We've Found Independence... With a Small Town Garbage Route!
(Page 4 of 5)
We also put bonus bucks in our packets by recycling all the scrap metal (everything from small bolts to parts of old car bodies) that we find in our daily collections of garbage. This material is squirreled away and saved until the scrap market hits its yearly high (usually during the cold months) and then sold all at once to a salvage yard.
RELATED CONTENT
Rock Port, Mo., took advantage of the power generated from the nearby Loess Hills Wind Farm in a bi...
ON THE TABLE: A smaller, more decadent way with pumpkin pie: Recipe for dark pumpkin tartlets...
You can give your holiday gifts a personal touch by crafting unique wrappings and gift tags from re...
Made properly, a canoe paddle is quite beautiful, strong, lightweight and functional. Building and ...
Stuart Silverstein shares the solution to his water supply problem: installing a faucet near the bo...
The prices we receive for our recycled metal vary considerably (not much for tin, a lot for copper) but any time we take in a load of anything we figure we'll average at least $100. (One load of aluminum cans recently enriched the bank account by over $400!)
We collect and sell newspaper and cardboard too, and the whole recycling end of our business is nearly 100% profit. This is "found" money .. . the cash we spend on the extravagant "extras" that everyone wants from time to time: a long-dreamed-of vacation for Larry . . . a new motorcycle and flying lessons for me . .. and bicycles, a go-cart, and a minibike for the boys. It's no wonder we all enjoy this end of our operation so much!
Yet another profitable offshoot of our basic garbage hauling business involves the buying and selling of "burn barrels". We purchase 55-gallon steel drums by the truckload for $2.00 apiece .. . and then sell them to our customers for $5.00 each. Sure, it's a minor inconvenience to lug the containers around as we travel our route. But the sideline does provide our patrons with a needed service and we sell at least a half dozen of the barrels a week (which adds up to about one thousand extra dollars over the course of a year). Everyone involved, in short, benefits from the idea and we're going to continue offering the drums.
Probably the biggest side benefit of all that we realize from our garbage business is the incredible number of "finds" we pick up each week. Believe me. You'll never know what an affluent and wasteful nation we live in until you follow us around our route just once. The things that people discard as "useless" would make our pioneer parents weep!
Larry and I have furnished our home with perfectly good items that our customers have thrown away as "too old", "unstylish", or "too worn looking". That's how we got our stove, refrigerator, clocks, radios, lamps, electric can opener, and almost all our furniture ... and we're proud of it. We figure we're way ahead of most of our contemporaries (whose furniture and appliances—which usually look no better than ours—seem to be accompanied by an endless stream of monthly installment payments). We consider it a blessing to be free of the "keep up with the Joneses" syndrome.
Still another "extra" that our business lavishes on us is the reoccurring opportunity it gives us to meet, become friendly with, and set up swaps with our customers. Larry hails from a long line of "horse-traders" and his best days are the ones in which he arranges a happy barter deal of some kind.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
Next >>
