Gen Z brothers bought a $4,000 pickup truck to start their business—now it brings in $3 million a year

It started with a bike ride to the local dump, where then-teenaged Kirk McKinney stumbled on a pair of "really nice speakers" that still worked.
The speakers became prized possessions and the inspiration for Junk Teens, a Norwood, Massachusetts-based junk removal and reselling business that McKinney launched with younger brother Jacob McKinney in February 2021. The brothers are now ages 22 and 20, respectively — and their business brought in $3.04 million in 2025 revenue, including more than $686,000 in net profit, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
After finding the speakers, "I was hooked. I just kept going back to the dump ... and, eventually, my bedroom looked like a mini hoarder's house," says Kirk McKinney, the company's CEO. He sold abandoned items he found on Facebook Marketplace as a side hustle, and hanging out at the dump, he met people willing to pay local teenagers to remove more unwanted junk from their homes, he says.
He knew he'd need help, so he quit a grocery store job and enlisted his brother, who was a high school freshman at the time, he says. They bought a used 2006 Ford F-150 pickup truck with $4,000 of their own money to haul junk, Kirk McKinney says. Two bored teens in the middle of a pandemic looking to make extra cash, they also picked up odd jobs like landscaping and moving gigs.
"We didn't really know that we wanted to start this business," says Jacob McKinney. Junk removal and reselling simply became the most fun and profitable part of their work, and customers showed more interest in Junk Teens "when they knew that we were repurposing" their items, says Kirk McKinney.
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Today, Junk Teens employs 10 full-time and roughly 10 to 15 part-time employees, all of whom are high school, college or gap-year students. The company's fleet of five dump trucks — the brothers plan to add two more later in 2026 — now has two locations in eastern Massachusetts that collectively cover Boston and the Cape Cod area, the brothers say.
Junk Teens completed over 5,500 jobs in 2025, mostly residential and commercial junk removal, the brothers say. The company charges between $300 and $600 per job, on average, depending on the size and nature of the service.
Both McKinneys now study entrepreneurship at nearby Babson College while running the business, and each paid themselves salaries in the low-to-mid six figures in 2025. They used part of that money to pay some of their college tuition, with the rest covered by their parents, who run a local tree service business, say the brothers.
"The money is great, [but] that's not what the whole point of this is," says Kirk McKinney. "We want to build futures for our friends, and we want to do what we love — and not have to work at a job that we hate."
Learning the ins and outs of junk removal
"One thing that we were very fortunate for is growing up in a family business background," says Kirk McKinney. Early on, their parents offered business ownership advice on topics like administration and bookkeeping: "We grew up watching our parents do all of that stuff for their business, and we would ask them questions in the beginning."
The brothers sought further advice online, literally searching "how to start a junk removal business" on YouTube — learning how to set up the legal structure of the business and put aside money to pay taxes, Kirk McKinney says. They recruited friends and classmates to help with the manual labor, and used local word of mouth and their social media savvy to build a customer base.
Now, the McKinneys post their own instructional videos on YouTube to show their tens of thousands of followers how they negotiate pricing and the best ways to dispose, flip or donate different types of items. Junk Teens has more than 400,000 followers combined across Instagram and TikTok, too.
Their first year in business nearly cleared six figures in profit, so the brothers bought their first dump truck, says Kirk McKinney. They parked it, along with their pickup, in their parents' driveway, where they also piled used items like electronics, appliances, furniture and bicycles under a tarp.
"Our parents were not happy with that," he says. The business started renting warehouse space instead in March 2023, paying $1,450 per month.
Getting 'crafty' to balance school and a growing business
Early on, when the brothers were both in high school, they often only worked a job or two per week — finding time after school or during weekends, Jacob McKinney says. As the business grew, they hired friends to share the workload, cut out hobbies like playing video games and got "really crafty" with their scheduling, he says.
During his senior year of high school, he negotiated a block of midday free time with his guidance counselor because local dumps only operated during school hours, he says. The brothers sometimes parked their dump truck in the school parking lot and begged forgiveness from teachers if they were late to class, says Kirk McKinney.
The business topped $1.2 million in revenue in 2024, which was Jacob McKinney's final year of high school. "[Being] a seven-figure business-owner in high school ... felt pretty crazy," he says.
Today, the brothers focus mostly on administrative and strategic work, and haven't gone "into the field" in nearly two years, says Jacob McKinney. In 2025, they professionalized Junk Teens' processes with marketing software and leadership promotions, and opened their second location in the Cape Cod area. The moves helped Junk Teens more than double its annual revenue that year, and almost double its annual profit, the McKinneys say.
College remains "really difficult, especially when owning a business," says Kirk McKinney. He's considered dropping out three separate times to run Junk Teens full-time, he says. Instead, he stayed — partially for his parents' sake, and partially because "college has taught me things that business never will," like social and communication skills, he says. "And life isn't all about making money and having a successful business."
The McKinneys will have more time for Junk Teens after they've both graduated, but their jobs may not get much easier. What began as a hyper-local service relying on friends and neighbors now competes with larger businesses that serve suburbs and big cities. National competitors include Waste Management, Inc., the $90 billion waste services behemoth, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which touts six franchises across Massachusetts and more than 140 across the U.S. in total, according to the company's website. College Hunks Hauling Junk, which similarly employs young employees, has over 200 franchise locations nationwide.
For its part, Junk Teens projects $5 million in annual revenue by the end of 2026, the brothers say. Their expansion plan involves covering the rest of Massachusetts before eventually opening more locations across the East Coast, says Kirk McKinney. The brothers say they're open to potentially franchising the business, bringing on outside investors or even selling the business down the road — though that's not in their immediate plans, says Kirk McKinney.
"I have a really strong feeling that after college, things are going to take off more than they ever have," he says.
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