“It has all kinds of information about where the pickup is — put the carts behind the garage or next to it. All those special instructions were included,” said Chuck Page, Allied’s senior area municipal services manager.

Recology asks residents with questions, complaints or requests for service changes to call 650-595-3900 or visit http://recologysanmateocounty.com.

Mike Rosenberg covers San Mateo, Burlingame, Belmont and transportation. Contact him at 650-348-4324.