Should you dump it, donate it, recycle it, or sell it? There is not a clear cut answer. In this video Lee talks about the methodology Junk Doctors has and why their decision to do it this way, despite all the criticism, has helped them grow to a $2 Million a year business by the end of year 5. Check us out at https://www.junkra.com Subscribe to this channel for all the best junk removal industry info Like and follow us on Facebook at Junk Removal Authority Check us out at https://www.junkra.com Subscribe to this channel for all the best junk removal industry info Like and follow us on Facebook at Junk Removal Authority
Okay guys got another episode of Junk Removal Made Simple for you here on this Tuesday afternoon. Today we’re talking about where to take your junk. There isn’t necessarily a hard and fast rule for whether you should take your items to a landfill, transfer station and dispose of it. Whether you should recycle the stuff. Whether you should donate stuff or whether you should sell the stuff. Typically, you want to try and keep as much out of the landfill as you possibly can. However, there is an expense for all that time spent sorting through stuff. Donation centers have become extremely picky about what they take and what they don’t take. A lot of people, a lot of guys on YouTube, I’m going to have a little bit of a different approach to selling items and scrapping items for the recycling income that a lot of people on YouTube will.
My number one rule is you are Andy’s Junk Removal Business. Your business is junk removal. The reason that’s my first rule when it comes to deciding this stuff is it’s very easy to look at this and think if you’ve got a bunch of items and there’s some value to them. You could sell them and all that kind of stuff, but are you a jump resell company? No, you’re not. You’re a junk removal company. You charge for the removal of the items. That is your primary business. That is your bread and butter. So, whenever you’re deciding this, that needs to be your first thought. So, where does that come into play? If you’re, say you’re in an area that’s an hour from your next job. Let’s say you did an eight to 10 arrival job. You’re in an area that’s an hour from your next job. You’ve got a load of stuff that you have some items in there. You know, you could sell for 400, 500 bucks, but the problem is it’s going to take some sorting. You’re going to have to take it back to your facility, drop the stuff off there. You have to hand unload it because otherwise if you don’t, you’re going to break it. You have to hand unload it. Put it in your facility, and then you might have to reload stuff. There’s no telling me that takes a lot of time. All of a sudden there’s just no way by doing that. You were probably going to be stretching, making your 10 to 12 on time. Just by dumping the stuff or maybe making drop off in a donation center that’s on the way. You know, you take the time to sell, that’s probably an hour to your trip. So, all of a sudden, you’re late to this 10 to 12. If you’ve got a full day, you don’t ever want to be late for a job. That’s our number one rule is if at all possible, we never want to be late to a job. From time to time it happens, but we try and make sure we’re never late. We’ll go to any length possible for the most part to make sure we’re on time to a job. The other thing is if you have a busier day, the rest of the day you could be late to each through the rest of your jobs and potentially you might not be able to get that final job done. You might have a full truck in and there’s just no way for you to where to put this stuff and all dumps are closed. You can’t get in that last job, so you could call that last job. It could be a full load, it can be a $500 load. You call that last job and they screw you. If you couldn’t get here today, they’re going to go with somebody else. They are closing all the house tomorrow morning. They’re leaving out of town. They left work early to make sure that they got this here and they’re so pissed off that they’re not going to deal with you. So, your primary business is junk removal. Always take care of your junk removal customers first.
The other thing is your time is valuable. So, you get these people and they talk about they’re selling some of the stuff they’ve got. They have junk removal load. That’s maybe 200 bucks but that $200, it’s not just $200 profit. There’s going to be times that you have to take pictures and get the stuff listed. You might have to clean the items up. You’re going to have to meet people and people jerk you around. When you meet people, you have to make time available. You know, it could be an hour. They tell you, you’re going to be there at 4:30. Well they may likely won’t show you until 5:00 o’clock. So, it can be 30 minutes to an hour that you’re waiting on them. That’s time that you could be doing junk removal jobs. So, part of when you’re selling items is to figure how busy are you right now? If you’re swamped, you probably just want to dump the stuff or donate it, be done with it. If you’re slow, then maybe you know if have time in between jobs. Maybe you draw up that load off.
