Dad’s Dumpsters LLC is the culmination of over 12 years of dreaming by my dad, Keith Sr, and myself, Keith JR, his oldest son. My Dad drove a roll-off truck for over 22 years. While I was in high school, I decided that I also wanted to be a roll-off driver.

 

When I turned 21, I went to truck driving school to get a Class B CDL. After passing the test to officially become a truck driver, my dad was able to get me a job with him at Republic Waste Services. I started off as a garbage man, doing residential trash. During this time, we talked very often about starting our own roll-off dumpster rental company.

 

During one of our many few hour talks during those early years, my mother came up with the name Team Disposal. We never forgot that name. After years of coming up with plans and ways for us to be able to start our company, we were finally able to do it. In July of 2016 we started Team Disposal. After all those years of dreaming, we actually started our company.

 

Team Disposal started off with one 10 yard trailer dumpster, pictured below. We did junk removals and we also rented it out in place of a regular roll-off dumpster. After about a month, we added our second trailer dumpster, this one being a 15 yarder. Over the course of the last few months of 2016, we were able to do almost 60 jobs with our 2 trailer dumpsters.

 

As 2016 came to a close, we had a plan to build trailer dumpsters as fast as we could so that 2017 would be a special year for our fledgling company.

 

After our successful first few months, we had a plan to buy and build as many trailer dumpsters as we possibly could. During this plan, we had some major negatives in the back of our minds when it came to trailer dumpsters. First, we both hated pulling trailers. Second, we seemed to have constant electrical issues dealing with the lights of the trailers. Third, was mechanical upkeep that trailers had that real roll-off dumpsters didn’t, like tires, leaf springs and things like that. Also, the cost of registering each trailer and getting license plates. Nevertheless, we proceeded with our plan. That changed one day when I took my daughters friend home and stopped at my parents for one of our hundreds, if not thousands of bullshittin’ sessions.

 

In our minds we were constantly trying to figure out if we could make our plan better. On that day, I started by telling my Dad that we should build wooden containers that we could somehow pull onto a custom built trailer we would build ourselves. Well, that idea stunk, rightfully! But, one thing lead to another and we landed on an old idea that my Dad had previously rejected. The idea was that we should build our own mini roll-off truck and dumpsters. From that very moment, our plan and life, really, had changed, we scrapped the trailer dumpster idea.

 

There was a major problem though, none of us had the tools or the skills to even attempt such a thing. Buying tools was the easy part, using those tools to build our real dream was a little bit harder. Through lots of time spent bullshittin’, we formulated a rough outline of what we had to do. I did a lot of research and figured out parts we would need. But, first, we needed a major ingredient, the truck!!!!!

 

After searching on Craigslist, I found us a GMC W4500 to go look at in Defiance, Ohio, over 3 hours away from us. We drove there, after test driving the truck for awhile we decided it was a good deal and we wanted it. After doing the paperwork, we headed home. Not long into the trip, we noticed a major problem, one that wasn’t there during the test drive. We had a major oil leak! We decided to stop at Walmart to buy some JB Weld to see if we could patch the leak on the oil pan. It worked, and we made it home and replaced the oil plan.

After we got the truck home, fixed the rusted out oil pan, it was time to get to work planning and building the roll-off. We ordered the scissor lift, rollers, fenders, and the winch. We bought the steel for the rails of the carriage (what the dumpster basically rides on,) and we got to building. Honestly, building the truck was the easy part, my dad will tell you the same thing. After a couple months of figuring things out, we had a working mini roll-off truck. Then came what we would later find out as the hard part, building the first dumpster.

 

We kinda bullshitted our way to a rough outline of what we wanted the dumpster to be. We bought the steel, and got to work measuring and cutting. I’ll say this now, my youngest brother Jake was a giant help building the truck and is a valuable third member of our team, we couldn’t do it without him.  Building the first dumpster was a slow process, mainly working on the weekends because we had other jobs. After a few months, the dumpster was ready to be picked up on the truck. A very happy and proud moment was about to occur, we picked up our dumpster with our truck, all of it hand built.

 

Come to find out, we had some serious, serious design flaws. Our door hinges wouldn’t let the door open all the way. The way the cable of the winch hooked up to the dumpster was dangerous, and at one point the dumpster actually became unhooked, slid off the truck and into my parents house, luckily no damage occurred. We had a good laugh, and got back to work redesigning the problem areas.

 

We ordered hinges from a roll-off parts website, when they arrived, they were way to big and overkill for our dumpster. So we fabricated our own, they worked flawlessly. We came up with new hookup system and it too, worked great. We designed a front roller system for the dumpster, and the dumpster was finally done, it only took about 5 months longer than we thought it would. But, it was done, and it was ours!!

 

Well, the truck was built, the first dumpster was built, time to build more, and we are! Our cousin Jackie and his wife Sherry, painted the truck, they did a wonderful job. We were ready for business. But, I haven’t covered how or why we went from Team Disposal to Dad’s Dumpsters.

 

Around late 2017 or early 2018, my Dad talked to me about changing the name to Dad’s Dumpsters, now this is a name that someone in the family came up with, but no one actually remembers who said it first. So it will remain a mystery. My Dad came up with the slogan, “No one takes care of you like Dad.” We all thought the name and slogan was catchy, so we went with it.

 

So as I write this on September 29th of 2018, we are building dumpsters and will continue building dumpsters forever, hopefully. Business is doing good, we are slowly getting our name out there, getting more and more calls each week. The next few years will be busy, but fun and exciting. I can’t wait.

 

I’m living my dream, and I couldn’t be happier. I hope my Dad and Jake feel the same. There is no better feeling than living your dream, especially when you’re doing it with the people you love. I implore all of you reading this, do whatever it takes to live your dream, you won’t regret it.

 

Dad, I consider you my best friend, I want to thank you for being by my side this entire time, I wouldn’t do it with anyone else. Jake, thank you for all your help, for being there whenever we ask you, for understanding why you can’t get paid. Thank you for making the investment with your time. The women of the family, I thank you guys for being there for us, supporting us, for understanding the effort that doing something like this takes.  Finally, I want to thank our customers, past and future, without you, there would be no Dad’s Dumpsters.

 

I’m off to build a dumpster!!!