You may wonder, and we get asked a lot, where does all of my junk go? After filling up our trucks during a junk removal job, our first stop is never a landfill. Dumping everything that we load from home, office or any other type of junk removal job is costly and can often hurt the environment. Usually junk removal companies have to pay a fee for the junk that they drop off at landfills. Sacramento Junk Removal Authority works to reduce the amount of waste that they dump at the landfills through several different methods. Find out what happens to your junk after you say goodbye to your clutter and hello to your new-found space.
Donation Stations
Sacramento Junk Removal Authority works with many local charities and donation centers in the area. When you contact Junk Removal Authority for your junk removal needs, we will bring your designated donation items to one of the many facilities that we have a relationship with in the Sacrament area for donation. If you do not have anything marked for donation, Junk Removal Authority will still deliver your large items and things that are easily identifiable for donation to one of the many donation centers in the in Sacramento area.
Sacramento Junk Removal Authority frequently donates items such as furniture, clothing, electronics, housewares, small appliances, tools and more. In addition, Junk Removal Authority will email you a tax-deductible form for your records.
Recycling Centers
The next stop on our trip after the donation center is the recycling centers. There are many different types of recycling centers available, it all depends on what kind of junks. You can recycle Electronics at special E-waste centers. Refrigerators and air conditioners contain CFC’s and need to recycled properly so that those chemicals aren’t released into the environment; California has special laws about the recycling of these goods that Sacramento Junk Removal Authority must follow. Metal can be recycled at scrap yards. Common household recyclables like cardboard, plastics, and glass can go through a recycling center.
Landfills
After we have donated and recycled every bit of your junk that we can, it is time to head to the landfill. Sacramento Junk Removal Authority cares about the environment. We do everything that we can to reduce the amount of waste that we take to the landfills with every junk removal job that we perform. We will continue to look for additional means for our company and our customers to reduce, reuse and recycle. Furthermore, to take care of the environment while removing the junk from our customer’s lives.
Contact Sacramento Junk Removal Authority
Junk Removal Authority is proud to serve the Sacramento area for all of your junk removal needs as well as, recycling, and donation needs. Also, Sacramento Junk Removal Authority can help you to reclaim your space and make junk removal fast and easy.
One of the hardest things to do when first starting your junk removal business is choosing how to price. Do you price by time? By weight? By volume? A hybrid of two or three of those? All of these are approaches used by junk removal companies from time to time.
Time. Many first time customers will believe that you charge based on either weight or time, so it is natural if you think that might be how you should charge as well. The easiest and most straightforward way to charge is just based on the amount of time your job takes plus disposal fees. If you chose to charge this way, you would clock in at the start of the job, clock out at the end, go unload and dump, and then add in the disposal receipts at the end of the job to figure out total cost. You would then either bill the customer or run their credit card. However, there are some issues with this approach.
First, this approach makes it exceedingly difficult or even impossible to give the customer an up-front price. There are simply too many variables involved. What is the weight of the items you are taking? How is the property laid out? Is there any disassembly required? All of these have to be considered.
Another issue with this approach is the fact that the size of the job and location of items could be prohibitively expensive for you or the customer. A simple garage pickup of some light items could see you losing a significant amount of money, while a one-truck attic cleanout could take hours and end up costing the customer over a thousand dollars. For these reasons, the “time plus disposal fees” option just isn’t the best approach.
Weight. What about just charging a flat rate for weight? There is a company in Vancouver called “Junk Rangers” with a very unique concept for this approach: they mount scales on their truck. They take a total weight at the beginning and end of each job and charge per pound. The advantages of this are obvious. As the junk removal business owner, it will be much easier to keep your disposal expense percentage exactly where you want it because your pricing literally depends on the same criteria.
There is an advantage with this route for the customer as well. It is a scientific approach with which the customer cannot really argue. The price per pound is made clear up front and the customer can clearly see their total weight (and therefore price) at the end of the job. However, this method still leaves the customer without a price up front.
Volume. The third common way to price your junk removal franchise is the most frequently used: volume. Price points are set based on fractions of the truck between a minimum and full truckload. If a job will require more than one truckload, the pricing simply restarts for every truckload after the first. A firm price can be provided up front because an experienced Team Leader can accurately quote load sizes after taking a look at items to be removed. Most experienced Team Leaders are almost perfectly accurate. The one drawback to this approach is that there will be the occasionally missed quote. You should expect new team members to misquote a couple jobs as they gain experience (and therefore train these team members before they have to make these quotes on their own). Rarely, a customer may dispute the load size in the back of the truck, but again, this is exceedingly rare.
The volume approach tends to be the best for the customer because they know what they are paying before the job starts. This approach also keeps costs down on some of the more time-consuming jobs, as their increased labor expenses are offset by jobs like garage cleanouts, which are very quick. It’s all about averages. As a result, most junk removal companies price by volume.
Check out this video for a full explanation on setting pricing.
The rest of this article will the steps to choosing to price based on volume. While everything is covered in the video, the main points are summarized here:
If you are new with no prior knowledge of your market and no financial data on which to base your decisions, you should research your competitors’ pricing. You can call other junk removal companies pretending to be a customer. Alternatively, some companies, like Junk King, have their pricing listed online.
Consider factors such as:
Traffic. In areas with high traffic, your trucks will spend more time on the road, increasing labor, fuel, and maintenance costs.
Layout of buildings. Ranch homes can be quickly cleared. High-rise apartments, on the other hand, will require time-consuming removal down hallways and elevators. The longer truck teams are inside a structure, the higher the labor cost and the greater the risk of property damage or employee injury.