What you want to make sure is your factoring your time in what you sell. So, if you are slow then maybe you do keep stuff. I mean, you weren’t all that busy anyway, so you can take the time to sell it. But here’s the thing too guys, is something apart on. This was one of the things that’s allowed junk doctors to do what we’ve done is your most important job as a business owner is to be the salesperson. So, you’re sitting here and screwing around with a $30 or $40 item when you could be out there knocking on doors. Pick up the phone and making phone calls and that can be a $300 to $400 job. I mean that could be thousands of dollars’ worth of business for that year and that could be tens of thousands worth of business for the next several years. Instead you’re screwing around with $50 piece of furniture, get ready and meet people and sell it. So, your time is valuable. Always factor that into it.
Items to keep, they take space and you’re paying by the square foot. So, there’s no way. You’re going to have storage space. So, you could be paying $300 a month to be in a storage unit to keep your basic stuff in there but if you’re going to try and sell a lot of stuff. You’re going to be having it several storage units where you have to get a warehouse. So, instead of paying 300 bucks a month for a storage unit and some parking spots for your vehicles and your team member vehicles. You’re having a wider warehouse. You’re paying 1500 to 2000 bucks a month. I can tell you right now, we just recently started selling a lot more stuff. We’re still maybe entire month of March. It’s just a Raleigh location selling stuff and Raleigh location probably did hundred thousand dollars I would say in March. We had maybe four grand worth of stuff we sold. Then we had a couple, maybe 2000 worth of scrap. So, 1.2 million we’re getting four grand with a self-sold item. If you’re doing half that, you get two grand. If those of you that are around $300,000, you’re getting about a thousand bucks. Well, you’re going to sit there and you got to pay a thousand dollars more for warehouse space and you’re getting a fraction of that back in and resell stuff. You know, it’s the state of a debatable. It’s probably not worth it. It is probably not worth it. So, that’s just one of the things you always want to think about when you’re selling items.
So, if you’re are going to sell stuff, I’d say have a threshold. Meaning like our threshold. If we were in a position where we were doing $300,000 a year. The threshold to sell items for us would probably be $300. It might be worth it for us to take it back to the shop for $300 but if we’re in a busy day. There’s no way we’re going to get all the jobs done or get off the job on time. We’re not yourself. At that point the threshold might be a thousand dollars. We gave up 700 just to make sure we do a good job on the junk removal because you got to get good reviews. You got to get repeat business. You got to get referral business. So, we might dump or donate it. We’re trying to donate it as long as we find donation center close by. The stuffs are nice. Try and donate it takes a little more time, but it does reduce your disposal fees. A lot of times customers will know their stuff went to good use. If you donate it obviously you can get a donation receipt. You can send it back to the customer. You can claim your item if there’s something wrong. We can send it back to our customer. I mean if you don’t tell your customer, you can send them a receipt and then you put a claim on your own taxes. So, I have a money threshold. It’s going to be up to you. I would always say just remember you’re in the junk removal business though, not the junk selling business. The other threshold you might have. If you reach $750,000 in sales maybe you start and you’re going to have some space. You’re going to need space at 750k. It’s for the warehouse. So, maybe you start selling more and at that point you can actually have somebody like, for example part of our dispatch we call air traffic control. That guy that keeps up a job, so he was Christian. Myself don’t have to because we were running three locations and it’s pretty much to run three locations. Now, I’m still all involved on the sales end of junk doctors, but most of my other focuses is on Junk Removal Authority. So, we got this guy. It’s a full-time position for him. He was on the truck team. We’ve now got him in a full-time position on that. We now sell items because there are gaps. All he does is just keeping up with our three locations on jobs. Tell them where they need to go. Rotating jobs around and all that kind of stuff.
