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Career gold unearthed from garbage heap

A Canadian man started a hauling business instead of finishing college, and has found his treasure.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 30, 2006

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - As a franchise operator of 1-800-Got-Junk, Calgary's Dave Harrop thought he would just be hauling away other people's garbage - not bona fide treasures that would lead to a lucrative lifestyle.

He once picked up 50 boxes of books that were bound for the paper recycler. Looking inside one, he found early editions of three books by Charles Dickens, including a copy of Bleak House.

"It was totally by fluke," he said. "I just happened to look on top of the boxes," he said.

Harrop's find is not as uncommon as it may seem, says company spokesman Christopher Bennett.

Bronic Gold, a San Mateo, Calif., franchise operator of 1-800-Got-Junk, found a 1954 Martin Parlor Acoustic Guitar worth almost $10,000, said Bennett, who has a document signed by President Theodore Roosevelt worth $17,000 and a Spider-Man 1 comic as a result of junk jobs.

"You'd be amazed at what people throw away," Bennett said. "You're really going into people's basements and back yards and grabbing junk and taking it to a landfill site."

They're all part of a Vancouver company that has transformed itself from a one-man operation carting off people's unwanted stuff 16 years ago to one that expects to have 250 franchises throughout North America by the end of 2006.

The business is the brainchild of CEO Brian Scudamore. Clad in slacks and a sweater over a T-shirt, the 35-year-old Scudamore is far from the image of a corporate suit. He walks to work and doesn't own a cell phone.

"We're creating the FedEx of the junk- removal industry," he said.

He began the company in 1989 as a way to pay his way through college. Sitting in a Vancouver McDonald's two days before his 19th birthday, he saw a beat-up old junk hauler truck and thought: "I could do that."

Using the 550 Canadian dollars in his bank account, he bought a similar truck and printed fliers for the Rubbish Boys. In 1999, Scudamore developed the franchising model based on the name 1-800-Got-Junk?

There was a problem. That number belonged to an Idaho agency. After countless calls tracking down the official in charge, Scudamore persuaded him to give it up.

"The guy goes: 'Listen, it's the number we own, but yeah, we're not really using it. It's not that important to us, but clearly it's important to you,' " Scudamore said.

[Last modified May 30, 2006, 06:04:46]