Finding joy, money in a garbage truck

Each Sunday, the AJC brings you insights from metro Atlanta’s leaders and entrepreneurs. Matt Kempner’s “Secrets of Success” shares the vision and realities of entrepreneurs who started their dreams from scratch. The column alternates with Henry Unger’s “5 Questions for the Boss, ” which reveals the lessons learned by CEOs of the area’s major companies and organizations.

Find previous columns from Unger and Kempner at our premium website for subscribers at www.myajc.com/business.

His tips for businesses involved in trucking:

Prepare for problems. Set aside 10-20 cents per mile driven for repairs and maintenance.

Learn how to maintain trucks yourself.

Hire great drivers who treat vehicles well.

“I knew I didn’t have to reinvent anything. Garbage has been around for many years. All we had to do was just be better.”

“I was a just a kid with a thick accent asking goofy questions.”

Emil Bekyarov’s luck turned for the better when the water heater of his new home flooded the basement and damaged furniture.

The resulting $8,000 insurance payment helped him launch the business he had dreamed of: hauling recyclables. Just eight years ago he came to the U.S. for a summer dish-washing job while on college break from his native Bulgaria.

Now 28 and living in Mableton, Bekyarov says he expects his Smyrna-based B Green Services to bring in over $700,000 in sales this year, mostly from collecting recyclables at local apartment complexes. The company has about a 30 percent profit margin, he says. His fleet of five garbage trucks includes one he was so excited to buy he did so without first learning how it worked. If his English is a little clunky, remember it’s not his native language.

I’m Bulgarian. I came 20 years old. Rolled into upstate New York with $400 in my pocket and washed dishes. I spoke very, very little English when I rolled up here. That is why the only job I could do is just the dishwasher.

He moved to metro Atlanta, where an uncle lived, got the dish-washing job and took English lessons. He became a waiter, then a restaurant manager for Chipotle, where he learned how to manage people and a budget. And he married an American woman he met shortly after arriving in the U.S.

I am ambitious. In my country, like in a lot of countries, it is hard to start something on your own. It doesn’t matter how hard you work. There is the corruption, the bureaucracy.

I bartended back home. We always had to return beer bottles and Coke bottles. They would wash them and reuse them. I was shocked when I saw nobody (here in local bars) kept them. We are throwing away money. That is how I started the recycling company. I started looking around, started Googling things. I went and visited these recycling plants. People were willing to take a little bit of their time and tell me how things worked. I was a just a kid with a thick accent asking goofy questions.

We had to make a decision on what direction of the waste industry we were going to be headed. It was just too expensive for us to target the heavy industry/commercial clients. And there was a lot of competition in the residential markets. There are 60 haulers in Cobb County alone on the residential side. So we found a sweet spot with multi-family, which was forced to recycle by the city of Atlanta.

Bekyarov met a counselor from the Kennesaw State University Small Business Development Center, which offers free consultations. He described to Bekyarov how Lowe’s competes with Home Depot by trying to be better than its bigger rival.

I knew I didn’t have to reinvent anything. Garbage has been around for many years. All we had to do was just be better. There was only one main competitor for us (in providing recycling to owners of apartment complexes).

I had to have everything in place before I even made a cent: trucks, containers, drivers. Nobody would (loan) money. Two or three months after we bought our house, our water heater broke. Our insurance company offered us: we can either do the repairs or we give you a check and you hire someone else to do the repairs. I just took the ($8,000) check and bought trash cans with it and sold my car, bought a pickup truck and started the business. I was 23. It was just luck, I guess.

I went to my friends who ran restaurants and hotels and asked them, “Hey would you give me a shot?’ They did. I knocked on some doors on my days off, saying we were very service oriented. A month later we had enough business where we decided we needed a garbage truck.

He put a down payment on a mini garbage truck with 90,000 miles on it.

I felt so free driving that garbage truck. The more I’m willing to pick up, the more money we are going to make. I had no boss. I knew I was going to be losing money for a little bit. It took us about a year. It is a business based on volume. I would drive my garbage truck on my day off from the restaurant and go and sell accounts during the day before my shift. My wife had a couple jobs so we can support this business.

His thick accent and broken English made it difficult to set up meetings with potential corporate customers.

I sound like some guy who is trying to sell you something and you don’t understand what. People questioned whether we were legitimate. Doing a good job allowed us to grow just from word of mouth. We showed up when we were supposed to. When they were in trouble and they called on a Saturday night, I went there and helped them out. Simple service. Money is not exactly an issue if you are taking care of their headaches.

A lot of people when they start a business like this they get so hung up on what the (recyclable) materials they are collecting are worth. Everyone is looking (to open their own) facility to separate everything they collect. It is humongous investment. That is why a lot of businesses went down. We decided we need to focus on finding more customers (rather) than worrying about separating what we are picking up.

The service fee we charge the client is where we make our money. Our business model is to make money before we even consider what’s in those containers in those trucks. I needed to make it economy proof.

Early on, recycling centers paid him $35 a ton for his unseparated recyclables, with potentially seven tons in one truckload. Now, he said, they pay nothing.

We started a different division of our company: valet trash service. Found in upper-class apartments, where the folks wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of taking the trash to down to the compactor where it stinks and it’s hot. You put your trash five times a week outside of your door. There’s a couple (of my) guys who come pick it up and take it to the dumpster. Good business. We got into that business because a client asked us to. It has become almost as large focus to us as providing recycling service.

My day usually begins around 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning and ends at 10 (at night). I have to make sure everybody does what they are supposed to do. During the day I wear fancy shirt and pants; during the night I could be a delivery guy. It is hard to find people who take joy and pride in doing this service. (My employees) make over $50,000 each.

Despite the fact that people look at it as something below them, picking up trash, I know it is a fantastic service to the community. I really take joy in that.