Spend time driving a truck with The Junkluggers and you”™ll see life from all sides.
Once owner Josh Cohen found himself cleaning up plastic bags of feces in what was the home to 20 standard-bearers for filth in Bridgeport. Yet he”™s also found himself in Manhattan at celebrities”™ homes, hauling away brand new furniture, worth tens of thousands of dollars, with the tags still on.
“We get it all,” Cohen said. “A lot of it is really nice. But this definitely isn”™t a white glove service. Our guys get their hands dirty every day going into crawl spaces and cleaning up yard debris. There isn”™t a day they don”™t come out dirty.”
Founded in Fairfield nearly 10 years ago, Junkluggers has turned into one of the largest junk removal services in region. What started as Cohen borrowing his mom”™s SUV, has grown into a 20-truck operation, with five franchises and counting. The company removes anything from refrigerators to storm debris. But the company hallmark is a commitment to the environment and finding a second home for things they collect before they”™re thrown out, Cohen said.
The company sells metal to scrap yards and donates furniture to charitable organizations in every town it services. Landfills are a last resort, he said. Customers also get a tax write-off for donations.
“We like supporting nonprofit charitable causes such as Goodwill, Salvation Army and Helping Hands,” Cohen said. “They support people in need. It was important to me when founding the business to also support the community in that way and give back.”
Last year the company removed enough “junk” in Fairfield County to fill nearly seven Olympic-sized pools, bringing in about $1.1 million in revenue. Like in Manhattan, a lot of the furniture the company removes in Fairfield is extraordinarily nice. In those cases, the items are still donated to collection centers, which they can then sell to further advance their missions.
Although Junkluggers is now headquartered in New York City, Cohen said he still considers Fairfield County his home base. He grew up in Trumbull and went to the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Its New York headquarters opens up more opportunities however and gives it a more centralized location for its new franchise locations in New Haven, Long Island and Pennsylvania.
Across all the franchises, teams pick up 50 to 60 jobs a day and a full truck load costs about $600, plus fees for manual labor. However the cost scales down depending on how much space is used in the truck, said Paloma Rosenbaum, marketing manager of The Junkluggers.
“We try to make it as easy as possible,” Rosenbaum said. “A lot of people have demanding jobs and family responsibilities. They don”™t have time to clean out basements or yards.”
Above all though, Rosenbaum said she believes people gravitate to the company over dumpsters and other trash collectors because of the company”™s donation element.
“Things aren”™t just going to end their life when we pick them up,” Rosenbaum said. About 60 percent of all items are recycled and the company is working on implementing a more sophisticated tracking system to pinpoint how much is donated and where.
Slowly the company is scaling up its donation rate with the goal of 100 percent someday. However the company is faced with many challenges before reaching that goal. Some cities like New York have strict donation policies for fear of bed bugs, while other donation centers won”™t accept furniture made of partial board like many of the items sold at IKEA, because it can easily break.
“We”™re trying to push the envelope on recycling and float the concept to our franchisees,” Rosenbaum said. “There”™s so much stuff. There”™s no reason it needs to end up in a dump.”
