Trash Daddy doesn’t shy away from the rougher side of junk removal. It can’t, given the economic conditions in the Akron/Canton, Ohio, area. While Austin’s junk reflected its go-go economy, Akron’s reflects an economy gone-gone. In the 1920s Akron was like Austin, a thriving metro center that was called the Rubber Capital of the World. Jobs were plentiful and the paychecks were healthy because Akron was the base for five of the six biggest rubber and tire producers, including B. F. Goodrich Company, Goodyear, and Firestone. In the 1970s and ’80s it suffered financially as many rust belt cities did. In 2010 the unemployment rates in Akron and Canton were among the highest in Ohio. Recently there has been increased energy around civic revitalization. When a burst of fracking doubled natural gas production in Ohio, the area felt a bit of an economic boost. According to the census, by the end of 2014, the Canton/Akron unemployment rates were in line with the state and national averages.
As a result there are a lot of different kinds of folks living in a small area. There’s a series of satirical maps on the web of US cities called “Judgmental Maps” because the maps describe a city’s neighborhoods with brutal insider-y honesty. The Akron map includes neighborhoods like “Ruined by the Freeway,” “White Upper Middle Class Heaven,” “Deer,” “Mostly Dorms,” “Avoid After Dark,” and “People Who Are Born and Die in the Same House.”
Brian confirms he has an eclectic client roster. For example, the day after one of these set-out drive-by investigations, Brian’s team helped out a well-coiffed suburbanite in a stunning 1920s three-bedroom home who repeatedly offered the team lemon ricotta cheesecake and tea. She was beginning a second career as a romance novelist. “One day I’m in a million-dollar home, and one day we’re in a very, very bad area. So, with the way the economy has changed, we get a lot of eviction clean outs because people aren’t paying their rent.”
The evictions are not pretty. His guys have encountered threatening situations with irate evictees. Some of his guys carry Tasers on these jobs.
It can also be tough emotionally when there are children involved. Brian has two adorable kids of his own, so his heart hurts when a child is part of an evicted family. He reminds himself that whoever owns the property or works for the company that is renting the property has to make a living and has his or her own family to feed. “A lot of times, I’ve been able to develop the ability to diffuse the situation and help them know that I understand what they’re going through and I feel bad that we have to do what we have to do. So, we try to maybe take them away from the situation, pull them out of it, talk with them. We’ll laugh and joke around and try to get their mind off of it. But those can be scary sometimes.”
On this particular drive-by, every third or fourth house on the street looks abandoned or seriously dilapidated. He finds the address and slows down a bit and peers out the window. He takes note of certain things. No car. No animals. “The blinds are drawn, nothing out of the ordinary.” Or so he thought. A few days later Trash Daddy shows up for the removal. As Brian waits for the bailiff to arrive, a guy he recognizes who owns a small asphalt company in the area approaches him. He’s the renter and the evictee. Brian has to set out the stuff of someone he knows. The man told Brian he’d been in jail for pistol-whipping his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, who’s an alleged sex offender and was spending time around his child. Afterward Brian sums it up: “This is a crazy business.”
Thirty-eight-year-old Brian Kaiser is a P90X-loving conservative Christian family man who founded Trash Daddy after putting a $75 advertisement in the local paper offering “All kinds of hauling.” He had a commercial driver’s license, a 2000 Dodge pickup truck, and a little flatbed trailer he used for his stump grinding business. Brian’s wife, a nurse who is smart, sensible, and smokin’ hot, thought he was nuts. That was in 2006. Now he has three trucks, nine trailers, and has expanded into Columbus, Ohio, as well. He also has a name that’s hard to forget and far more innocent than it sounds. In Brian’s case, it is just about being someone’s dad. Brian had been in the business for a few years under the name All Hauling. One day in 2010 his son wanted him to stay home and play. Brian told the then two-year-old, “Sorry, Bud, I have to clean up some trash for someone.” His son looked up at him, smiled, and said, “You’re the Trash Daddy.” He liked the name, designed a logo, and put it on his trailers, T-shirts, and website.
Someone else liked it, too. One day Brian did an online search for his company and discovered his entire website had been stolen by a guy in Abilene, Texas. It was a bold case of web plagiarism. They guy copied and pasted every part of the site, except for the part about his son naming the company, and then slapped his own phone number on it. Brian had made a rookie mistake and forgotten to trademark Trash Daddy.
Brian admits that in the early days he was learning as he was going. He had to quickly figure out the EPA guidelines and the health department rules. He didn’t realize he couldn’t just scrap a refrigerator, due to the Freon. He also had to get used to all the different ways people treat their stuff that might not be in line with his personal value system.
“The newer generation is so wasteful. We’ve gone into places and the people just say, ‘Yeah, all that stuff in that room goes.’ And it’s literally six months old or whatever, toys that we just watched our kids say, ‘We want that!’ And they’re already throwing it away! Then we’ve seen the green people. People call them the tree huggers, those people who are interested in saving the environment. They’re very concerned, ‘Where are you taking that?’ I mean, they almost grill us like we’re on trial. And they want to know. So, you have all these different facets of people. And sometimes the wealthy are very green. And then sometimes maybe the poor are the wasteful. But to watch their nature and their thought process is really, it’s sad in a way, so to see that their life revolves around those material items, even though they’re junk or nasty stuff.”
