Junk King started with a job application its founder never filled out
A promotion Mike Andreacchi didn’t get led to a red-truck hauling company born in a San Carlos garage, and to franchise owners who came from very different careers.
San Carlos, CA
Mike Andreacchi did not go looking for a career in junk. His girlfriend found it for him.
His girlfriend at the time, now his wife, came to him one day and told him he had an interview the next day. He did not remember filling out any applications, Andreacchi told Authority Magazine in 2022. She had filled out the application herself and landed him an interview with a junk removal company.
He got the job and found he loved the industry. He also saw room for improvement in the way waste was handled. When a management position opened, he wanted it. He did not get it. He was told he was too young and lacked experience, he recalled in the same Authority Magazine interview, where he listed “Age is just a number” among the lessons he wished someone had told him before he started. Losing out on that job pushed him to build a business of his own.
In 2005, Andreacchi and his childhood friend Brian Reardon started Junk King out of a two-car garage in San Carlos, California. The company began franchising in 2010, and by 2021 it had 114 locations in the United States and Canada. Since 2022 it has been owned by Neighborly, which added it to its portfolio of home services companies.
Much of what makes Junk King interesting happened after the garage. The company grew through franchise owners, and some came from places far from the hauling business. One grew up with Andreacchi and was among his first employees before he went off to work for a railroad. Another practiced law and served in the Coast Guard. Another spent a decade as a charter school principal.
The founding idea was plain. “The idea behind Junk King was simple, offer great customer service and recycle more than the other guys,” Andreacchi told Authority Magazine.
The early days were not tidy. “No one writes the manual on how to start your perfect business,” he told the magazine. He had to figure out whether he needed a business license, and in which cities. He started with few resources and soon learned how expensive a business is to run. One of his lessons from that period: “When you don’t have resources, get resourceful.”
At first, the company’s customer service line was a few people answering calls on their cell phones. Then, out on a job, Andreacchi’s partner hurt his foot and could no longer work in the field. They talked over how he could stay involved and settled on making him the call center, with the task of setting the company’s standard for customer service. “Not exactly the typical way a company creates a new department for itself,” Andreacchi told Authority Magazine.
He traces his drive to sports. “I have a competitive streak that comes from my football career,” he told the magazine. He also credited his wife, Karen, the one who filled out that first application, calling her “my biggest cheerleader.”
Two early choices shaped how the company looks on the road. The first was color. Junk King painted its trucks red so they would be more eye-catching than anything else in traffic. “I truly believe that you could not drive by a Junk King truck and not notice it,” Andreacchi told Authority Magazine.
The second was size. Company announcements from 2020 on described the trucks as 20 percent larger than the industry average. Andreacchi’s reasoning was practical. A bigger truck means fewer trips to haul off a customer’s junk, and fewer trips save on overhead and cut the company’s carbon footprint.
Recycling was part of the plan from the start. In 2021 the company said 60 percent of the junk it collected was recycled or repurposed rather than dropped at landfills. Andreacchi described the effort to Authority Magazine as taking the time to “upcycle as much as we possibly can.”
Inc. named Junk King one of its 10 most promising franchises for 2011, a year after the company began franchising. One of the people who knew Andreacchi first eventually came back as an owner.
Ryan Melconian grew up with Andreacchi and was one of Junk King’s first employees in 2005. He later moved to Texas to work as an engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad, and he stayed a Junk King customer. When he and his wife, Brooke, remodeled their house, they hired the Houston franchise and met its owner, Marcus Otrowski, who had opened the location in 2013. The two stayed in touch. When Otrowski retired, the Melconians took over the Houston business in 2020.
“Through the years, I continued to turn to Junk King for my hauling needs and knew that I wanted to remain a part of the brand,” Melconian said in a 2020 Junk King news release.
In 2021, Mike and Tammy Needham, both Northwest Arkansas natives, opened Junk King’s first Arkansas location, based in Bentonville. “Helping people get rid of their unwanted junk in a sustainable and eco-friendly way is the most important aspect of our job,” Mike Needham said in a 2021 Talk Business & Politics story.
In Greenville, South Carolina, Justin Harris and his business partner, Shannon Trawick, opened a franchise in 2022. Harris, a former lawyer and Coast Guard veteran, said he took his cues from his Eagle Scout days: “Leave places cleaner than you found them.” Both partners came from California and chose Greenville as the place to settle. Harris told the Greenville Journal in 2023 that customers with big projects, such as a packed garage or a full attic, had all told him they wished he had been there two years earlier, before things got to that point. The paper’s profile of the franchise put the share of Junk King’s hauls that were recycled or donated at 75 percent, with donations going to Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity and other local charities.
In Sarasota, Florida, Alisa Wright took over the local franchise in 2024 to serve Sarasota and Manatee counties. She came to it after 25 years in education, a decade of them as a charter school principal. “After researching Junk King and meeting local and national representatives of the brand, it was evident that we were cut from the same cloth,” Wright said in a 2024 Junk King news release.
The Greenville partners boiled the work down to a single line, which the Greenville Journal reported as their mantra: “Treat every job and every customer like you’re going over to your buddy’s house to help his mom.”