We've Found Independence... With a Small Town Garbage Route!
"We've gotten so much help and encouragement from MOTHER's articles about independent, self-sufficient people," says Nebraska's Maureen J. Pace, "that my family thought it only fair to tell other MOTHER readers about the success of our own little business venture and way of life!"
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Three years ago my husband Larry, our two sons (then six and four), and I moved to central Nebraska . . . with a clear idea of exactly what we were going to do once we got there: We were going to live a back-to-basics life while we supported ourselves by operating an established garbage route that we had made arrangements to take over.
Imagine our distress, then, when—with the family transplanted, winter setting in, and our bank account reading absolute zero—we learned that our business deal was being called off by the other party! To say that our life looked like a nightmare at that point would be a gross understatement.
Fortunately for us, however, Larry is no quitter. He's a strong man with a head of curly red hair, a full red beard, and a mind that is just as filled with fiery determination. "Well," he said, "if our first opportunity has flown the coop, another one is just as surely waiting for us to find it. As a matter of fact, I believe we'll all be happier if we just buckle down and build our own garbage route from scratch by ourselves anyway."
The next day—armed with a paper full of figures—my husband visited the local banker, and persuaded him to loan us enough money ($800) to see our proposed new business through its first few months. Then, with the grubstake and an old Chevy farm truck that we borrowed from Larry's parents, we set out to make that business a reality.
THE RULES OF OUR SUCCESS
From the very first, we've operated our little enterprise strictly according to four guiding principles that we've never changed and never broken:
[1] We take on only as many accounts as Larry and I, together, can handle. We both have always felt that hired help would lust be an unnecessary bother, complication, and drain on an operation that we prefer to run as a small family business. We are both bona fide MOTHER types. Our venture was never intended to earn "big" money. Instead, my husband and I want only enough cash coming in to give us financial security, support us comfortably (not elaborately), give us a maximum amount of time with each other and our boys, and guarantee us freedom from anyone else's time clock.
[2] We make do with the equipment we have on hand or that we can buy with the money we already have. (Example: A new truck would be nice right now, but we absolutely refuse to indebt ourselves the $10,000 or $15,000 it would cost.) Thanks to Larry's considerable mechanical ability, we've made this rule stick . . . and we believe it's one of the biggest reasons we've been able to get ahead the way we have.
[3] We bill our customers monthly, and we personally collect quarterly from any patrons who don't send in their monthly payments. By adhering to this principle, we've prevented our accounts from building up large, overdue, difficult-to-pay, semi-annual or yearly bills . . . and we've almost never been stuck by a real deadbeat.
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