We had been ambushed by the last job. The clean-out of the duplex left us with little profit, filled up our storage space and wreaked havoc with our income stream. We could not bring any more loads to Toby’s double garage, since it was full of the junk storm. (See previous post)
Focusing on the massive amount of items in the garage became a priority. Tote after tote, box after box, we sorted through it and gradually made progress while also filling up both of his garbage cans every week. Toby was not interested in the selling side of the operation, so I became very familiar with Craigslist and began to take a truckload at a time from his garage to my house to sort and sell. Sellable items were categorized, photographed and posted for sale on Craigslist, while filling up a spare bedroom in my house. We ended up making three times as much from selling off the junk storm than we made from hauling it.
We were still advertising our hauling services on Craigslist and continued to receive inquiries. One potential customer wanted us to clear out one of his mini-storage units. It was full of items we thought we could sell, but we had no place to haul them to and store. We turned the job down. You can not turn down jobs and make money.
Then the other shoe dropped. Toby had to get a real job. We were not making enough with hauling for him to support his family. He wanted to expand the hauling business, buy a building and bigger trucks and the whole bit. I was looking at it as more of an experiment to bring in some side cash. He was in a different financial situation than me so were viewing the operation from very different vantage points. Toby went back to work and I continued pursuing other ideas.
Eventually the garage was cleaned out. Toby is still working, but everything is in place if we decide to haul again. Most enjoyable of the whole experience was being able to work closely with my nephew. We also liked the satisfaction of getting a job by advertising our services, doing the work well and making the customer happy. Getting paid was okay, too.
If we should ever do it again we have decided on a new policy: take the loads to the dump, sort through them there, and keep only the items we might be able to sell. Brilliant!
Next up: my experiences with surveys and reward sites.
Showing posts with label Hauling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hauling. Show all posts
Friday
The Perfect Junk Storm
The hauling business was going great. We were moving appliances, furniture and household items from one place to another as well as just hauling away stuff people didn’t want anymore. As described in the previous post we were getting paid to haul, selling the nicer items on Craigslist, and selling clothes at a local consignment shop.
December of 2007 slowed down considerably, being cold and snowy and close to Christmas. Not much hauling at this point, but still plenty of items from previous jobs to sort through in Toby’s garage and clean and sell on Craigslist.
Then it came. A clean out request from the owner of a duplex. It was now January in Iowa, and the owner had seen our ad on Craigslist and called Toby. It was urgent, he said, to get this place cleaned out and back on the market. Could we help? Toby went to visit the duplex and gave a bid. Another hauler had bid less, but the owner really liked Toby’s attitude. Could Toby match the other, lesser bid? If so, he would sure like to hire us. Toby said yes, and we were hired.
We showed up a couple days later to do the job and walked through the duplex. The renters had skipped out, taking their essentials and leaving basically a full house behind. Our bid had been based on the amount of pickup truckloads it would take us to clean the place out. After the first two pickup loads it became very apparent that there was no way this was going to happen with our two trucks and in one day. The owner was showing the duplex to prospective renters that night and we had told him we could handle it. What to do?
We decided the only way out was to get a bigger truck. Off to the local U-Haul where we rented a 14 foot truck. Back to the duplex where for the rest of the afternoon we worked on the clean out. The basement was the worst. The previous renters had accumulated so many clothes that they had to store them in gigantic totes. We took turns up and down those stairs, carrying the giant totes, boxes and miscellaneous junk.
Into the U-Haul truck it all went, including two washers, a dryer, a huge couch, kitchen table, chairs, small tables, dishes, the entire contents of the duplex. Finally, the U-Haul was full, from top to bottom, front to back. It was packed so full we had to struggle to pull the back door down. But the duplex was still not empty, and the landlord called to tell us he was on the way over with the prospective new renters. I backed my truck up and we finished the job filling it up, while the landlord was showing the duplex to some people that were eyeing us and the situation rather suspiciously.
The job totaled three pickup truck loads and a packed to the gills 14’ U-Haul. He paid us the $200 we had WAY underbid for the job. Minus $100 for the U-Haul this backbreaking job brought us each a whopping $50 each. There was no way we could just take all of this stuff to the dump. We had to keep it, sort through it and sell what we could to recoup at least the cost of the U-Haul. We drove the perfect junk storm over to Toby’s double garage, unloaded it and stood there staring at a now packed garage, wondering what we had gotten ourselves into and how to begin getting out.
December of 2007 slowed down considerably, being cold and snowy and close to Christmas. Not much hauling at this point, but still plenty of items from previous jobs to sort through in Toby’s garage and clean and sell on Craigslist.
Then it came. A clean out request from the owner of a duplex. It was now January in Iowa, and the owner had seen our ad on Craigslist and called Toby. It was urgent, he said, to get this place cleaned out and back on the market. Could we help? Toby went to visit the duplex and gave a bid. Another hauler had bid less, but the owner really liked Toby’s attitude. Could Toby match the other, lesser bid? If so, he would sure like to hire us. Toby said yes, and we were hired.
We showed up a couple days later to do the job and walked through the duplex. The renters had skipped out, taking their essentials and leaving basically a full house behind. Our bid had been based on the amount of pickup truckloads it would take us to clean the place out. After the first two pickup loads it became very apparent that there was no way this was going to happen with our two trucks and in one day. The owner was showing the duplex to prospective renters that night and we had told him we could handle it. What to do?
