“We do our best to not say no,” Russ says. When a customer asks whether a dumpster can go out today, he says, “if there’s any way we can possibly do it, we react with short notice.”
Russ says that holds after hours. “If we’re able to do it, we do it, even if it means working past closing time or on weekends on short notice,” he says.
He runs Rocket Rolloffs in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his son, Tucker. The company drops off roll-off containers, picks them up when they’re full and takes the loads to the dump, managing the runs so they work with the landfill. It is veteran-owned, and beyond the two owners there is a team of drivers. Russ calls it “just a father and son with a driver or two.”
The father and son came to the business from the renting side. Russ says they got started “just because we needed to supply ourselves with roll off dumpsters.” On its About page, the company says they built Rocket Rolloffs to answer quickly and to text customers as a rental moves from delivery to pickup.
The work runs about half residential and half commercial, Russ says, and the company is not picky about which. “We like to provide the service,” he says.
He puts the owners’ own labor at the center of it. “We do the work ourselves,” he says. “We show up every day and work from sun up till sundown to make sure it’s taken care of.”
Russ says the plan is to grow. “We like this business,” he says. “We’re going to grow it as much as we can.”
When a customer ends up unhappy, he says, that is not how the job ends. “I follow up with any customer that’s not completely satisfied,” he says, “and if I can at all satisfy them, I will.” He traces the habit partly to how he grew up and partly to many years in retail, where the rule was that the customer is always right. But he gives a plainer reason. “We need you to be our customer,” he says, “and I’m not going to lose you over some little thing.”