So, there’s a lot of down time on that. So, we have him selling items now. Well, pain is gone already. So, might as we’ll going to have them paid to prep items, take pictures of the item, list it for sale and meet customers. It’s a little easier for us. We’re on time. We’re not wasting as much time by sending people back to the office necessarily because we have zones. You know, North in we drop stuff off. We have zones where our trucks kind of stay. So, no truck is not likely to have your cleaning across town back and forth to make jobs. So, they could be you know our office is centrally located so they can head back at the office to drop stuff off and go off to the next job. But even then, you need a threshold. If all they have is $100 to $150 worth of stuff and they’re in the zone that is far away. Have them donated. Dump it. Recycle it, whatever and just get over to the next job. Time is money and you got two guys. If you have crew of two guys when you get larger. You’re sitting there, you’re paying them. It’s about 34 to 35 bucks an hour depending on what they’re making per hour. You got worker’s comp, Medicare and Social Security, you’re paying too. I mean, if it takes them an hour, 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back. One hour is 36 bucks. Even you’ve cut in what you can sell to there. You could still have the threshold there as well.
The other thing is, it’s hard to scale if you’re super committed to sell. So, there’s a company around here. Garage Brothers, they had a show. I think that’s an A&E. They did 10 episodes called Garage Gold. Their whole deal was as they’ll go into your garage out. They might do it for free if they can get enough money from selling stuff. Then if they can’t, they charge a little bit extra. So, the entire series was based on kind of like American Pickers, except for Junk Removal. What kind of stuff they came across? How much money? What could they sell it for? The problem is the vast majority of our junk removal workers aren’t going to be able to recognize the value of stuff. They’re going to have absolutely no idea. So, selling stuff is hard to scale. It takes up a lot of time. It’s hard to scale. Junk removal business not junk selling business. I keep going back to that. Some customers might want a discount for items that you’re going to sell because they have value. We don’t do that. We just don’t do it but maybe there’s a point that if you’re smaller than you do, especially if you’re on the truck. They have $2,000 worth of stuff. Yeah, we’ll give you $300 of. If it’s $2,000 worth of stuff and it’s a full truckload. We’ll remove this stuff for free. So, I mean the whole thing about this. The problem with selling items is, it is subjective. We always want to standardize our systems and people. I’ve met with the state companies and all in the past. They’re like, “You being stupid.” Think all the hundreds of thousands worth of stuff. Donate it, just not sold it. Think of all the thousands of dollars that you waste, but they’re sitting there with a small-time estate sales company. Maybe making $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Not to brag but I make at least three or four times that. So, you got to recognize your priorities. You need to manage your time and that means sometimes that you get rid of stuff. That you otherwise can have money that you get rid of it. Just to make sure you can get more junk removal business by selling and especially keep up with the junk removal jobs that you already have.
One of the things I’ve got, we’ve got a guy that does some house flipping with us. He buys these houses. The guy is brilliant on finding these houses. He finds these houses and he might spend, for example we got a deal just a crazy deal that we’re doing in Garner North Carolina. The house is an old modular home and actually had a regular mortgage. Since old modular home is nice. It’s a modular home. It was foreclosed on, but the craziest thing in the world that happened is it was just recently upgraded. The home owner recently upgraded, it has granite countertops and high-end cabinets. Recently put in new hardwood floors. The three parts of this house has already been done. That house was given at, it’s like $76,000 is what we got that thing for. We’re just do a little bit of minor work. That’s going to be turned around and for like probably $130,000 right there in three months. So, we’re going to make like 50k. It’s a crazy hit. That’s a lot better hit that we normally have. We’re going to make 80% percent of the money that we’re putting towards of the house. It’s going to be made in like a two-month span. Why doesn’t the bank go ahead and just list the house for sale and do that? Because the bank just wants to cover their mortgage. The bank realizes they’re not in the real estate business. They’re not in the house flipping business. They’re in the business of lending people money. That’s where their time is best spent. So, that’s the reason they auction these houses off. This real estate agent I worked with. Actually, we did none of the actual work, the physical work on these houses. We’ve got a company, a construction company. We pay them a fee and he’s actually the one that orchestrates the deal. He locates the deal and basically uses other people. One of them being us, to fund these houses. So, we go in there. We buy the house, and then we just put our money in it. A lot of times you don’t even see the property. Then they flip it and then we get the check back. Then if we want to reinvest another house, we can. So anyway, that’s just an example. The bank knows what their best time is. They’re leaving 50 grand on the table in this house for very little work, but it’s just not worth it to them. They’re in the money lending business. They’re not in the real estate business.