We decided the only way out was to get a bigger truck. Off to the local U-Haul where we rented a 14 foot truck. Back to the duplex where for the rest of the afternoon we worked on the clean out. The basement was the worst. The previous renters had accumulated so many clothes that they had to store them in gigantic totes. We took turns up and down those stairs, carrying the giant totes, boxes and miscellaneous junk.
Into the U-Haul truck it all went, including two washers, a dryer, a huge couch, kitchen table, chairs, small tables, dishes, the entire contents of the duplex. Finally, the U-Haul was full, from top to bottom, front to back. It was packed so full we had to struggle to pull the back door down. But the duplex was still not empty, and the landlord called to tell us he was on the way over with the prospective new renters. I backed my truck up and we finished the job filling it up, while the landlord was showing the duplex to some people that were eyeing us and the situation rather suspiciously.
The job totaled three pickup truck loads and a packed to the gills 14’ U-Haul. He paid us the $200 we had WAY underbid for the job. Minus $100 for the U-Haul this backbreaking job brought us each a whopping $50 each. There was no way we could just take all of this stuff to the dump. We had to keep it, sort through it and sell what we could to recoup at least the cost of the U-Haul. We drove the perfect junk storm over to Toby’s double garage, unloaded it and stood there staring at a now packed garage, wondering what we had gotten ourselves into and how to begin getting out.
Saturday
First Attempts
I worked for over 18 years for the same employer for pretty good pay. Like many of us I hung on, year after year, figuring at least I was paying the bills and, yawn, saving up some money.
I got along well with my coworkers and my boss. My job with customer service and administration had been very fast paced and stressful. When I took an IT position it turned out to be a boring, behind the scenes job. I was ready for a change, but not one I would make all on my own. Then came the news that we were being outsourced. Read the previous post for that story.
Once it was over, I had to decompress from the 9 to 5 routine. It was strange at first not getting up to go to work. Then it was really nice. Then it got boring. It was now in the fall of 2007 and I needed to figure out what I was going to do.
My nephew Toby came over for a visit one night and we brainstormed about what we could do together to make some cash. It had to be something with almost zero overhead and start-up costs. We both had pickup trucks, and I had discovered craigslist.org. The light bulb went off! Let’s use the trucks we already have and advertise on craigslist to provide hauling services.
I went to the website for our landfill to find out what they accepted and what they charged for dumping to give us an idea of what to charge our customers. We decided that in most cases we would just double what the dump charged. We now had a quote sheet.
I wrote up some short, to the point ad copy and got a free Gmail account with the name of our service as the address (ourservice@gmail.com). I opened a free account with Craigslist using the gmail address as our email contact and Toby’s
cell number as our phone contact. He would take any phone calls and I would handle the email inquiries. We would split all costs and profits 50/50. We were ready. I posted the first ad on craigslist and we waited for a response.
It came pretty quickly, and within a few weeks we were scheduling several jobs a week. We noticed right away that occasionally people wanted us to get rid of some pretty nice stuff along with the junk. Usually they were tired of looking at it and just wanted it all gone, the good with the bad. We decided that what ever we didn’t keep personally we would store in Toby’s double garage to sell…on craigslist! I got another Gmail address, took some photos of our newly acquired treasures and began to post them. We were now selling online. We would also come across boxes, sacks and totes full of clothes. We sorted them out, opened an account with a local consignment shop and began taking the nicer clothes there while donating the rest to Goodwill or Salvation Army. We now had three streams of income and had reduced our landfill expenses by making fewer trips. This was working great! Too bad we didn’t see what was looming in front of us, just waiting to mess up our system.
Next: The Perfect Junk Storm
I got along well with my coworkers and my boss. My job with customer service and administration had been very fast paced and stressful. When I took an IT position it turned out to be a boring, behind the scenes job. I was ready for a change, but not one I would make all on my own. Then came the news that we were being outsourced. Read the previous post for that story.
Once it was over, I had to decompress from the 9 to 5 routine. It was strange at first not getting up to go to work. Then it was really nice. Then it got boring. It was now in the fall of 2007 and I needed to figure out what I was going to do.
My nephew Toby came over for a visit one night and we brainstormed about what we could do together to make some cash. It had to be something with almost zero overhead and start-up costs. We both had pickup trucks, and I had discovered craigslist.org. The light bulb went off! Let’s use the trucks we already have and advertise on craigslist to provide hauling services.
I went to the website for our landfill to find out what they accepted and what they charged for dumping to give us an idea of what to charge our customers. We decided that in most cases we would just double what the dump charged. We now had a quote sheet.
I wrote up some short, to the point ad copy and got a free Gmail account with the name of our service as the address (ourservice@gmail.com). I opened a free account with Craigslist using the gmail address as our email contact and Toby’s
cell number as our phone contact. He would take any phone calls and I would handle the email inquiries. We would split all costs and profits 50/50. We were ready. I posted the first ad on craigslist and we waited for a response.
It came pretty quickly, and within a few weeks we were scheduling several jobs a week. We noticed right away that occasionally people wanted us to get rid of some pretty nice stuff along with the junk. Usually they were tired of looking at it and just wanted it all gone, the good with the bad. We decided that what ever we didn’t keep personally we would store in Toby’s double garage to sell…on craigslist! I got another Gmail address, took some photos of our newly acquired treasures and began to post them. We were now selling online. We would also come across boxes, sacks and totes full of clothes. We sorted them out, opened an account with a local consignment shop and began taking the nicer clothes there while donating the rest to Goodwill or Salvation Army. We now had three streams of income and had reduced our landfill expenses by making fewer trips. This was working great! Too bad we didn’t see what was looming in front of us, just waiting to mess up our system.
Next: The Perfect Junk Storm
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