Carter Grandbois was 16 years old, working for a junk-removal operator in Johnstown, Colorado, when he noticed the cash. His boss kept a thick stack of it in the center console of his truck. Grandbois went home and talked to his dad, and within days, they bought a trailer. The first job paid $500 for 30 minutes of work. "That was kind of an eye-opener," Grandbois, now 18 and working for himself full-time, told Fortune.
Carter's Junk Away bills as much as $15,000 a month in peak season, Grandbois said. His W-2 employees are his high school friends, but he admits that he wasn't able to scale up and reach profitability until he created a pricing calculator, started tracking data, and started using systems to get consistent lead flows.
"I'm really into vibe-coding and creating software," he explained. "After that, we were able to be profitable on every single job," he said proudly. "When our team is out… they're bidding jobs spot-on every single time. So every time they complete a job, I mean, we're making anywhere from $50 to $200 without being on the truck." He said he earns about $125 to $1,000 per junk-removal job and he is increasingly overseeing the business from home as he scales, which is what he means by not "being on the truck."
Grandbois wants to share the wealth, too, via social media. (He's on TikTok at american.junkremoval.) "I was like, 'Hey, like everyone else could totally use this for their business.'" Now he has two calculators—a universal one for everyone and another, "private junk-removal calculator," which he described as detailed for a "more experienced junk-removal business." When asked about potentially creating his own rivals, he shrugged. "That is one of the things with giving away stuff for free. You never know who's watching the content. But at the end of the day, I know I'm doing something good for anyone else who's trying to start."
After all, he explained, it was his inspiration. Where another generation might have read about, say, Warren Buffett in Fortune magazine, he reflected, "it's probably just like Instagram reels where you're scrolling and you're like, 'That guy has a Lamborghini. That dude has a McLaren. Why can't I have one of those?'"
#grandbois #time #every #business
Carter's Junk Away bills as much as $15,000 a month in peak season, Grandbois said. His W-2 employees are his high school friends, but he admits that he wasn't able to scale up and reach profitability until he created a pricing calculator, started tracking data, and started using systems to get consistent lead flows.
"I'm really into vibe-coding and creating software," he explained. "After that, we were able to be profitable on every single job," he said proudly. "When our team is out… they're bidding jobs spot-on every single time. So every time they complete a job, I mean, we're making anywhere from $50 to $200 without being on the truck." He said he earns about $125 to $1,000 per junk-removal job and he is increasingly overseeing the business from home as he scales, which is what he means by not "being on the truck."
Grandbois wants to share the wealth, too, via social media. (He's on TikTok at american.junkremoval.) "I was like, 'Hey, like everyone else could totally use this for their business.'" Now he has two calculators—a universal one for everyone and another, "private junk-removal calculator," which he described as detailed for a "more experienced junk-removal business." When asked about potentially creating his own rivals, he shrugged. "That is one of the things with giving away stuff for free. You never know who's watching the content. But at the end of the day, I know I'm doing something good for anyone else who's trying to start."
After all, he explained, it was his inspiration. Where another generation might have read about, say, Warren Buffett in Fortune magazine, he reflected, "it's probably just like Instagram reels where you're scrolling and you're like, 'That guy has a Lamborghini. That dude has a McLaren. Why can't I have one of those?'"
#grandbois #time #every #business
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