Item donations, donation centers have gotten very very picky on what they take and what they don’t take. It’s basically going to be an almost brand-new condition. Donation center, goodwill is very picky. I think a lot of times goodwill. They see a big truck roll up. They just don’t want to deal with the truck. So, a lot of times they say “No, we don’t have space.” Keep on moving. So, donating can be tough. You can keep donation receipts. Putting your name if you want to run off for your taxes but be honest if you told your customer. Go and send them a tax receipt.
Recycling items, if the majority of load is metal steel. Just regular old scrap steel. Yeah, you’ve probably take to a donation center. You don’t just like you would in a landfill and then you get a little bit of money comes from that load. If you have a mixed load and it’s like just some steel. I would take the time to stop and separate that stuff out. We’ve got, a lot of our landfills and a lot of construction debris landfills actually have a metal bin. You don’t get paid for it, but you can toss the metal in there. A lot of transfer stations will separate that stuff out. So, a lot of times it’s just worth letting them do that. It’s not worth the extra money for you to take a scrap yard yourself or store at your office. Again, let’s go back to that whole time is money. Remember, you’re in the junk removal business. You’re not in scrapping business. There is money to be earned on scrap metal. Now, if you get any copper, backup batteries, and stuff like that. Then you should hold on to it because that stuff doesn’t take up a whole lot of space. It’s crazy the amount of money per pound. I’m not into scrapping, recycling or junk doctors but I know that copper is somewhere around $2.50, $3 per pound. Car batteries are somewhere around $0.50 per pound. A car battery can weigh 40, 50, 60 pounds. No problem. You know, especially a larger battery. There’s a lot of money there. They don’t take up much space. Hold it, scrap them. You can store them in the office. It’s worth the scrap metal.
One of the things we do at our Raleigh office is we actually have a scrap yard drop-off, a 40-yard container. We fill up that container with general steel only for that area. We fill up general steel. They actually come to pull it up. It’s no time whatsoever. It just doesn’t take any time at all. So, we’re all about efficiency. In business, you’re either fast or you’re dead. There’s the quick, the quicker the dead. That’s all there is in business. So, one of the things are always keeping in mind. If you’re slow or if have somebody did like dispatch or ATC. Like we’ve got. You can have and take the time to take appliances apart. Separate the metals out, so you get more money and everything. Again, you just got to figure out if you have enough business and enough stuff for that person to be doing because you’re going to be paying them after everything. You’re paying them 16, 17, 18 bucks an hour.
I just kind of want to go back to reminding you. You’re in a junk removal business. I’ve said these a million times, so that needs to be your priority. I promise you, if you focus more on the removal of the things instead of selling things. You’re going to work out better. Just to kind of have a recap of everything. I don’t even write a whole lot on here. This episode, I feel like probably hasn’t been quite as valuable as a lot of our other ones. The problem is there isn’t a hard and fast rule on what you should do. So, I can’t sit up here and tell you definitively like with advertising, I can tell you the definitively. You know, what works, what you spend money on or what you need to change. Finances, I can tell you definitively. How to get more customers? I can tell you definitively. There’s a lot of greater in this Franklin. It’s just going to take some critical thinking. Again, your primary businesses are junk removal. Get your jobs done. Get your jobs done on time. Focus on selling and getting more junk removal business. If you have valuable loads. Thousand-dollar loads that come in that you can sell. You might be going to sell them, but you might lay the stuff for $500 and under a loan. Get your work done. You’re going to be the quick or you’re going to be the dead in business. There’s plenty of people that are in the junk removal business. That spend a lot of time selling stuff to get money from selling stuff. There is a small fish in a small pond. It’s their inability to manage their time and part of the managing the time is making sure you’re not wasting time selling stuff when you should be removing stuff.
