Kirk McKinney was riding bikes near his Massachusetts home about six years ago when he came across a goldmine: A dump filled with plenty of junk, sure, but also speakers and electronics.
“Someone had thrown away this perfectly good pair of speakers,” he told Business Insider. “I asked the guy at the dump if I could take them and he said yes. I just couldn’t believe that.”
McKinney, a high schooler at the time, kept returning to the dump in search of more speakers for his collection. Eventually, he built a sound system in his bedroom that “shook the entire house,” he said.
“My mom was not happy about that at all.”
When his mom told him he needed to get rid of the speakers, he decided to try reselling them.
“I sold my first radio on Facebook Marketplace for $50,” he said. It was the most money he’d ever made for an hour’s work. “That’s when I discovered what entrepreneurship was.”
From selling junk to removing it
The more time McKinney spent at the dump, the more he got to know the people who did junk-removal jobs. Eventually, he started working for them. After learning the ropes, he figured he could do the same thing himself.
“I was basically doing the whole job for them,” he said. “The guy was paying me pretty well, and he was still walking away with money at the end of the job. I eventually realized, I’m already transporting junk items from the dump back and forth. Why not just provide this service for people on my own?”
Courtesy of Kirk and Jacob McKinney.
To start, he needed two things: another set of hands and a vehicle. He enlisted his younger brother, Jacob, who had his own small side hustle splitting firewood, and the brothers pooled their savings to buy a $4,000 Ford F-150. That was in 2021.
Their first job, which came through a referral from the junk-removal workers Kirk had helped, was small but encouraging.
“We got hired to move a couch for, like, 100 bucks,” Kirk said. “Took us 15 minutes. That was pretty good.”
Their earliest customers came mostly through word of mouth. They also posted on Nextdoor, in local Facebook groups, and leaned on family and friends to help spread the word.
Not every job went as smoothly as the first one. One early house cleanout took them about nine days, they said — a job they estimate would take the company about half a day now. They had to rent a U-Haul and a dumpster because their pickup truck couldn’t handle the volume.
“In the very beginning, we were literally doing whatever we could to make it work,” Kirk said. “We were just a couple kids in a pickup truck with couches hanging, like, three feet over the top of our truck, strapped down.”
They learned through trial and error, and by asking questions. They called other junk-removal companies, explained that they were young and trying to learn the business, and asked how they priced jobs. Over time, they got better at estimating, loading, and sorting.
“We started to become masters at stacking, breaking things down, sorting it,” Kirk said. “It was almost like Tetris, where you would just have to fit everything perfectly where it needs to go.”
Growing to a seven-figure business operating across multiple markets
The first major turning point came around early 2022, when the brothers reinvested most of what they had made into a dump truck. It cost a little more than $80,000.
The purchase changed the business immediately. The dump truck could hold about eight times as much as the pickup, they said, allowing them to take on more jobs, reduce trips to the dump, build more efficient schedules, and begin hiring friends to help.
Courtesy of Kirk and Jacob McKinney
By the end of 2022, with the pickup truck, the dump truck, a few employees, and a small amount of paid marketing, they did just over $200,000 in sales, according to a P&L viewed by Business Insider.
In 2023, they bought another dump truck and rented a warehouse after outgrowing their parents’ driveway. The warehouse gave them a place to park trucks and store items they could donate, resell, or repurpose. That year, they brought in nearly seven figures.
In 2025, they hit $3 million in revenue. They’re on track to bring in more than $5 million in 2026.
Junk removal is relatively easy to start, but the low barrier to entry also makes the industry competitive. One way Junk Teens stands out, the brothers said, is through speed and communication. Most customers want junk removed the same day or the next day, so responding quickly can determine whether they win the job.
Courtesy of Kirk and Jacob McKinney
They also leaned into what made them different: their age. The company was initially called K&J Removal, but Kirk said he realized customers were hiring them because they were teenagers working hard and hustling. That became the basis for the Junk Teens brand.
“I just took the thing that made us stand out, our competitive advantage, and built a brand around that,” he said.
Today, Junk Teens has expanded beyond its main location in Norwood to Cape Cod, the North Shore, and Rhode Island. The company has about 25 employees and five dump trucks, and the brothers said they eventually want to expand nationwide.
Kirk said the brand has also helped them build an audience online. Junk Teens has more than 500,000 followers across social-media platforms, which the brothers said has helped with visibility and recruiting young workers.
Their advice: start small and get good with people
Jacob said one of the most important skills for young entrepreneurs is learning “the people game” — how to communicate, ask for help, find mentors, and build relationships.
“At the end of the day, business is business, but the whole world is made out of people,” he said. “If you want to get into business, I feel like you really have to get into that whole people game first.”
Courtesy of Kirk and Jacob McKinney
Kirk’s advice is to simplify the first step. He said many people overcomplicate entrepreneurship by waiting for the perfect idea, the perfect plan, or the right amount of money. Junk Teens didn’t start with a national vision. It started with one sale, then one truck, then one job, then one reinvestment decision.
“It takes one realistic goal at a time being met over and over, slowly and steadily, and it compounds,” Kirk said. “That’s how the greatest things are created.”
