How Does 1800 Got Junk Make Money

From Trash to Cash: 1-800-GOT-JUNK Began as a Start-Sprouted and Is Now a Multi-Billion-Dollar bill Company

This multi-meg-dollar company began with just an old pickup truck.

Aug. 19, 2011— -- If it's true that uncomparable man's junk is another human beings's treasure, then what happens if you get everyone's scrap?

Brian Scudamore is the man who is the king of debris. The CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK has mature his multimillion-dollar business into the Starbucks of trash.

1-800-GOT-JUNK is a full-service junk removal company that began in Vancouver, Canada, and has now spread to the United States and Australia. Scudamore's company has become a classical model of a simple idea dead to idol and raking in millions as a result.

"I'm surprised nobody thought about information technology," Scudamore said. "I mean, I'm a high school dropout, a university dropout. It's much a simple estimation, how did it suit what IT is now?"

Recently, line of work has been getting a boost from a antic down culture phenomenon: hoarders. Not just people billboard junk in miscellaneous but from the A&E's hit TV series "Hoarders," which uses 1-800-GOT-JUNK on its house calls.

"Some people, it's just like, you roll in the hay, 'Spotless out my entire service department,' and we get to crop doing it and they're charitable of watching, and they'Ra like, 'OH jeez, I didn't smooth know I had that,'" said James Wyatt Skovron, peerless of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK crew members. "Then I think it's for certain people don't realize how much they have until it's time to eliminate it."

But the company has seen tremendous growth gross. IT hitting its best $1 million class in 1999 and now brings in roughly $100 million each year. One thousand trucks do the simple task of picking up people's unwanted overgorge and acquiring obviate IT.

"We had a guy from Ottawa in Canada go to Sydney and spend a few months working in the trucks in Australia, and He same, 'Brian, it's the same junk in all city.'"

And they get a whole Host of bizarre gourmandize, with a couple of memorable gems, including John Wayne's personal Book, a truckload of denture molds, a defused Domain War Deuce bomb, a prize from a nudist settlement, 50 garden gnomes, 18,000 cans of expired sardines and flatbottom a animate kitty who was set up inside of a refrigerator.

Aft the junk is self-collected, Scudamore explained, it is taken to transferee Stations and recycling depots.

"Landfills are the last haunt," atomic number 2 aforesaid -- "61.3 percent of what we catch away gets reused, donated, recycled. The goal is 75 percent away the ending of 2022."

The 1-800-GOT-JUNK call center is a monumental span of phones ringing soured the hook, and Scudamore said they sometimes sustain very strange requests.

"A lady said if we can pick raised her cats," said Steven Kadiebwe, one of call center employees. "I same we don't, you know, I know we don't Doctor of Osteopathy that!"

On that point's plane a special section of phones where the Australian calls are fed that is staffed with people with Australian accents to give the callers a local feel thousands of miles away. On a record day, Scudamore said 5,000 calls will inherit his call center.

1-800-GOT-JUNK Started Dead A Rubbish Boys

When atomic number 2 first started out, Scudamore had only $700 and an age-old pick-up hand truck.

"Called the company the Rubbish Boys," he said. "Started knocking on doors when I saw someone had a slew of junk in their alley, the laneway. Would introduce myself and offer to cart it away for a fee."

As his business grew, he thought a attention-getting sound figure look-alike "1-800-GOT-JUNK" would work bettor as a company name, but at the start the number was taken and actually rang to the Idaho DoT. Scudamore said 60 phone calls afterward, he convinced them to let him have the number.

Operative his company with the enthusiasm of a start-sprouted, Scudmore holds mandatory daily office huddles to discuss numbers.

Despite the dirty work, he makes sure all of the trucks are clean, and he believes in free advertising at all costs -- his own motorcar is mantled in the company logo. Trucks are also left-of-center in prominent places as billboards when they are not existence used.

Chasing a bottomless pit of junk, a seemingly long demand, Scudamore said the incoming step is to expand the business to to a greater extent countries. He also wants to professionalize more dirty jobs that are generally a pain to get finished, much as landscaping, maid services, rug cleanup, window washing and theater picture.

"I believe we can take out simulate, 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and make information technology a billion dollar business enterprise, whether it's just in junk removal, or a second brand that we started calling 1-888-WOW-1DAY-House painting," Scudamore said.