2 Brothers Started a $1.2M Side Hustle as Teens. The Blue-Collar Business Made $3M Last Year: ‘Young People Are Looking for Different Career Paths.’

In 2024, when Entrepreneur first connected pinch brothers Kirk McKinney, 22, and Jacob McKinney, 21, their Greater Boston-based junk-removal business, Junk Teens, was still a side hustle, albeit a $1.2 million one. 

Image Credit: Junk Teens. Kirk McKinney, left, and Jacob McKinney, right.

The then-teenaged brothers launched Junk Teens backmost successful 2021 pinch a azygous pick-up truck. A brace of moving speakers recovered astatine a dump grew into a postulation of resellable items — $1,000 worthy — sold connected Facebook Marketplace.

Now, the brothers’ mostly student-run service, which besides serves Cape Cod and Rhode Island, operates 8 trucks and has 25 full-time employees. The business has handled an estimated 7.4 cardinal pounds of items, sorting usable equipment for donation, resale aliases repurposing whenever possible.

Junk Teens deed $3 cardinal successful gross successful 2025 and is projected to scope $5 cardinal successful gross this year, per the company.

The institution besides grew its organization partnerships. A machine thrust pinch Computers 4 People distributed refurbished laptops and desktops to under-resourced communities, and a business pinch WellStrong connected the Cape raised costs for wellness and peer-support programs that assistance constituent maltreatment recovery.

Here’s really the McKinney brothers unlocked their blue-collar business’s monolithic maturation — and what’s adjacent for Junk Teens. 

Breaking retired of the bottleneck 

For a agelong time, Jacob scheduled worker routes and figured retired wherever to dispose of the items they picked up. Managing it each was challenging erstwhile the business had a fleet of 3 to 4 trucks, conscionable half of what it is now. 

“I was moving 12 hours a day, nonstop,” Jacob recalls. “So I didn’t really person immoderate much clip to effort to fig retired really to prosecute personification other aliases thing for illustration that. Long communicative short, 1 of the biggest first things we did was delegate my occupation position.”

The brothers divided Jacob’s domiciled into respective different ones, which helped streamline worker bookings and hiring. 

“We promoted to head 1 of our guys who had been pinch america for a mates years who was taking a spread twelvemonth from college,” Kirk adds, “and gave him immoderate of the responsibilities that Jake had, for illustration calling successful the labor each time and reviewing the schedule.”

With that successful place, Jacob collapsed retired of the bottleneck; he had much clip to activity pinch Kirk connected building amended systems and training, allowing the business to scale. 

Image Credit: Junk Teens

Taking advantage of exertion and AI — including vibe coding 

When Junk Teens deed $1.2 cardinal successful gross successful 2024, the entirety of the business’s day-to-day operations existed connected Apple Notes.  

“Then Jake would benignant those retired and transcript and paste those schedules to the guys that were going retired each day,” Kirk explains. “That was really we ran our business. It was fundamentally a $1 cardinal broadside hustle astatine that point.” 

Now, Junk Teens is taking advantage of tech tools. The institution uses Jobber for customer narration management, GoHighLevel for customer information postulation and Connecteam for worker management. 

The business is besides embracing AI successful its galore forms, from the built-in “slight automation” that makes consciousness of information crossed the package programs it uses, to vibe coding its very ain app. 

A Junk Teens worker who was connected the squad for respective years and had basal tech skills built the app, utilizing Base44 and ChatGPT for a batch of the UI and UX referencing. The app features a leaderboard and different statistic that thief way worker capacity — for instance, an employee’s gross per hr aliases closing rate.

“Our full app was developed by a teenager,” Kirk says. “That’s different absorbing point — that technology’s astatine the constituent wherever precocious schoolhouse kids tin create full apps. And our full institution uses that app each azygous day.” 

Image Credit: Junk Teens

In the early days, Kirk edited contented and posted videos connected social media erstwhile he had the time. But Junk Teens has since systemized its societal media strategy too. Now, Kirk collects footage erstwhile he’s retired connected the job, past outsources the editing to thief recognize his vision. 

About 8 months ago, Kirk brought different Junk Teens squad members connected committee too. 

“ I started training different guys connected our squad to spell retired location pinch Meta Glasses and GoPros and movie immoderate of their day-to-day operations and what they’re doing retired successful the section each day,” Kirk explains. “So now I person each this awesome contented to activity with, and past I tin benignant of beryllium the translator betwixt that footage and the team.” 

Currently, Junk Teens has surpassed 213,000 followers connected TikTok, 269,000 followers connected Instagram and 69,000 subscribers connected YouTube.

Image Credit: Junk Teens

Not only has systemizing Junk Teens’ social media attack helped marketplace the business, but it’s besides served arsenic a awesome team-building tool. 

“A institution is conscionable a group of group astatine the extremity of the day, and erstwhile you spot yourself successful these videos and the societal media’s capturing it, you’re a portion of that, and it really elevates the culture,” Kirk says. “Then caller group spot what we person going connected here, and it really attracts much group who want to activity pinch us.” 

Cultivating a vibrant civilization astir a young team

Most of Junk Teens’ labor are precocious schoolhouse aliases college students, and the institution intends to salary them much than its competitors to pull apical talent. 

On average, that salary useful retired to astir $25 to $30 an hour, including hourly rates, commissions and tips. 

“A batch of the labor consciousness for illustration they’re building the institution pinch america because they’re besides building their opportunity arsenic the institution grows,” Kirk says. “Because of that, we person a batch of forward-thinking people, and I deliberation that america each being young is simply a portion of why that happens.”

Although Junk Teens loses immoderate labor erstwhile the schoolhouse twelvemonth starts backmost up, the seasonality of junk removal aligns good pinch the ebb and flow, and the brothers ever scheme for it. 

Image Credit: Junk Teens

The business’s measurement astir doubles successful the summertime months; the caller Cape Cod location unsocial booked $350,000 successful services during highest play past year. 

What’s more, Junk Teens’ young squad members bring an open-mindedness and precocious power that make for a vibrant company culture, the co-founders note. 

“In that script wherever personification had thing hap successful their life wherever they mightiness beryllium a small down coming successful the adjacent day, they get picked correct backmost up because there’s 10 aliases 15 different guys that each person precocious power astir them,” Jacob adds. “It’s intolerable to still enactment sad aliases down erstwhile you’re successful that type of environment.” 

Perfecting systems for a nationwide scale

Now, the McKinney brothers are focused connected perfecting their business’s systems arsenic they oculus a nationalist description , ideally wrong the adjacent mates of years. 

“ For me, the astir breathtaking point is empowering the youth,” Kirk says. “With technology, location are truthful galore opportunities to make money. But everyone’s ever going to request junk removed. There’s ever going to beryllium precocious schoolers looking for after-school and summer jobs. And young group are looking for different profession paths different than the accepted assemblage route.” 

The co-founders person regular DMs from young group asking for proposal connected starting a business. They would promote anyone who’s considering it to extremity procrastinating and spell for it. 

“I don’t deliberation there’s ever a cleanable roadmap unless you already person $1 cardinal and are a business expert, which we were not, and astir people starting businesses are not,” Jacob says. “So start, moreover if it’s not going to beryllium the business that you discontinue with. We conscionable started pinch thing that we thought was adventurous and entertaining, not moreover thing that we thought would make america the astir money.” 

This article is portion of our ongoing Young Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of being a young business owner.