I PICK UP PROFITS WITH A PICKUP

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Then one of my short-term deals gave me the idea for a shoestring business that keeps me, the pickup, and a couple of friends busy part time for eight months of the year and turns a tidy profit too. (We get paid twice: once when we collect our stock and again when we sell it.) What's more, the work is ecologically sound and the schedule flexible enough for me to attend college full time and for one of my partners to hold down a 40-hour-a-week job. And the only real essentials are a truck, a large backyard (or rented storage space), and a little ambition.

Sound interesting? Read on!

I got my idea the day the employment office sent me out to a construction site where a contractor wanted me to clean up around two houses he was building. When such a job nears completion, the lot is littered with all kinds of scraps that must be cleared away before the landscapers arrive. I was amazed by the quantity and quality of discarded materials: 2 X 4's, planks, sheets of paneling and plywood, shingles, and siding-all usable-and lots of assorted scraps. While some of the stuff was obviously too small to be used in construction, there were boards up to 10 feet in length and plywood in 3' X 5' pieces.

All this waste was scheduled to be taken to a nearby landfill dump because it was simpler for the contractor to start anew job from scratch than to salvage odds and ends. My sense of ecology, however, was offended to see so much lumber-and the trees it represented-bulldozed into a heap with the rest of the garbage from oar affluent society. The economics of the situation were revealing. The contractor paid me $2.50 an hour to load the wood on his truck, haul it five miles to the disposal facility, unload it, and return to the site for another lot. The whole process took about two hours, and the dump charged a $2.00 use fee. Including gas and wear and tear on the truck, my employer was shelling out about $7.50 a load to dispose of the waste lumber. I asked the contractor if he would pay me the same amount-as a flat rate of $7.50 a load-to haul the trash away in my own truck. After we'd agreed that "a load" would mean my half-ton pickup filled level with the cab-high sideboards, and that I would guarantee a clean job, he became my first customer. I had more very shortly: Two other builders in the same housing development were glad to be relieved of the search for someone to do clean-up work. I spent the next week hauling lumber but not to the dump

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