Disposal fees. This should be one of the biggest factors in your pricing. In North Carolina, our average disposal cost per ton is about $42. In some areas in the northern United States, disposal fees are more than $100 per ton!
Climate and road salt. Areas with high snowfall (and therefore lots of road salt) will see higher truck maintenance costs. Road salt wreaks havoc on trucks and adverse weather conditions both slow down truck teams and increase accident risk.
Consider the cost of getting a crew on site. Labor costs, wear and tear on the truck, fuel, and time add up to about $70 just to get a truck to a job. Be mindful of this when you set your minimum price point.
Most customers don’t pay any attention to your interior price points – they only care about the minimum and full load charges. This allows you to compete with your minimum and full load rates while still making a profit between those two points.
Don’t restrict your price points to just ¼ load increments. If you load up about ⅓ of a truck, you’d either have to charge the customer significantly too little or significantly too much. Likewise, having 100 different price points makes it impossible for your truck teams to maintain consistency and confuses your customers. Setting 12 price points creates a good balance of fairness in pricing without overwhelming your truck teams or customers.
Don’t make your price curve linear. If your full load rate is $400, your half truck price should not be $200. Instead, pricing should follow a less even curve based on percentages of the full truckload rate. As an example and reference point, the Junk Doctors price points are listed below:
Minimum: $95
1/8: $135 (27%)
1/6: $170 (34%)
¼: $205 (42%)
1/3: $265 (54%)
3/8: $300 (61%)
½: $330 (67%)
5/8: $360 (73%
2/3: $390 (79%)
¾: $420 (85%)
5/6: $460 (94%)
7/8: $475 (97%)
Full: $490
That’s all there is to it. Be sure to like and subscribe on YouTube for more helpful tips, and until next time, go get ‘em!
Not that lots of people recognize that there is cash to be made from garbage. Whether it remains in creating beneficial as well as special things from things people discard or from just offering to get rid of these for others for a charge, you can make loan from junk. Does this mean that installing a business for junk removal in Charleston should be your following undertaking?
Before you begin hauling junk away for others, there a few things you have to take into consideration. Below are a few of the points you require to think of:
Exists a market for such a service in your area?-- This is a question you will should ask, especially if you remain in a location of Charleston that is currently saturated with individuals running the same business. If there are just a couple of business concentrating on junk removal in Charleston, particularly in your component of community, after that this company might extremely well be worth taking into consideration.
Do you have the drive to make such a business prosper?-- Ever become aware of the expression "The mind is ready however the flesh is weak"? Well, if you do not have exactly what it requires to run a company that could be fairly tiring on the body in addition to on the mind, you should consider a few other organisation venture. If you do have just what it takes to make this type of a business be successful, after that you ought to go all out.
Are you ready to find out the ropes?-- Every business has a variety of things that you need to discover in order for it to prosper. In junk removal, as very easy as it might sound, there are really a few conformity certificates as well as training that you could need to go through if you intend to cover all the bases in such a service. You will also should discover ways to run a service that you have and how you can handle people that work for you.
Are you endure sufficient to encounter the ups and downs of a company?-- If you are not worried of dealing with a few obstacles every now and after that, you have exactly what it requires to successfully run a service. Junk removal in Charleston can be really challenging, and also no company ever before rode a wave of success from the get go. If you can ride via the lots of barriers that have running your personal junk hauling service, and also still have the drive to maintain things going, you could be excellent for such an endeavor.
These are just a few of the points you will certainly have to go through your head before you start running a junk removal company in Charleston. Various other challenges you may have to consider when it pertains to such a business include where to obtain individuals for the tasks you will certainly have openings for, where to buy your equipment, and a lot more importantly, where to obtain the resources for such a service. If you have prepared answers for every one of these, then you could safely state that you prepare to obtain right into the junk removal sector in your area.
When you are looking for a profitable company to obtain right into, you would certainly never ever actually believe that hauling junk is one of them. Well, shock, shock. Setting up a business that concentrates on junk removal services in Sacramento might simply be the venture you are trying to find to make you rich. There are a great deal of success tales that focus on hauling junk and exactly how people have ended up being millionaires from waste removal, so why shouldn't your tale become part of such a list?
Obviously, intending to set up junk removal services in Sacramento as well as in fact doing it are 2 extremely various things. There are a couple of things that have to enter appropriate order before you could begin raking in the cash money from your junk hauling tasks. How do you begin? Right here are some points that you need to do:
1. Analyze your target audience-- This is the initial step to a lucrative company concentrating on junk removal services in Sacramento. You will certainly should discover who your target market is, what they need, exactly what they want, and also what they get out of a business such as your own. You ought to also think about scoping out the competitors so you will understand whether or not your firm can hold its very own versus others with the exact same organisation version.
2. Compare franchising with setting up your very own junk hauling organisation-- Some brand-new entrepreneur locate it easier to franchise business instead than to start a company from scratch, and also in reality, it is certainly simpler to perform. Business name is established, the methods included with junk hauling as well as removal is developed, and the devices you need is offered. What might not appear to those who go by doing this is that the satisfaction you receive from seeing your own service succeed, and the reduced expense of not requiring to pay for a franchise business, is in fact a far better choice.
3. Created your service plan-- No organisation can prosper without a plan in place. This will assist you set a couple of vital actions for your organisation to take, such as how you can price your services, whether to employ or subcontract laborers, to rent or buy devices, as well as numerous other such decisions.
4. Obtain funded -Unless you have cash-on-hand to use for beginning your junk removal services in Sacramento, you will certainly should safeguard an organisation funding to obtain points rolling. The funds that you obtain will be made use of in the direction of the purchase or lease of junk hauling devices, training for you and also your employees, and other expenses that your brand-new undertaking might require.
