The truck is the business: what owners drove and what it cost

Most of the businesses in this database are a vehicle with a service attached. The owner pages say what that vehicle cost, and the range is wide: a $700 pickup at one end, a $160,000 vacuum truck at the other. Where an owner landed on that range decided how fast they could start, whether they should build or buy, and where their growth stopped. This piece goes through what the documented owners drove and what it did for them.

The first vehicle was usually cheap

Brian Scudamore spent $700 on a beat-up pickup in Vancouver in 1989 and started hauling junk to pay for college. The business became 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, which reported about $600 million of systemwide revenue in 2024. Sam Evans did nearly the same thing in 2016 with a $1,000 truck and about $1,700 all-in. By 2019 You Call We Haul did about $180,000 at roughly 70 percent margins.

Some owners did not start with a work truck at all. Steve Hunsaker began hanging holiday lights in 2020 with no crew, no trailer and a Ford Fusion with ladder racks, and grossed about $35,000 that first season. Mike Andes's entry says early Augusta Lawn Care operators got going on about $9,000 of used equipment: a truck, a mower and no trailer. Joshua Brown spent about $5,000 on a washer and a trailer. Alan Tursunbaev started detailing with $500 of equipment and now runs GoDetail out of vans rather than a building.

What these trades share is that the vehicle only has to carry the owner and some tools. A junk hauler needs a bed. A light installer needs a ladder on a roof rack. None of it is specialized, so a used one will do, and the startup cost ladder shows these trades clustered at the bottom.

Where the truck is the barrier

Other trades cannot be done from a used pickup. Daniel Tom puts a rentable portable toilet at about $800 and a vacuum truck at roughly $160,000, and estimates about $250,000 for a credible start. His entry calls the truck the real gatekeeper purchase. Bay Area Sanitation reported $4.3 million of total income in 2025, Tom pays himself a salary of roughly $120,000 and reinvests the rest in units and trucks.

Septic works the same way. Dan Spracklin's advice is to buy a pumping company rather than start one, because pump trucks are expensive and a customer file like the 22,000 households at Gray Brothers takes decades to assemble. He bought, and took the company from about $1 million to about $3 million within two years. The comparison of buying versus building covers that decision in general.

Bin cleaning sits in between. The purpose-built rig on Brannon Fowler's entry costs $25,000 to $50,000. His entry describes that as high enough to price out hobbyists and low enough for a serious operator to finance. It also reports what industry forums say about the downside: a market full of barely used rigs, sold by owners who bought the equipment before they had proved the route. Fowler built past 1,000 recurring clients in about two years.

Trucks built for one job

Kim Hatch's Turner Septic in New Hampshire had a 1,400-gallon four-wheel-drive mini truck built to reach mountain-top properties that standard pump trucks cannot get to. Those are customers a standard truck cannot serve. The trucks also carry Starlink and the technicians carry iPads, which produce the photo-heavy invoices her entry credits with steady referrals. The company runs 18 jobs a day at peak.

Spracklin's changes at Gray Brothers included GPS routing on the trucks. In a pumping business, the cost is mostly time spent driving between tanks, so a shorter route goes straight to margin, and margins went from 10 to 15 percent to more than 30. Scudamore's version was presentation: clean trucks and uniformed crews were part of how he turned an anonymous chore into a brand.

How far one truck goes

Adam Hill runs more than 100 vending machines at over 40 locations around Tampa Bay from a single box truck and about 1,600 square feet of warehouse at roughly $1,600 a month. Hill Vending grosses over $58,000 a month, and he typically works two days a week. In vending, the machines earn the money and the truck just restocks them, so one vehicle covers a lot of revenue.

Dumpsters follow the same logic. The comparable listing on Clayton Roll's entry showed $1,005,000 in revenue and $310,000 in owner earnings from 84 dumpsters and three trucks. The boxes sit on job sites earning rent; the trucks move them.

In hauling, the truck and the owner's body are the same capacity. Kyle Landwehr says he was doing $30,000 to $40,000 a month working the truck himself when he broke his ankle stepping down from it. That is what made him hire. His reported gross margin went from about 50 percent in year one to 30 to 35 percent with crews and about 20 percent once an operations manager ran the business. Ryan McCoy, who bought the Dallas Scoop Soldiers territory in 2019, counts his growth in trucks: about 30 across three markets by 2026.

The owner with no trucks

Ian Hecht is the exception. His entry points out that every other owner in the database owns equipment, and he owns none. He runs the website and the phone; the haulers with the trucks do the work and keep 80 to 85 percent of the job value. He reported $2.1 million of revenue in his second year on about $26,000 of advertising. The trade-off is in his entry too: no trucks, crews or dump fees, but a business that depends on search rankings he does not control.

What to take from it

The cheapest starts in the database used a vehicle that could do the job badly and replaced it once the money came in. The expensive trades put the vehicle first because the work needs it, and in septic that is the argument for buying a company that already has the trucks and the customers. Fowler's warning about unused rigs and Marcus Gram's rule of never buying a vending machine before you have a place to put it say the same thing: the equipment pays only when the route already exists. Our piece on route density covers how close together the stops need to be. The margin ledger shows what each trade keeps after the trucks are paid for, Start here sorts the models by capital and hours, and every owner above is in the database. This site is one of SideRoad's weekly builds.

Common questions

How much does the truck cost to start a service business?

It depends on the trade. Brian Scudamore started 1-800-GOT-JUNK? with a $700 pickup in 1989 and Sam Evans started junk removal with a $1,000 truck in 2016. At the other end, Daniel Tom puts a portable toilet vacuum truck at roughly $160,000, and Brannon Fowler's entry puts a bin cleaning rig at $25,000 to $50,000.

Should you buy the equipment before you have customers?

The documented owners say no. Brannon Fowler's entry notes a market full of barely used bin cleaning rigs sold by owners who bought before they proved the route, and Marcus Gram's rule in vending is never to buy a machine before you have a location for it. In septic, Dan Spracklin's advice is to buy a company that already has trucks and customers.

Can you run a service business without owning trucks?

One documented owner does. Ian Hecht runs a dumpster rental lead business: he handles the website and customer service, and the haulers who own the trucks keep 80 to 85 percent of each job. He reported $2.1 million of revenue in year two on about $26,000 of advertising, with the risk that the business depends on search rankings.