By Focusing On Care and Support, Junk Junk Baby! Aims To Become the Leading Junk-Hauling Franchise

Twelve years ago, Eric Myers began hauling junk for friends, more as an escape from his fast-paced sales career than a way to make money. But before long, his hauling business was making money. A lot of it. Myers’s company carved out a lucrative niche in the junk-hauling segment by providing care-oriented service for people going through difficult transitions. Now, Junk Junk Baby! has launched a franchise opportunity designed to allow lifestyle-oriented entrepreneurs around the country to find the same success Myers achieved.

“My story will be familiar to anyone who has ever gotten burnt out in the corporate world,” Myers said. “I think that’s a big part of why we are seeing so much interest from prospective franchisees in just our first year of franchising.”

Before Myers started Junk Junk Baby!, he spent 15 years in various sales positions, starting in telecom sales — “pure boiler room culture, with 150 cold calls a day” — and eventually winding up in insurance sales — “more of a sentence than a job, but I gutted it out.”

After the birth of his child in 2010, Myers decided he couldn’t effectively embark on the most important chapter of his life while killing himself working for someone else in a career he wasn’t passionate about. So he quit his job and bought a truck.

“It was a little scary, but I knew there was no perfect time to take a chance, so I decided to pull the trigger,” he said. “My wife and I had three months of living expenses saved up, and I decided I was going to use that cushion to make something happen — to hustle.”

One thing Myers’s career in sales taught him is the value of relationships and customer loyalty, so he started providing free moving and hauling services for his friends and neighbors. Before long, those favors turned into paying jobs, and customers began referring Myers to their friends and families. Not only was Myers eking out a living for his family, for the first time in his life, he says, “I loved what I was doing. I was free, and more importantly, I was making a positive impact on people’s lives.”

As business picked up, the name came naturally. Myers chose Junk Junk Baby! as a way to honor his newborn. Over the next decade, business continued to grow, thanks largely to Myers’s focus on care-oriented service.

“What I found early on was that people who are moving or need junk removed from their homes are going through a transition, and transitions are, at best, uncomfortable. At worst, they are among the most difficult periods of people’s lives,” he said. “People are often emotional or upset, and it may not seem like a junk-hauling company can help with that, but we really can.

We show up ready to mitigate the chaos. You can see the relief on people’s faces when they realize we are handling one of the more chaotic tasks they have on their plates. So we’ve made that part of our model — we are focused on care and support.

We help people.”

That commitment to care goes beyond Junk Junk Baby!’s day-to-day services, Myers says. The brand also works with local community organizations and nonprofits to provide support for people in need.

“We pride ourselves on giving back whenever and wherever possible,” Myers said. “That is core to our business. It starts with the box trucks we use, which allow us to recycle any discarded items rather than trashing them. We’re very involved with the Housing Authorities in our area and partner with them to make sure that residents have basic household items when moving in.”

Junk Junk Baby! launched its franchise opportunity in 2021, and already the brand has become one of the most sought-after new franchises in its segment.

“People are really drawn to our clear purpose and the escape we offer from the corporate world,” Myers said. “You read about the Great Resignation and so many people reevaluating their careers, and I think what we are seeing is a major value shift. The pandemic rocked just about every industry, and it made a lot of people realize that they don’t want to be gears in a machine; they want to feel good about what they are doing, and they want to work for themselves. That’s exactly what our franchise offers.”

Junk Junk Baby!’s appeal to prospective franchise owners can also be attributed to its low-cost operational model, which allows new franchisees to get up and running and recoup their initial investments quickly. Myers says the brand calibrated the startup costs to ensure franchisees are able to invest in their own growth. Those low startup costs represent the bulk of a franchisee’s expenses, as the business requires no brick-and-mortar space to rent and maintain and little overhead beyond the cost of a truck and local marketing efforts.

“This is an exceptionally low-cost model, and the benefits of that go beyond cost savings,” Myers said. “It’s a simple, streamlined business that just about anyone can run. You don’t need a bookkeeper or manager or even any specialized skills, you just need to share our passion for taking care of people.”