5. Secure all necessary documents and permits-- You will certainly also have to safeguard authorizations and various other paperwork necessary to legally run a business that uses junk removal services in Sacramento. Some of the licenses you will certainly have to have, besides a business permit, unique authorizations for hauling particular types of junk, conformity certificates that the EPA might need for the hauling as well as disposal of toxic products, as well as an employer recognition number, if you are intending on hiring a couple of individuals to function for you. You will additionally needto have insurance coverage for your business along with to cover your staff members.
One of the important things that people generate a great deal of regularly is junk. Whether you are in Sacramento, Kansas, or Atlanta, junk is being made everywhere. Among the tasks a great deal of individuals locate rather daunting and also hard to do is the hauling and also disposal of junk that they have. People that hate such a task often attempt to discover a company that could do this for them, and also this is just one of the numerous factors why you ought to consider installing a company for junk removal in Atlanta.
Having a company that focuses on junk removal throughout the United States is considered a rewarding endeavor mostly due to the fact that not that many individuals really want to carry their junk themselves. There is money to be made in junk and also hauling other people's junk can be a good business for you to think about getting into. Certainly, this is not the only reason why you must enter into such a business, although it is possibly the biggest one.
What other reasons are there for you making that large leap right into producing a business that concentrates on junk removal in Atlanta? Here are several of them:
You obtain to help others-- The satisfaction you get from knowing that you were able to assist an additional individual with a job that they could not manage, also if it was for a fee, is an additional excellent reason for you to get into such a biz. Not every person could quickly take care of the type of work included with hauling as well as taking care of junk. Having the ability to do this will give you the possibility to assist people with a demand that they have as well as at the very same time, it likewise provides you a method to make money.
You obtain to help the community-- Nothing is as unsightly as a pile of junk sitting outside a home, waiting to be hauled away and also to be thrown away. As stated previously, not everyone has the chops or the knowledge to effectively do away with junk that people in some cases wind up accumulating. Eliminating junk that produces an instead undesirable mess in front of residences and offices in your area essentially helps the area because you are maintaining the surroundings tidy as well as making your city a far better location to reside in.
You give individuals jobs-- Being an entrepreneur as well as running a junk removal company in Atlanta means that you will require a couple of other people in order to help you with the services that you use. You could not quite possibly accumulate and also deal with stacks of junk on your very own. You will certainly require a team in order to help you with this. You will certainly likewise require staff to help you respond to calls as well as to approve work for your service. When your enterprise expands, you will need even more individuals to do these jobs, which indicates you will certainly offer even more people tasks.
You reach help the atmosphere-- As a company that specializes in junk removal in Atlanta, you should be cognizant that not all types of junk can as well as ought to be thrown away in a singular way. There are various disposal techniques that require to be followed according to regulations established by the EPA and your neighborhood in addition to state laws. As a supplier of such a service, you obtain to deal with the several different sorts of junk you encounter the best means. This aids avoid contamination of environments and you get to assist the earth by recycling junk that can be reused.
My name is Lee Godbold and I’m the co-founder of Junk Doctors Junk Removal and Hauling and the Junk Removal Authority. With help from my partner, I built Junk Doctors into a $2 Million-a-year business that can literally run without my day to day input, all by the time I was 27 years old. At the time of this writing we have around 30 truck team members, 10 trucks, a Bobcat, and a dump trailer in operation in North Carolina. We’ve got a great organization full of great people and it has made life great for me. I can focus on building JRA now while still getting a hefty paycheck from Junk Doctors. But where did we come from? I can promise you it hasn’t always been airplanes and nice cars.
Before I started Junk Doctors I was working at a roller skating rink making around $15,000 a year and going to school part time. I was also racing NASCAR style race cars. Every extra penny I made went into the racecar. Even then my car wasn’t good enough to be truly competitive. I would go fast and something would break. I’d fix it and then wreck or it would break again. Eventually I ran out of money and sold everything but my pickup truck.
I have always been very driven and entrepreneurial. Always sure that I would be successful, knowing I would work for myself. I didn’t know when or how, but I knew I would figure it out. I tried many businesses before Junk Doctors. There was a flyer delivery business, a mobile airplane washing business, a mobile paper shredding business, a cleaning service, and more. Each one of those failed and each failure taught me lessons that led to the success of Junk Doctors.
I got to thinking that people have junk, I have a truck, and I’m willing to work hard. Until I figure out what I want to do why don’t I put up some Craigslist ads and flyers about hauling junk? I did just that and within the first day I had my first job scheduled. I was charging something like $50 per pickup truck load. So cheap! But I was making more money than I’d ever made and having a blast. I knew two weeks in that I’d found what I’d been looking for. I was going to be a garbage man!
After about two weeks of hauling using just the truck I got to a HUGE yard waste job. I wound up borrowing a 6×12 trailer from my boss at the roller skating rink. The thing had sides that were maybe 6 inches high! Not to be deterred, I stacked that yard waste five feet high and ran ratchet straps all over the place and hauled it to the yard waste facility. Five loads. I think I charged around $800 or $1000. I couldn’t believe I’d made $1,000 in a day. Little did I know that just a few years later I would be consistently making over $10,000 a day!
After about six months of hauling using that no-wall trailer we decided to take a risk and buy a trailer with 3 foot sides. A $1200 risk. Man we were sweating spending that much money. But we bit the bullet and got the trailer. It instantly increased our productivity and allowed us to hang some signs on our trailer (though not very impressive ones).
