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Many people dream of turning a side hustle into a full-time business. Far fewer actually do it.
Brothers Kirk McKinney, 22, and Jacob McKinney, 21, are among the exceptions. What started with a $4,000 pickup truck and a willingness to haul away unwanted junk has grown into Junk Teens, a junk-removal company that generated about $3 million in revenue in 2025 and is on track to exceed $5 million this year, according to Business Insider.
The idea began when Kirk was still in high school. After discovering discarded speakers and electronics at a local dump, he started collecting and reselling some of the items online. One early sale helped him see a bigger opportunity.
"I sold my first radio on Facebook Marketplace for $50," Kirk told BI. "That's when I discovered what entrepreneurship was."
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The brothers officially launched the business in 2021 after pooling their savings to buy a $4,000 Ford F-150.
Their first job was moving a couch for about $100.
"We got hired to move a couch for, like, 100 bucks," Kirk told BI. "Took us 15 minutes. That was pretty good."
At first, most of their customers came through word of mouth, local Facebook groups and Nextdoor. The brothers took on whatever work they could find and learned through trial and error.
One early house cleanout took nine days to complete because they lacked the equipment and experience they have today.
"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."
By the end of 2022, the business had brought in over $200,000 in sales. By 2023, after adding another dump truck and renting some warehouse space, they were getting close to making a million dollars.
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Today, Junk Teens has around 25 employees, operates five dump trucks and serves multiple markets across Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The company has also built a social media following of more than 500,000 people, according to BI.
Despite the company's rapid growth, Kirk's advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is surprisingly straightforward.
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