Ty Collins was working construction when a Hummer with the words “junk removal” on its side went down the street. He looked the business up, did a little research and watched maybe one video, he says. In 2020 he started hauling.
The first clients came from working for free. His wife, Erica, was in corporate oil and gas at the time. She has since quit that job and works alongside him, and he says she is the one who is really good at customer service. The company now runs three trucks and three dumpsters, plus a Hummer of its own, wrapped with the Clear Your Junk logo. “We did everything ourselves,” Collins says. “We bought everything ourselves.”
That history shapes how he thinks about growing. People have offered to buy the company, he says, and his mind goes straight to what a sale would do to the work. “I think when you get too big, the personal touch of the company tends to dissipate,” he says. He thinks about the reviews customers have left over the years. “I think of sitting back and seeing how that stuff would diminish.”
So Clear Your Junk stays a family operation. Erica works the jobs and the phones with him, and their son and daughter work for the business too. Other workers come and go. Collins says keeping employees is hard because he sets the standard high, and he can usually tell when someone walking up with their hands in their pockets, asking for work, is ready for it or not. “I don’t make excuses and I don’t take excuses,” he says.
A promised job gets done whether it pays well or not. “I don’t care if I just break even on a job,” he says. “If I put my word on it, I’m going to do it.”
The work runs from homes and commercial spaces to properties owned by out-of-state investors and real estate clients. A large share is the hard kind: evictions, hoarder cleanouts, squatter cleanouts. The crew keeps it light. One customer was delighted to find the truck carries a joke inviting passersby to honk if they are hoarding, along with a second line assuring people the crew has seen worse. The company website introduces Jocko, a French bulldog billed as its junk removal expert.
Most jobs are in and around Alvin, with Pearland, Friendswood, Manvel and Houston on the route. Collins also works with an organization in Houston that picks up illegally dumped trash.
The schedule runs seven days a week. Someday, he says, he will either sell the business or hand it down, and he has other ventures in mind. Until then, the rule is simple. “If I say I’m going to be somewhere, we’re going to be there, and I don’t care if we’re sleepy,” he says. “I don’t care if it’s Sunday.”