After using that trailer for around six months we bought ol’ Number 1 from Jacksonville, FL. When we got that first dump truck our productivity went through the roof. We could do five jobs instead of three in a day and would finish the day feeling refreshed rather than dead tired. When someone wanted a same-day pickup we had them covered. We had enough energy to attack that new job with excitement. After being on truck 1 for about 6 months I got off the truck full time and began working on growing our business instead. I began hiring people, advertising, and selling. Once I got off the truck we again increased productivity.
The following year we began a trend of adding one to two trucks a year as we grew. Revenue would double most years. I always wanted to build a business that could be sold and run without me. I didn’t want to have to shut down operations so I could take a vacation. That goal was met by year three. And now I work about 10 hours a week on Junk Doctors compared to about 60 hours a week for Junk Removal Authority. I travel when I want to and I’m always replacing tasks I don’t enjoy doing with stuff I do. That is the purpose of true business ownership.
Now you know how we made it. We want to take you to the same level. We want you to reach success quicker than we did. By partnering with us you will literally remove years from the process. Call us at 919-466-9322 or email lee@junkremovalauthority.com.
Good morning guys. I’m a little bit early to a meeting I’ve got here, so I’ve got a little bit of time. Just recorded a Junk Removal Made Simple episode on the worst mistakes we ever made running our junk removal business. That’s a really great. My hope on it and my goal is that when you all watch that, you’ll avoid making those same mistakes we made. I’d love to know where our business could be if we had avoided those mistakes early on.
When I first reached the point at which I didn’t have to be on the truck all the time, I relished the fact that I had a new freedom to do what I wanted to do. I was making a decent amount of money. I started to settle. I stopped improving the business. I stopped pushing as hard. It only lasted for a month or so, but over just that one month I noticed a decline in business. I noticed I was sleeping in later and I really wasn’t as happy. I went to the beach more and I had more time to spend on my hobbies, but I wasn’t as happy as when I was pushing hard and working towards clear goals.
Growing up, I got into aviation through my dad. Because of the expensive and time-consuming nature of the hobby, most people in aviation are older. As a result, I had the privilege of being friends with a lot of older people. Most of them were in their 60’s when I was a kid. As a grew into a teenager, they grew into their 70’s and 80’s. Many of them have since passed on, but what I remember most about them was their passion and uncompromising determination. These guys were out at the airfield every day, honing their skills and talking about the things they loved and the goals they still wanted to accomplish. Then there was my grandfather.
He had goals and ambitions when he was a younger man. But those days were long past. I began to see the signs as soon as he wasn’t working anymore. Even as a kid, I could tell that the TV had replaced his ambitions. He wasn’t striving for anything anymore. He was retired.
He stopped engaging his mind. He stopped engaging his body. He stopped striving for things that mattered to him. Most importantly, he no longer had goals to strive for. And that’s ultimately what people live for. We’re a species meant to hunger for constant improvement, and though the type and degree of improvement differ from person to person, everyone has to have something to work towards. As soon as we allow ourselves to lose that hunger, that yearning for the thrill of achieving our own goals, we start to lose our purpose.
Without a purpose, a motivating reason to get up every morning, we start sleeping in. Why should we get up when we won’t accomplish anything meaningful? When we start sleeping in too much, we get lazy. Sick. Our energy levels go down. We don’t find joy in the things that once fulfilled us. We’re not happy. Our work, families, friends, and hobbies all miss out on our much-needed attention. We’re still alive, perhaps. But we’re not truly living.
This may seem like an overly bleak or fatalistic outlook, but it’s the truth. Though it may seem like the simplest and most obvious thing in the world, having a purpose for your life is absolutely essential to living a good and enjoyable life. That’s why it’s so important to stay hungry and never settle.
Don’t settle on your income when you hit your target. Set your sights higher – make it five or ten times the amount you’re currently making. Make it a goal that you have to work for – one that makes you a little nervous. After all, if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough. Write that goal down once or twice a day at the beginning. I write my goals down at the beginning of the day and again at the end of the day. Long-term goals, short-term goals, goals that you want to accomplish that day – write them all down. Remember them. Want them. Be hungry.
Let’s say your goal was to own a home. Once you buy the home, you’re happy. And you should be – you’ve accomplished a very big goal you set for yourself! Chances are, however, that you settled for something about the home. Maybe it was the neighborhood, the layout, or the funky column jutting into the living room. Maybe you discover that the grocery store five minutes down the road doesn’t stock avocados (which is obviously unforgivable). Don’t settle. Make it your goal to fix that funky column, move to a better neighborhood, or live closer to the grocery store that somehow only stocks perfectly ripe avocados.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be happy with your home. After all, if you’re never happy with the life you’re building, there’s no point to building it either. There’s a balance to be struck here. Enjoy the present and remember all the work you’ve put in to get where you are. Just know that as corny as it may sound, life really is about the journey more than the destination. Remember being a kid and staring at the toy catalog for weeks, saving up pocket change and birthday money a little at a time to finally buy it? Oftentimes the excitement of wanting the toy, obsessing over it, and imagining it was greater than the feeling of actually possessing it.
If you’re completely happy with your home and it’s everything you want, do you just stop and rest on your laurels? Of course not! Just find the next part of your life you want to improve. Maybe it’s your vehicle. Maybe it’s your body. Maybe it’s your relationship; that’s the hard one. With everything else going on in your life, you have to make sure you’re not being complacent in your relationship. That you’re not taking the other person for granted. That you’re really pushing hard and that you’re trying to keep the heat in that relationship going. You’re intentionally setting aside time just for that person and for your relationship. When I plan my day out (and I plan the entire day in advance), I plan out the time that I’m going to spend with my wife.