While he has made a career for himself digging through debris of an urban landscape, Brian considers himself a farm boy at heart. “Growing up we milked fifty-five cows twice a day. We weren’t the big fancy computerized milking parlor. We still actually walked up beside the cow, got kicked by them, and then once they were done kicking us, then we put the milkers on and let them milk.”
Brian Kaiser and hard work have been acquainted for a long time. Growing up the youngest of three in Lewisville, Ohio (last census population count 176 people), he didn’t go to college, but the life lessons he took from his truck-driver dad and stay-at-home mom have been as vital to him as an entrepreneur as any economics course. “The farm aspect really played into affecting all this because I learned the work ethic of getting up at four in the morning, doing milk, and then after you’re done milking, you go work all day or you go to school. And you hurry up and get home and eat at four because you’ve got to milk by 5:00 PM. And then, you want to go out and have fun if you can stay awake. Plus, you’ve got to be back at 4:00 AM. Cows don’t care about Christmas. I missed part of my own graduation party because I had to go milk. And that’s played into a huge effect in this business because at nine, ten at night I’ve been outside in the [barn] spotlight storing a trailer to get ready for tomorrow morning because you just do it. And I’ve seen some of the guys that have worked with us like, You guys are nuts. What are you doing? And the mentality, I guess, was a little different.”
As the Trash Daddy website explains it, “We can help with Clutter, Downsizing, Evictions, Divorce, Foreclosure, Hoarding, Remodeling, and more.” What the heck could more be? Could anything be worse than any of the other situations? I learned the answer was yes when Brian’s right-hand man, Casey, and I went on a call for an estimate.
It was a pretty nice neighborhood and not too far from NBA star LeBron James’s house. We were a little early, so to kill some time we did a drive-by of the palace where the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar lives. Casey once did a job for his next-door neighbor. Brush with fame.
We arrive before the client, having easily found
the compact two-story home up on a hill. We turn into the long driveway. Everything looks OK from the front. But once we pull around the back, we drive right into what looks like a small municipal dump. A burned and now soggy brown fake suede couch is leaning against the side of the house. There are random bedsprings strewn about and dirty, broken children’s toys in a heap. A car approaches and out emerges a very forlorn and stressed middle-aged woman with ash-blonde hair and an ashen complexion. She is the definition of unhappy. She unlocks the door and leads us inside the house. There are three old beds and a couple dressers that need to go. Going from room to room you can’t help but notice that the previous occupants let kids write on the walls with black marker. The place could have been a set for a horror movie. I half expect some maniacal-looking toddler with a knife to pop out of a closet and threaten me with some menacing catch phrase like, “Guess who’s getting a time-out now!”
Cat feces are here and there. “I think the cat is still in here,” the owner says as she peeks into some closets. I hope not. Before we can ask what the hell happened here, she offers the sad tale. She was a novice landlord. It was the first time she had ever rented her house. She’d moved into her late mom’s home and wanted to wait a bit to sell this place, hoping the economy would improve. The renters had been there about a year and a half. They stopped paying two months ago. “A neighbor called me and said there’s a moving truck in the driveway.” She contacted the renter who told her, yes, they were leaving but she’d get a Dumpster to clean out the stuff. By the time the owner got there the renters were gone.
It looks like a classic abandonment job until Casey opens the one-car garage. Inside is a mountain of full garbage bags. The stench is overwhelming. Casey looks long enough to get the dimensions and quickly count how many bags from the floor to the celling and how many across. “OK . . . you can close it,” he says as politely as possible. The renters not only didn’t pay their rent, they also didn’t pay for garbage collection. About twenty yards away was a circle of gray cinderblocks. It’s a makeshift fire pit full of half-burned trash. Perhaps the renters had planned to incinerate all the stuff that was in the garage but, as Casey pointed out, they clearly were not Mensa members.
“Guess nobody told them you can’t burn beer cans.”
The woman sat down at the picnic table and said to no one in particular, “I can’t believe people would do this.”
It takes Casey a few minutes to calculate how much time, how many men, and the approximate volume of the job. When he gives the woman a card with the price there’s a bit of sticker shock. The estimate to get the house, the garage, the fire pit, and the yard completely clean would be $1,300 dollars.
“I didn’t know it would be that much,” she says softly.
Casey gently explains it would probably take five guys about five hours to clean this up right. “The garbage pit is a real menace. We don’t know how deep it is.”
She says she has to think about it. Casey doesn’t push it but explains that she should just give a call when she’s ready and they will make this all go away. He wanted to close the deal, but the woman just wasn’t ready. It’s no problem. Trash Daddy has a lot of work right now. Once we got back in the truck the phone didn’t stop ringing.
10:31 AM
Trash Daddy: Hello, Trash Daddy. Casey speaking.
Q: What’s the price on your Dumpsters?
TD: For fifteen feet, about $275 [for] seven days.
Q: How big is it?
