JunkStart names Bryan Cross VP of operations

JunkStart, a Texas-based pay-by-weight junk removal franchise, today announced the appointment of Bryan Cross as Vice President of Operations. In his new role, Cross will work directly with founder Daniel McCarty to build and refine the brand’s systems to support franchisees as well as growth.

Prior to joining JunkStart, Cross served as an operations leader at Lawn Doctor and a franchise business coach/consultant at College H.U.N.K.S. Hauling Junk and Moving service. Those experiences are well aligned with both JunkStart’s business model and the brand’s vision for expansion.

Overall, Cross brings more than a decade of growth-minded leadership in the franchise space to relative newcomer JunkStart, not to mention a track record of coaching more than 100 owner-operators to success. His new home, JunkStart, started providing its innovative weight-based junk hauling model in their home market of San Antonio in 2022 and launched its franchise offering just over a year ago, in the summer of 2025.

“We have a lot of momentum right now, and Bryan can help us build the operation to match it,” JunkStart founder Daniel McCarty said. “He’s spent years helping franchise owners figure out what works and how to improve it. He understands what it takes to grow without losing sight of the people actually running the business.”

Cross’ appointment comes just a month after JunkStart’s first franchise location in Omaha, Nebraska started operations. Under Cross’ leadership, that location and the brand’s company-managed territory of greater San Antonio will serve as testing grounds for JunkStart’s new franchisee-minded support systems. Those innovations will both help the brand scale more rapidly and enable new owner-operators to realize revenue faster.

“What stood out to me about JunkStart is that there’s a strong business model here, but there’s also a real opportunity to help shape how the company grows,” Cross said. “My focus is making sure franchise owners have the support and systems they need to run strong businesses without making things more complicated than they need to be.”

With the addition of Cross as Vice President of Operations, JunkStart continues to seek additional qualified franchise candidates to bring transparent, data-driven pricing to people in their community who need to get rid of junk.