Then there’s your business. I enjoy flying. I enjoyed cars. But growing my business, seeing it flourish, seeing how many people I can help through my work – that’s what gives me the most pleasure in life. So I’ve poured my heart and soul into this business and it’s done wonders for my goals. I achieved my five-year goal a couple years early. I’m on track to hit my ten-year goal by year five. When I hit that, I’ll be setting another ten-year goal. I’ll be doing that at least five or ten times – and hopefully even more than that!
You see, the only reason you ever settle is because you convince yourself that your dreams and ambitions are unattainable. You may have gotten sick and tired of all the disappointments along the way. That’s tough. But disappointments happen all the time, and they’re simply teaching tools; stepping stones on the path to success. There may be hundreds of these little steps, and with so much to accomplish it’s possible to psych yourself out, to start believing that your dreams can’t happen. Break that long-term goal into little pieces and tackle one at a time. Sometimes they won’t go so well. Sometimes they’ll hurt, bad. Disappointment might last days or weeks. But you can’t settle, you can’t give in to the easy way out and give up. Because if you choose to be hungry, to chase those goals and keep pounding even through the really bad days, you’re gonna get there. And you’re going to be at your happiest through it all.
You’re going to feel your best and have the most energy when you’re working towards a goal. As they say at Men’s Wearhouse, I guarantee it. Everybody, have a wonderful day. Don’t settle for a good day. Chase after that great day, that extra one percent. Be hungry. Chase after your ambitions and make all your dreams and aspirations come true. When they do, set more goals. I’ll talk to everybody soon.
Manage your people with kid gloves. Don’t create a high pressure environment. Make sure people leave on time. Pull people up, don’t push them! All of these previous sentences are littered throughout business books. Books written by college professors and managers of large corporations. It’s a bunch of bologna. No if, and, butts about it. It’s crap. You’ve done a great job building your junk removal business by the sweat of your brow. You are now at the point where you got to kick it into the next gear. The only way to do that is to start hiring more people. But it is imperative that you get the same or better results from them as you got from yourself. And, always remember one thing. The reason you hire anybody is for profits. It is to make you or your business partners more money. That is it. Get rid of any pie in the sky mentality that you want to hire people in order to provide needed jobs to people and better your community. Don’t kid yourself. You need people to make your company more money. That’s it.
Here are the keys to managing your people to get them to make you the most Guala Guala.
Understand that you hired them to make you more money: Don’t ever hire someone because you feel sorry for them. That will never turn out well. Instead you will start feeling sorry for yourself that you ever hired them in the first place. You hire people to save you time and make you more money.
Train them to properly do their job: Make sure you have documented training manuals and a well thought out training program complete with checklists to ensure no training is missed. You are setting your team members up for failure if you don’t properly train them. Train them to meet or exceed your well documented work standards.
Monitor them to make sure they are doing their job correctly through meeting and occasional supervision: Once a week have them meet with you or their manager/team and have them outline tasks and deadlines for the week ahead. When they are new check in with them daily to monitor progress. Once they are more established you won’t have to check over them as closely. If they still require close supervision after months of working with your company they might want to find another position or another job. You should have people that can complete tasks and meet deadlines without direct supervision. In the case of truck team members you should ensure they are placing courtesy calls, do customer follow up calls, check over truck cleanliness, make sure they are getting review requests out, etc. Everyone should have firing orders on what they are expected to do and you should be ensuring they are carrying out those tasks completely.
Call them out on anything they are doing wrong: Let them know if anything is not being done correctly. Make sure they know how to do the job properly. Meet with them a time or two. If they can’t fix it then you might want to get rid of them or find them a different position they would be better suited for. Remember, all tasks are important. If you let them slip on one task they could very well slip on another.
Hold regular performance evaluations: Make it clear to them that they know how they are doing and what they need to do to improve. If you aren’t meeting with them they don’t think you care. If they think you don’t care then they won’t care. Not a good thing.
Expect your people to meet deadlines and stay however long it takes: By making it clear that your people are expected to meet deadlines and complete their days tasks no matter how long it takes you will find that people will become more efficient. They will cut out the extra long lunches, the water cooler talks, the extra coffee break, etc. They will still focused on achieving their task. If they have to stay way late all the time you need to look into their efficiency and try to help them get things done quicker so they don’t have to stay late all the time. That isn’t good for their family life. And if their family life suffers. And if they suffer and get depressed their work will suffer. Not good. Also, if they are hourly you are paying them for the extra time. Also, not good. Expect your people to complete their tasks every day no matter what.
Turnover is a good thing: Nothing kicks people into high gear and puts them on their toes than a constant round of hiring. Treat your organization like a college basketball team. Be constantly bringing in the best people you can. Train them up and see how they perform relative to others in your organization. The ones that perform the best get the playing time. The ones that don’t ride the bench or get cut. Management books caution against turnover. I like it. I like constantly bringing people in and kicking people that can’t perform out. Bring em’ in. Kick em’ out. This has been the greatest change we’ve ever made to managing our people. We had guys that just did as little as possible to get a pay check become kick ass team members from this one change. They saw new people coming in and passing them. They didn’t like it and got motivated to perform. Turnover is a good thing. Always be hiring!
Longevity doesn’t matter: Experience matters. Longevity doesn’t. Experience can make you make better decisions. A motivated and experienced team member is worth more than a motivated and inexperienced team member. However, longevity doesn’t matter. The present is all that matters. If you have a two month guy who is outperforming a five year guy then the two month guy should get the PT or the spot. The five year guy needs to pickup his game or leave the organization. If you have a five or ten year guy in your sites and they tell you or act like they deserve it because they have been with you for ten years. Because they have been so good for ten years. Make sure they understand that you appreciate what they did int he past but presents results matter. Either pickup your game or leave.
