“I actually have their personal cell phone number, and I can call them,” says the owner of OnPoint Removal Services.
He means his contacts at two local nonprofits where he drops off what his crews haul. When a job turns up something still worth using, he picks up the phone and asks, “You guys interested in this?” If the answer is yes, he can bring it by “after hours,” he says, or “when no one else can.” The load doesn’t have to wait on anyone’s business hours.
It is a short list of phone numbers, but it decides where a lot of a household’s things end up. The deciding starts at the curb.
Many of OnPoint’s customers want to go through their belongings while the crew is there, so the crew stops and goes through them too. “Do you want to dump this? Do you want to keep this?” is how the owner describes the questions they ask. When he hires, he tells new people “to be patient with the customer,” and the pace follows from that. “We’re not really rushing,” he says.
What comes off the truck still useful goes to the company’s shop. He says it isn’t full, but he tries to hold on to anything that can go to Habitat for Humanity or a Humane Society shop. He may sell a few things, he says, though he rarely does. Most of what he sets aside is meant to be given away.
The giving sometimes runs the other direction, to the people with the junk. About once a month he tries to take a job for free for someone who needs help. He partners with a couple of local nonprofits, including a newer one that helps cancer patients, to find those households. He describes them as low-income, or battling a sickness, or “just someone in need.”
None of this was the plan when he moved up from Texas in 2021. He wanted to work for himself. He found a dump truck, went on YouTube to see what a person could do with one and kept running into junk removal.
He runs the company with his wife, and the two of them are its only owners. He puts the work at roughly three-quarters residential, with commercial jobs starting to pick up. The company serves Vancouver and nearby Salmon Creek, Camas and Washougal.
The trucks are big for a local outfit. The smallest is a 17-yard dump truck, followed by an 18-yard truck and a 40-yard box truck.
The direct line he keeps with the nonprofits extends to customers. He books jobs through an app that gives each customer a two-hour window, then sends a text when the crew is on the way, another when the work is in progress and a third when it’s done. If a customer calls, a person answers. “They talk to me or they talk to my wife,” he says.
He traces that to how he was raised: saying “yes sir, no sir” and looking people in the eye when he talks to them. “Your word is your bond,” he says.
Until the next run, the shop keeps holding what the trucks bring back, and the runs don’t let it pile up for long. “I’m there at least twice a week each place,” he says.