When Leon Massey tells a customer his crew will arrive between 10 and 11, the hour is there on purpose.
Often the reason is the customer. He and the customer talk through the job in detail beforehand. Then the crew shows up, and the customer asks whether they can add this, or add that. The extra might be small or it might be large. Either way, he says, “that messed up the timing that I set aside for them,” and the delay carries into every job after it on the schedule.
So he promises a window, and he is careful about what goes into it. “Don’t promise anything that I can’t keep,” Massey says. If an accident holds him up, he calls the customer, even when he will still arrive inside the hour. “It’s as simple as, do what you say you’re going to do.”
A Bellevue customer, in a testimonial on an earlier version of the company’s site, credited him with laying out timelines before the crew arrived and with being thorough about clearing the debris.
Massey runs MPI Junk Removal in Seattle with his wife, who is his business partner. The company lists a service area running from the city out through Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Renton, Kent, Issaquah and Sammamish, among others. He puts the work at about 70 percent commercial, which he says is not how most junk removal companies are structured. His commercial accounts are property management and construction companies.
He came to hauling from real estate development, a business where he got paid every six to 12 months. “I need to find something that I can get paid daily,” he remembers telling himself. He already had the tools a junk hauler needs, so he started the current business and learned service work from podcasts, mentors and whatever else would teach him.
Hoarder house cleanouts were a big part of the work. He wanted customers who would call again, and that pushed him toward commercial accounts. A commercial job can keep a crew on site for two or three days, a different kind of work from a daily residential pickup.
“What’s important to me has always been, can I depend on someone? So let’s make sure I’m dependable,” Massey says.
It shows in how he handles a quote he got wrong. When he has misjudged a job, he says, he does not go back to the customer to adjust the price. He takes the loss and takes care of the customer. What he wants customers to think is simple: “No matter what, I know Leon’s going to take care of me, and he’s always going to be fair.” That has hurt him on some jobs, he says, and he has held to it anyway.
Technically, the staff is Massey and one full-time employee, with temp agencies supplying help on jobs. He still works jobs alongside his guys. He does not think he is yet at the point where he can hand someone the keys to the truck and go handle other business. “You’re only as strong as your team,” he says.
Distance he leaves to the job. He would rather stay within 10 to 15 miles, and a typical trip runs about 25. “I’ve gone 200 miles because the job was big enough,” he says.