Everyone, including you, goes lame: All race horses go lame. All employees, including you go lame as well. It is important that when anyone goes lame you try to figure out why. Is it something that can be corrected? Are they simply bored? Can you move them to a different position to get them re-enthused? You will lose interest in doing certain things within your business as well. It is important at that point to hire someone to do the task you aren’t interested in doing anymore. Otherwise your whole organization will suffer.
Don’t allow anyone to get to comfortable: This applies to yourself probably more than anyone else. It is easy for the business owner to get comfortable. He has to self motivate himself. He doesn’t have someone threatening to cut his job if his performance slacks. The only way to not get comfortable is to constantly be setting and achieving goals. Every time a goal is achieved you should be ready to have another go back in its place. Always have something you are working towards or your performance will suffer. And as far as your team members make sure they feel the pressure to perform. If they don’t have the pressure they will start to slack off.
Consider tying peoples pay into performance: I do believe in some types of pull management. Try to motivate your people by allowing them to share a piece of the pie. When they perform better they make more money. Come up with a structure where people are rewarded for the success of the company. DO NOT CAP THEIR PAY. If you set up this structure do not cap their pay once they reach a certain level. The only reason this is done is because of selfishness. You don’t want them to make more than a certain amount. Maybe you don’t want them to make more than you. Do not do this. You want your people super motivated. Once they hit their cap they are going to start being resentful. And the late business is just as good as the early business.
Recognize and reward performance that exceeds expectations: Anytime you get someone who is constantly exceeding expectations recognize and reward them. These people are few and far between. Make sure to take care of the few ones you find. Try to promote them into positions if possible.
Always remember you owe it to yourself to have the most profitable business possible: You’ve taken on risk and devoted your entire life on your business. You are always thinking about your business and working a ton on it. Even with your family you are often thinking about your business. Don’t get caught in the trap of cutting team members slack all the time because you “don’t need the money”. That is a bunch of malarkey. You owe it to yourself and your family to make as much money as possible. And you aren’t doing your team members any favors. Expect them to perform and they will enjoy their job much more. And if they don’t you need to get rid of them.
This whole article is pretty ruthless. Your environment should not always be ruthless. It should be filled with a culture that rewards people who are doing well. You should wish people happy birthday and celebrate their work or life successes. But everyone must know that you expect results in your organization. By expecting and enforcing deadlines and results and by constantly bringing in new people, you will find that an organization will form with a crazy good culture that makes a bunch of money. Every business owners dream.
We’ve all thought about it. Unless you have prior business experience it is likely going to be your strategy when you first start your junk removal business. I remember when we first started our junk removal business thinking how ridiculous it was the 1-800-Got-Junk charged $450 for a full load. Preposterous! Who would every pay that?
One of the things you have to know is to have the proper perspective. At the time I was 20 years old and working at a skating rink making about $15,000 a year. My take home pay wasn’t much more than $450 for two weeks of work. Of course it wasn’t worth it to me. I’d do it on my own. Also, I didn’t have a whole lot of stuff to haul off. So I figured if it wasn’t worth it to me it really can’t be worth it to someone else. Disregard the fact that Got Junk at the time already did over $100 Million a year in revenue and had close to 200 locations at that point. I just figured there was no way anyone really wanted to spend that much money on Got Junk. They were the main game in town and we figured we could slip right in there and take away the business just by being cheap.
So we started placing ads on Craigslist. Keep in mind Craigslist was a lot better back then than it is now. Much more widely used. And free. The calls started rolling in and we thought we were making money hand over fist by charging $200 for a pickup truck and trailer load. However, Craigslist customers were a pain to deal with. The jobs were difficult and they customers were so freaking cheap. Some of them were good but most of them were rough and cheap. Also, though we were making good money it still wasn’t enough to really field another crew full time. I was making great money when I was on the truck. Once I got off though the returns were much lower. And work wasn’t consistent enough to have a full time crew either. Jobs could be sporadic from time to time. I needed another way to get more jobs.
At that point I got in touch with a former junk removal company operator who had sold his business. He helped me get set up on Google AdWords. That is when our business really took off. AdWords was simple at that point and much cheaper. However, with our current pricing we weren’t making as much money on AdWords jobs, even though the work was easier and the sales higher. But we had that AdWords expense. We needed to raise prices. But we were scared to do so.
So we were faced with a decision. Do we stop doing AdWords or raise our prices. We raised our prices and… the calls kept coming! We raised prices again and… the calls kept coming! Before we knew it we were making more money and not working nearly as hard. A win-win!
We were incorrect in thinking that the main thing everyone was looking for was price. Yes, some people were looking for price. But many people simply wanted the service to get done and get done fast. Even then we promised same day service. They liked the fact we were locally owned. And we were spending enough on AdWords we were the first person they found. Not being first doesn’t mean you won’t get work from AdWords. You still might get as much business being second or third. But we happened to be first. And people called us. And we were great on the phone so we locked the appointment down.
So, your wondering is there a time you should be the cheapest person in the market? Yes, there are couple of instances. The first one is if you simply don’t have as professional an image. You have an older truck, your site isn’t flashy, and you are very new with little reviews. You might want to be the cheapest in your market at that point. But you must give a reason for you being so cheap! What’s a good reason? “We are the cheapest of the professional junk haulers in this area because the owner is on all the jobs. We are a new company, though our owner, John Doe, has been working for a moving company for years and knows how to move as good as anyone. Since he is on the truck we’ve got much lower overhead than our competitors. That’s why we can be so cheap.” Give them a reason. Otherwise they might come up with their own which is: They don’t offer as good of service.
