FAIRFAX, VA — After working 70 hours a week in a 9-5 job, Jacob Weigel and Jeremiah Hankerson decided they wanted to do something different. They wanted to start their own company and be their own bosses.
Last year, the two 23-year-old George Mason University graduates got some money together, bought a truck and started Junk Runners, a Fairfax-based junk removal business.
“After getting our degrees, we had the mindset of wanting to start something for ourselves and create something, just to have our name on and to build and develop,” Hankerson said. “We have a passion for helping other people. We’re driving around and picking up furniture. It’s not like sitting in the office every day.”
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Hankerson and Weigel first bonded as members of the GMU track team, which is where the “runners” in the name of their business comes from.
“We both were business students,” Weigel said. “We had a lot of overlapping classes. We also spent a lot of time running track together. And we’ve always just enjoyed a kind of a hands-on type of life, down and dirty kind of working, just working really hands-on with the community.”
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Post college, that desire for “hands-on” work that benefited the community led them to jobs at another junk removal company. While they appreciated the industry from an employment standpoint, they weren’t happy with the level of customer service aimed at helping the community.
“Not every company emphasizes donation and giving back to the community as much as they possibly could,” Weigel said. “We thought that there was a window of opportunity there to boost that ourselves.”
Part of Junk Runners philosophy is to help those making donations to charitable organizations like Goodwill or providing a donation pickup service for those same nonprofits. The company has been able to donate more than $50,000 annually to local charities.
Recently, Hankerson and Weigel participated in a Jobber Summit, a streaming event featuring keynote speakers and live chats with other entrepreneurs. That’s where they first heard about Jobber Grants.
Jobber is an operation management software company that supports home service business owners with software, resources, and expert advice. Each year, the company awards grants recognize excellence in home services across the U.S. and Canada.
Hankerson and Weigel decided to apply for a grant. As part of the application process, they created a video to tell the judges about their company and what they hoped to achieve.
“We’re telling them that we love to donate, and we hope to expand our capacity to donate, our capacity to service clients in the DMV area,” Weigel said.
Junk Runners received a $10,000 national grant from Jobber, which they’re going to use to grow Junk Runners by purchasing a second truck.
“If you’ve ever been to the DMV area, it’s packed,” Weigel said. “There’s always traffic. There’s always people to serve here, and that’s our bottleneck. This grant came along and we saw this opportunity to go for it.”
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