TD: About four feet tall, fifteen and a half feet long, and seven feet wide.
Q: How long do I need to let you know in advance?
TD: As soon as possible. All my Dumpsters are out now, but I should have some back by mid next week.
Q: OK, thank you.
10:38 AM
TD: Hello, this is Trash Daddy, Casey speaking.
Q: Hi. I have the remains of a yard sale to get rid of. . . . How do you do what you do?
TD: Well, it is an $85 minimum to pick up something. And then we measure by cubic yard.
Q: What do you do with it?
TD: We donate it.
Q: OK. I’ll get back with you.
By 10:50 AM he has taken five calls but hasn’t booked a job yet.
“Everybody is price shopping today.”
10:51 AM
TD: Hello, this is Trash Daddy, Casey speaking.
Q: Do you recycle old TVs?
TD: Yes.
Q: Do you pay for them?
TD: No, we charge to get rid of it. It costs us money to dispose of old TVs.
[Silence. Line drops]
The abrupt end to the conversation leads to a little bit of sarcasm from a normally good-natured guy. “Yeah, that’s right. I make a living hauling things for free.”
There are many people who still don’t really understand what professional junk removal is and why they would pay to have someone take the stuff away. Even the big franchises aren’t heavily represented in the
mountain west because people have space to keep their old things or they haul it themselves. And then there’s just general suspicion. “Some people assume you are going to sell their stuff,” Casey explains. He remembers that one of their competitors tried the resale idea as a business model. “For a little while we were being underbid by a guy who came in at about half of our quotes. He was selling the stuff. It must have burned him out. Housing it. Moving it. He went away after a few months.”
Brian is very aware of skeptics of this business. There are a lot of sketchy people hauling junk. He is a walking billboard for his company. Brian himself is immaculately dressed, pretty buff, with a shaved head, soft voice, and a steady, strong gaze. He has rules about how his team behaves and how they appear. No smoking or cursing or spitting on the job. He wants a client to feel safe enough to leave him with a key code to their garage or home, and some do. In fact, we went to lunch one day after leaving the site of a job only to find the owners sitting behind us and his team back at the house hauling away. Many of his guys are related to one another or are friends of friends, and he has high expectations of them. He runs his family-friendly business like a tight ship.
“First how we stay competitive is we try to make sure everybody is uniformed. To look more professional, I think. People feel security when we show up versus if we’re . . . like, we have a guy that we see at the dump all the time, and he has [what] we call the Craigslist Special truck. He bought it for a thousand bucks. He put some unpainted plywood on the sides. And he’s out there hauling against us. And he hauls for half of what we haul. And he shows up in usually sweatpants, flip-flops, and old tank top. And I mean, I’m very scared about who comes to my house. I’m very paranoid because I know I’ve heard stories. I know what happens with people. They get their house cased. They walk through. They see how a place is set up. They see [if you] don’t or do have security, do or don’t have a dog. So I think the uniforms have kept us more professional, which brings us above people. Our trucks, we have customized our trucks. They’re a little different looking. Everything’s a little lifted and tinted windows and just a custom look.”
He is hoping his clean cut/dirty jobs model could lead to a Trash Daddy franchise. To buy a franchise from one of the big national junk removal chains you need around $100,000 to qualify, while another requires $50,000 in liquid assets but a net worth of $200,000. “A hundred thousand liquid capital! How many people do you know who have that—especially in these times?” was Brian’s reaction when he started researching the idea. He wants to disturb the franchise model by offering a low financial barrier to entry. He dreams of offering a franchise financing option with the hope of encouraging the guy who doesn’t have an MBA, or even a BA, to get into business for himself. He has one hardworking fellow named Mike working a few jobs in Columbus to see if there’s a market there. He’s expanding his reach into Cleveland and Youngstown. “I think I have an opportunity to offer to all these—you know, some dad that’s working for $25,000 a year and he
’s got that just, I’m-going-to-tear-it-apart mentality, but he never gets that opportunity. So that’s why I think leaving our prices lower as far as to buy in, to never get as high as the other guys—not to take them from them, but to give them an opportunity. To say this is what you need, start bare bones. And I don’t expect you to make X amount of dollars. You don’t have to send me so much per month. Some of these franchises, it doesn’t matter if you make anything. You’re sending them a $5,000 check every month. I think that the American dream of owning your own business is still there. We can do it. I did it and didn’t go to college, didn’t have any business training. I just did it. And just through a ton of hard work it’s been working. I think that aiming toward that and the family values, kind of the Chick-fil-A type of a mentality, you know.” He refers to the company several times during our interview. Brian admires Chick-fil-A’s longstanding infusion of faith into its business plan.
Brian strives to live and to work with his values intact. When he finds himself face-to-face with people in their darkest hours, some of whom made their own misery, he tries to bring his Christian principles to bear. Respect. Honesty. Generosity. After a brief discussion of Chick-fil-A, an opponent of gay marriage, Brian quietly shares that he has done jobs for gay couples even though some friends have asked him why. He notes that “they have needs too, . . . they are good tippers,” and in his mind it is the Christian thing to work with people with whom you don’t necessarily equate yourself.
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