Another good reason to be the cheapest is you are the most sophisticated junk removal company in your area, and one of the largest. By that I mean you are extremely busy and have a large volume of items that you pick up. You have so much that you are able to open a store. Because you have so much volume your store stays very busy from selling the stuff you get from your junk removal jobs. You also can take advantage of economies of scale and make great money by separating your metals and recycling as much as possible. So you are getting income on the back end as well as the front. Because of this you are able to charge customers less because you will make up the difference when you re-sell or recycle the items you pick up. Be up front and honest about this. Market the hell out of it on your website. This is a major competitive advantage.
Of these two scenarios one is temporary. That one be scenario 1. The second one is permanent. The key with the second one though is the fact you have to have a huge volume of business to do this. Otherwise you will never sell enough for it to be worth your time on a consistent basis. I think you need at minimum $1 Million a year in sales to do this and probably closer to 1.5.
What are the other negatives to going the cheap route with your junk removal franchise? The problem is there is no way to reach enough people. You could have the cheapest and best junk removal business on the planet. But if nobody knows about you then what’s the point? When you have minuscule margins you can’t afford to do AdWords, SEO, Customer Acquisition Management (CAM), or other advertising services to get the word out.
Another issue with going cheap is the fact that the customers that hire the cheapest in the market simply because they are the cheapest generally are not good repeat business. It’s hard to build a thriving business when you are constantly having to get new customers. Customers that hire you because you can get to them fast or are the most professional are much more likely to review, refer, and re-use you. These are the people you want to go after.
Yet another reason is the fact that it is tough for you to pay someone else to work on the truck. To pay a full crew would really make it tough to profit much money. That means that you are going to struggle to answer the phone which means missed appointments. That means that if you want to take off work you likely won’t be able to run another truck. Do this long term and it will be a huge strain on your life and your relationships.
One thing you must remember is you are a businessman. You are not a garbage man. By being a business man one of your primary goals should be to create a business that runs without you. Without profit margins from charging a high enough price you will be unable to do this. You will be unable to hire people to answer your phones (or the JRA call center), to manage your books, to dispatch your crews, etc. Your business will never be one that you could sell for a huge payoff. It isn’t as good of a business as it could be to pass down to your kids. You, at that point, mainly have a job. And a job with no benefits and no paid time off. You are a slave to your work. If you are going to do that you might as well work for someone else with 90 percent less stress.
The alternative to this is to charge enough for you to make a healthy profit on each job you do. You will then be able to advertise to reach a bunch of people, who will re-use and tell others about your business. Before you know it you will have people in all the different departments of your business. You will then have the freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it. At that point you will begin having a life where you can fully focus on excelling with your business, with your relationship with kids/spouse, your physical body, and your spirituality. You will have flexibility and freedom. That should be one of your primary reasons for getting in business. But to achieve that you must charge enough for your services for sure.
We here at JRA are here to help you achieve financial and life freedom with your junk removal business. We built Junk Doctors to a $2 Million a year business by year 5 and are ready to do our best to get you to that same level. Junk Removal is a great business to be in if it is ran right. If it isn’t you will enjoy it for a while before you get burnt out. Let JRA show you and manage your advertising, sales, job booking, bookkeeping, or get your new business open. Simply call us at 919-466-9322 or visit junkremovalauthority.com.
Customer Acquisition Management (CAM) is a service that we provide to existing business owners and is included for the first three months for businesses that buy our complete business package. It is the most comprehensive marketing product available for junk removal customers. CAM is basically a complete audit of your website, PPC advertising (if you are doing), SEO, booking operations, referral programs, and all other advertising methods. We review anything related to you earning new customers as well as getting your past customer to schedule again and to get them to refer business your way. The initial steps in CAM, which are all preferred by JRA, are as follows.
> Review your Website: JRA will review your site to ensure that it should convert customers that visit your site. We will likely make some recommendations at this point for either changes to be made on your site, or potentially to move forward with a new website.
> Review AdWords (if applicable): If you are currently or have ever done AdWords we will look at past results, study your ad copy, study your landing pages, and determine the success and failure of your different ads.
> Study your market: A survey will be completed on your market to determine which overall strategy JRA believes you should take to acquire more customers and earn the highest profits. Many competitors websites will be visited, AdWords will be studied, SEO will be studied on them, they will be called, and much info will be gained on your competition. Some strategies JRA has that are used depending on a customer’s unique situation are best rated, locally owned, lowest price, most environmentally friendly, and more. JRA will be looking for an opportunity for any other type of campaign that we believe would benefit you as well.
> Ensure you are listed on Google, Yelp, Angie’s List, Facebook, and other major sites as well as databases. If you aren’t JRA will add you.
> Study your sites current performance on SEO.
> Study all other advertising that is being used.
> Study how your company handles operations. How do you answer the phone? Are you getting same day bookings? And so forth.
> Once JRA has a thorough picture of your current environment we will then make a recommendation for what we believe your overall strategy should be in order to have a significant gain in customers.
Though JRA can provide just AdWords or just SEO we strongly recommend against this move. Success with advertising is a multi faceted approach. This is one of the largest mistakes we see businesses make. They do a little of this and a little of that. They might not find the success they were hoping for. So then they abandon most advertising all together. They then doom their business to being average or mediocre. JRA can assist you with using proven advertising strategies to help you reach a level of success beyond what you ever thought possible with your junk removal business.
