1-800-GOT-JUNK? LLC - Beginnings

Beginnings

The company known as 1-800-GOT-JUNK? was founded as The Rubbish Boys in 1989 by Brian Scudamore in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Born in San Francisco, Scudamore had moved with his parents to Vancouver at eight and had shown an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age, delivering papers at nine, washing cars for money at 11, and selling candy and snacks to his classmates at 14.

Scudamore's studies sometimes took a back seat to his side activities, and he dropped out of high school one class shy of graduation, though he managed to secure admission to a community college for the fall of 1989. He began to look for summer work to pay for his tuition, but the job market was tight, and he could not find employment. One day, while sitting in the drive-through lane of a local McDonald's, the 19-year-old found himself staring idly at a truck full of junk in front of him. For Scudamore, it was a "Eureka" moment—he decided then and there to begin hauling trash.

The next day he withdrew $700 from the bank to buy an old Ford pickup truck, and made preparations to get business cards and flyers printed. Seeking to give his one-man junk-hauling operation the illusion of size, he dubbed it The Rubbish Boys, adding the slogan, "We'll Stash Your Trash in a Flash!" He painted his new business phone number, 738-JUNK, on the plywood sides he had attached to the back of the truck, and waited for the phone to ring.

Work soon began trickling in, and by summer's end Scudamore had made a profit of $1,700. After his first year in college he revived the trash hauling business for another summer, but in the fall he began taking business management classes at the distant University of Montreal. He decided to transfer to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver after a year, however, so he could run his trash hauling business year-round.

In 1993, with the successful business demanding more and more of his attention, Scudamore decided to quit school to pick up junk full time. Although his surgeon father was appalled, in the newly incorporated firm's first year of full-time operation, revenues hit $100,000.

In 1994 Scudamore opened a small office in Vancouver to serve as a dispatch center for the three trucks he now owned, and the following year he began developing custom computer software to use for scheduling, marketing, and accounting. In 1995 a branch operation was launched in Victoria, British Columbia, with a partner, and in 1996 The Rubbish Boys recorded $1 million in revenues for the first time.

The year 1997 saw the company hire Paul Guy, who had been the general manager of College Pro Painters in British Columbia, to help develop a franchise plan. That same year, the firm's first American location was set up in Seattle, Washington.