Another episode of Junk Removal Made Simple here brought to you by the Junk Removal Authority. Remember, business package is still on sale. I’m going to keep it at that $50,000 rate. Still at fifty. I want to get higher, but I got people just pounded me to keep it fifty. Let’s get into this out before we start raising the price up. So, I promise you that $50,000 is definitely worth it. It’s worth so much more than that really because a lot of that is an expense. A lot of that is our initial expense for three months of CAM. We cover that. We’ve got a year of consulting. We have your logo design. We’ve got your legal fees to establish your business. We’ve got your hotel expense and taking out the Angus barn here at Raleigh. A high-class dinner when you come here. Then when we come to you, we’re covering our hotel expenses. All the airfares included. Pretty much every expense, there’s going to be a few in there. Even the office supplies are included. The traditional tools are included. There’s extreme amount of expense on our end that 50,000 includes. You’re paying just a just a fraction for our expertise and our expertise is worth probably four times the amount that we were getting. I don’t put a price on Business package is on sale. If you’re thinking of getting into junk removal business, call me. I’ll tell you if I think of a business package that is right for you. If you’re going to call me up and you’re saying that I don’t have $50,000. I’m going to have to go in debt to get this 50 grand. I’m going to tell you, “You probably don’t want to do this. You probably want a bootleg. You probably want a bootstrap, bootstrap like we did.” If you are coming to me and you’ve got a million dollars, $500,000, $200,000 or even a $150,000. You come to me and you’re like “I want to spend $50,000 to start.” or “I want to start a junk removal business. How should I do it?” I’m going to tell you, spend $50,000 with us. You’re going to get to the point a lot quicker where you’re making serious money. Where you can actually have a return on that investment.
I don’t want to take your last $50,000. I certainly don’t want to take money. I certainly don’t want to take your last $20,000 and $30,000 because you’re going to have a time period with our system that you’re not making money. You’re going to have time where you lose a little money. Junk removal is pretty quick. Your losses are going to be a little more limited than other forms of business but you’re still going to have a period where you’re breaking or even losing money most likely. Not have been surprised before our Charlotte location surprises. We had some very large contracts right off the bat in Charlotte. We had like a month. We lost money in Charlotte. Ever since then we’ve just been clicking, clicking away. A couple thousand dollars profit every month. So, the business package is great.
CAM, we’re doing so much more now than just dividing to AdWords and SEO. Yelp campaign set up. See how your social media is going to get social media strategy. Making sure your landing pages are right. We’re researching your competition, researching your market. We’re trying to find every single avenue for you to have a leg up on your competition and to get people. AdWords, I know I get people to your site. There’s no question that people go into your site but it takes just a little bit more to make it to get to your site. To pick up the phone and call you a schedule. That’s really what really the AdWords is all about. AdWords and SEO, includes SEO. CAM is a great thing but it is expensive. No doubt about it. Right at the start, they’re looking for three grand. Very first month and then still several thousand dollars each month after that but you start getting results pretty quick. Some stuff where you need to be patient on but I’m excited about CAM can provide so much value. I know it’s expensive. I’m aware of that but I choose to partner with CAM.
We’re going to make sure that we get your stuff right. So, I appreciate everybody for watching this episode of Junk Removal Made Simple. Call me +1 919-466-9322 and visit junkremovalauthority.com. Email me at [email protected]. We will have a more episodes of trash talk that’s little of four or five-minute segment coming up daily. Next Tuesday will be another episode of Junk Removal Made Simple. Thanks guys.