CAM is NOT an instantaneous influx of new customers. It is very much an investment that likely will take several months before significant gains are seen in the number of customers and job profitability. All of JRA’s services are a flat rate. And we also understand the junk removal business like no one else. What that means is we understand the type of customer that will use our service. We also understand which type of customer will NOT use our service. We also are looking at the profitability of certain jobs. For jobs with lower profit we attempt to severely lower the cost to acquire that particular customer. Unlike other AdWords management or SEO companies that do work on a lot of different businesses you have one company that focuses exclusively on junk removal and making sure your business not only gains more customers, but gains more profitable customers.
CAM is not cheap. This is a major project that for JRA to undertake and we charge accordingly. Though there are many packages for CAM on average pricing will generally run around $3,000 for Month 1, $2,000 for months 2-5, and around $1,250 for month 6 on out. However, this pricing could vary either direction depending on your current setup and your goals with the campaign. However, like many investments, if you try to go cheap on CAM and just “dabble” you could very well be throwing money away and missing out on a great opportunity to gain a lot of business.
Should you be interested or have questions about CAM please call our office at 919-466-9322 or email lee@junkremovalauthority.com. Also, remember to check out our Youtube channel for lots of great information.
What do I do with the stuff once I pick it up? That is a common question that is posed to me from current and prospective junk removal business owners. They want to be able to get all their jobs done but they really want to sell stuff too. They feel like by donating and recycling the stuff they are missing out on income from item sales. That is partly true. But one of the keys to growing a business is to make sure you spend your time where it is best spent. Remember, you are in the junk REMOVAL business not the junk RESELLING business.
So, we will start right off where everybody wants to. When should I sell it? There are a few factors that play into that:
What does your customer want done with the item: If they expected it to be donated then you should try to donate it. If they expect the donation receipt get them the receipt.
Will selling the items get you off schedule: You never want to be late to a customer. Remember, you are in the REMOVAL business and not the RESELL business. Don’t let resell take away from the removal which is the bread and butter of your business.
Have a value threshold: Remember, selling items isn’t all profit. You have to take pictures, list it for sell, respond to buyers, possibly clean it, and meet the buyer. There is a lot of time that can be taken up. It probably isn’t worth your time to sell a $20 item. And, it might not be worth you or your team members time to bring a load back to your facility if it is under, say $300-$400 of value. And if you are busy that threshold would be even higher. When we first started we had a value threshold of $700 because we were so busy. The fact we said no to selling most of the items at the start allowed us to do more junk removal jobs than anybody. It made sure that we were able to accommodate same day service which is 20 percent of our business. And it allowed us to be able to get out and sell our removal service. We got flap all the time from friends and people we know that owned estate sale companies that were like, “Dude, you need to sell the stuff. You are donating or junking thousands and thousands of dollars of stuff.” They weren’t lying. I bet we’ve passed on over a half million worth of stuff since we started. But I guarantee you that we’ve gotten at least three times the amount of business. Steve Jobs once said that your success is not made with the things you say yes too, but instead the things you say no too. Remember that. Saying no is one of the reasons JD is at $2 Million a year in sales where some of our competitors, in business just as long, are at about $300,000 or less.
Space available: Remember, you need storage space. Storage space costs money. Is it worth paying $1500 a month for warehouse space to sell $2000-$3000 worth of stuff? Probably not.
Focus more on sales when you hit a gross sales threshold: For us it was $1 Million for our Raleigh location. That was when it was worth the space. That was when we were able to take a dispatch guy and have him also do sales. So it helped us to have one guy other than Christian or myself do dispatch. Sales helped pay for him. It was worth it then.
When should items be recycled?
If you have a majority load of general scrap steel type items I would take it straight to a scrap yard normally.
If you have just a few scrap pieces it probably isn’t worth holding onto it unless you were already heading back to your shop. At that point it could be worth having a trailer or a dumpster that you put general scrap in.
Always retain copper, car batteries, brass, and other metals that don’t take up a lot of space but pay a lot. Build up a good amount at your shop and make a metal run every so often. HAVE CAMERAS ON THIS STUFF AND LOCK IT UP. Thieves love copper and batteries and will steal it in a heart beat. It doesn’t take much copper to have $300 or $400 worth.
Balance your time: Again, before you go through items to separate the metals determine if it is actually worth it.
When should items be donated?
Pretty much anytime you aren’t selling or recycling the stuff and it is easy to get too or enough volume to drastically decrease your disposal fees.
If your customer expects you to attempt to donate it.
If a donation center is closer than a drop off facility and by donating an item or two you might able to combine your next job.
What donation or recycling percentages should you have?
I don’t think there is a number. And for these companies out here that claim they recycle or donate 80 percent of what they bring in I call that a big pile of stinky bull shit. There is no way. On our website we tell our customers we will attempt to donate and recycle stuff, but we are not sorting through bags and boxes. If they want small stuff to be donated then they need to have it pre-sorted or pay us a labor rate to do so. If we have a load of nice stuff we will make sure to drop it off at a donation center or sell it. It is the right thing to do and it works out for us financially. But we aren’t going to spend hours more time sorting through stuff to discover a few odds and ends to donate.
There is not a hard and fast rule on what you should do with your stuff. I wish there was. We love standardization. But so much of this is subjective. However, I will tell you, generally with selling items less is more. You will definitely get rid of some valuable stuff but I have seen the proof that you will get several times that back with your primary business. And the REMOVAL is scaleable. The RESELL is much harder to scale. Remember, you are in the junk REMOVAL business not the junk RESELL business.
