The booming business owner had to hurry to explain the workings of his operations—his final exam was one hour from now.
Kirk McKinney, 20, turns junk into treasure by removing it for cash alongside his younger brother and business partner, Jacob McKinney, 18, who just graduated from high school. They live in Needham, Massachusetts, where they own three $80,000 dump trucks, run a boisterous and brawny young crew, and haul around 30 jobs a week. The McKinney brothers are awash with junk and profit.
And it all started with a trip to the dump in 2019.
“I sold my first radio for $50,” Mr. Kirk McKinney told The Epoch Times.
At age 15, he found working at the local grocer, Roche Bros, unrewarding. But he was also scooping valuable audio equipment at the junkyard, to the point where his mom complained that his bedroom was full of top-end speakers that were used but still worked perfectly.
She told him to throw them away. He started selling them and made it his business instead. And the rest is history.
“I didn’t like working at the grocery store,” he told the newspaper. “Once I realized that I could keep [selling junk] and I was making more than I was working at the grocery store is when I then put in my two weeks’ notice and started selling junk full time.”
All at once, he found he loved every second of working for himself, and after about two years he enlisted his brother. They went in as business partners, the elder brother just 17, the younger 15.
From there, a greater opportunity presented itself when they met professionals onsite who taught them about junk removal, and the McKinney brothers went in on their first truck, a used pickup for $4,000. Through word of mouth, the orders started filing in.
Tax season 2022 came with a revelation. “We looked at all the money we made, and we realized that we wanted to reinvest all of it back into our business,” Mr. Kirk McKinney said. “That’s when we bought our first dump truck.” It was a brand-new Isuzu for $80,000.
For the brothers from Needham, they see the sky as the limit. While they had casual helpers from high school in the beginning, they began really hiring in 2023 (still mostly friends from school). The bookkeeping, accounting, and some marketing duties are subcontracted out. At a certain point, the business took on a new structure where the siblings assumed higher positions, tackling less grunt work and more responsibility in their company: Junk Teens Junk Removal.
As a result of their growth, a natural instinct for entrepreneurship shone forth spontaneously from the brothers.
“The key to making it all work is properly delegating,” the elder brother said. “It’s about who you have, how you have them help you. And it’s all about your team at the end of the day.”
They made a point of hiring young hands—ones like them—to instill fresh work ethics and inspiration. After finding success themselves the brothers want to give back, helping teens get out and learn life skills they will keep forever.
And school? The brothers are not done their education. Not yet. While running Junk Teens, they pursue knowledge to make them better businessmen.
While taking business courses at Babson College, Mr. Kirk McKinney manages like a floater and is a visionary, venturing to build indirect value for Junk Teens on social media as a long-term marketing investment.
Finishing up high school this year, Mr. Jacob McKinney, who will attend the same college as his brother, simultaneously holds a more hands-on role in the business, managing the crew, creating schedules, liaising with clients, and getting quotes.
“Strategic problem solving is what I’m good at,” Mr. Kirk McKinney said. “I still like to go in and help the guys out and work with them and be in the operations. It’s not like we’re laying back and we’re relaxing on vacation managing our business.”
Looking to the future, they invested in a third dump truck this year, with further expansions planned up the bend. Today, the one question lingering before them is this: How big can they go?
“We’ve focused on scaling our business,” Mr. Kirk McKinney said. “It’s just a different type of work and a different type of attention than it was when we first started, when we were only working with our hands, because that’s how big our company was.”
Before rushing off to his college final exam, he added, “But now that we’re bigger, there’s just more tasks and more responsibilities in different areas.
“We’re still hungry.”
