Kirk McKinney, a teenager at the time, rode his bike to a local dump and found a “really nice speaker” that still worked.
The speakers became prized possessions and the inspiration for Junk Teens, the Norwood, Mass.-based company Junk Teens, which McKinney launched in February 2021 with his brother Jacob McKinney. The brothers are now 22 and 20 years old, respectively, and their business generated $3.04 million in revenue in 2025, including more than $686,000 in net income, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
After finding the speaker, “I was hooked. I kept going back to the dump…and by the end, my bedroom looked like a mini-hoarder’s house,” says Kirk McKinney, the company’s CEO. He sells discarded items he finds on Facebook Marketplace as a side business, and while wandering through dumpsters, he says he meets people who pay local teenagers to remove more unwanted junk from their homes.
He said he knew he needed help, so he quit his job at a grocery store and enlisted the help of his older brother, who was a freshman in high school at the time. Kirk McKinney said they bought a used 2006 Ford F-150 pickup truck for $4,000 of their own money to transport the junk. Two bored teens wanted to make some extra money during the pandemic, so they took on odd jobs like landscaping and moving jobs.
“We never knew we wanted to start this business,” says Jacob McKinney. Junk removal and reselling became the most fun and profitable part of their job, and customers became more interested in Junk Teens “when they knew we were reusing” their products, Kirk McKinney said.
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Junk Teens currently employs 10 people full-time and approximately 10-15 part-time, 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 in late 2026) currently has two locations in eastern Massachusetts, covering the combined Boston and Cape Cod areas, the brothers say.
The brothers say Junk Teens completed more than 5,500 jobs in 2025, mostly residential and commercial junk removal. The company charges an average of $300 to $600 per job, depending on the size and nature of the service.
The McKinneys now run their businesses, study entrepreneurship at nearby Babson College, and are each paying themselves low to mid-six-figure salaries in 2025. They used some of the money to pay for college tuition, and the rest was covered by their parents, who run a local tree service business, the brothers said.
“Money is great, but that’s not what the problem is about,” says Kirk McKinney. “We want to build a future for our friends and do what we love and not have to do a job we hate.”
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“We were very fortunate to grow up in a family-run environment,” says Kirk McKinney. Early on, their parents provided business owner advice on topics such as management and bookkeeping. “We grew up watching our parents do everything for the business, and we used to ask them questions in the beginning.”
Kirk McKinney said the brothers went online for more advice, literally searching YouTube for “how to start a junk removal business” to learn how to establish a legal structure for a business and save money to pay taxes. They recruited friends and classmates to help with manual labor and used local word of mouth and social media knowledge to build a customer base.
Now, the McKinneys have posted their own instructional videos on YouTube showing how to negotiate prices and the best ways to dispose of, flip and donate different types of items. Junk Teens has over 400,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok combined.
Kirk McKinney said the brothers bought their first dump truck after making nearly six figures in their first year of business. They parked it along with their pickup truck in their parents’ driveway, where they also piled up electronics, appliances, furniture, bicycles and other used items under a tarp.
“Our parents weren’t happy about it,” he says. The company instead began renting warehouse space in March 2023, paying $1,450 per month.
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Jacob McKinney said when both brothers were in high school, they often worked only one or two jobs a week, finding time to work after school or on weekends. As the business grew, they hired friends to share the workload, eliminated hobbies like video games, and became “very clever” with their schedules, he says.
As a high school senior, he says, he negotiated with a career guidance counselor for free time during the day because the local dumpster was only open during school hours. Kirk McKinney said the brothers sometimes parked their dump truck in the school parking lot and begged teachers for forgiveness if they were late for class.
The business generated more than $1.2 million in revenue in 2024, when Jacob McKinney was in his final year of high school. “Being a seven-figure businessman in high school…it was a pretty crazy feeling,” he says.
Jacob McKinney said the brothers are currently focused primarily on administrative and strategic work and have not been “out in the field” for nearly two years. In 2025, the company professionalized the Junk Teens process using marketing software and leadership promotions and opened a second store in the Cape Cod region. The move more than doubled Junk Teens’ annual revenue that year and nearly doubled its profits, the McKinneys said.
Kirk McKinney said college remains “very difficult, especially if you’re running a business.” He said he considered quitting school three times in order to run Junk Teens full-time. Instead, he stayed. Partly because of his parents, he says, and partly because “university taught me things you never learn in business,” such as social and communication skills. “And life is not just about making money and running a successful business.”
The McKinneys will both have more time for Junk Teens after graduation, but their jobs may not get any easier. What started as a hyperlocal service relying on friends and neighbors now competes with large companies serving suburbs and large cities. Domestic competitors include Waste Management, a $90 billion waste services giant, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which has six franchises in Massachusetts and more than 140 franchises across the United States, according to the company’s website. College Hunks Hauling Junk also employs young employees and has more than 200 franchised stores nationwide.
Junk Teens, meanwhile, expects annual revenue of $5 million by the end of 2026, the brothers say. Kirk McKinney said the company’s expansion plans include covering the rest of Massachusetts and eventually opening more stores across the East Coast. The brothers have said they would be open to franchising the business, bringing in outside investors or even selling the business in the future, but that’s not in their immediate plans, Kirk McKinney said.
“I have a strong feeling that things will be better than ever after I graduate from college,” he says.
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