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Archive for February, 2012
Eco Blog: dedication to Green Hauling
February 16th, 2012
When looking to hire a junk hauling company, why does it matter how they will take care of my trash and junk? Well, allow us to explain!
Like with any other company you chose to do work at your home or business, there are several important factors to consider when hiring a junk removal company. You want to select a company that is licensed, pays taxes, offers workers benefits, and gives back to the community. The junk removal business is one of the easiest businesses to get a start in, all you need is a few hundred dollars to purchase a used pickup truck and $20 for a can of paint to put your name and contact information on the side of the truck. For this reason, there are many different kinds of irresponsible individuals who get in this very rigorous business, and you want to make sure you are able to recognize the true professionals.
Illegal, non-licensed drive by and “Home Depot” type haulers are very likely to dump your trash on the street! That’s why they can work at such a cheap rate. Also, these people have no traceable address and it’s extremely difficult to hold them responsible for illegal dumping, which is a serious problem in our cities. It costs taxpayers millions of dollars to deal with the ongoing problem. Often times the police will sift the illegally dumped trash for an address and come back to present the proprietor with a large bill for the cleanup. These illegal haulers will not refuse to haul hazardous paints and chemicals, which may be dumped on the street or in a landfill; such a problem is commons in area like Richmond, CA which is close to the Bay of San Francisco. The paints and chemicals find their way into the Bay waters, becoming a dangerous threat to marine life and the entire Bay Area environment.
Demand to see companies’ license and insurance; also ask for references whenever possible. Pick a company with prominent advertising and a traceable address. Also it is always preferable to pick a locally owned and operated company. For example, it would be much easier for the inhabitants of Richmond or the San Francisco Bay Area to check the credentials and deal with a San Francisco junk removal company.
It's usually easy to tell the good ones by the look of the trucks too!
Also, there are many new junk franchise type operations that pay $30,000-$50,000 for a new franchise and have to get this initial franchise costs paid for ASAP. Locally owned & operated companies can always give you a better price.
Ask for an up front quote for the work. Don’t do business with a company that adds on weight or labor charges after the job is completed. Lastly, don’t do business with a company who places illegal ad signs on chain link fences and telephone poles. These are usually franchise operations that do not care about the blight they cause in our neighborhoods. The removal costs of these illegal signs are put on us, the taxpayers.
Posted in About Fast Haul, Recycling |
6 Comments
February 3rd, 2012
Like all “older” business owners, especially in the tech-savvy San Francisco Bay Area, I had to adapt to the ever growing influence of the Internet.
I’ve been running Fast Haul, my trash removal and junk hauling business for 20 years and in the past, all you had to do was making sure you were in the Yellow pages and maybe a couple of other local business publications, then drop a few print ads (or flyers as they are called these days) in mailboxes and on windshields. You were pretty much fine with only that.
Since then, things have radically changed, and especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area as I mentioned; I am now getting over 90% of my business through my website and online ads. I am definitely not a computer person, but if I wanted my business to survive, I had to adapt: get a website and a solid online advertising strategy. It has been a learning curve, and I thought the latest issue I had would serve as a cautionary tale for other small business owners trying to make an honest living out of their website.
After several bad experiences (which will probably be the topic of a future Eco blog post), I hired dots Web Marketing in 2009 for a complete re-design of my site and implementation of an online marketing campaign. Because the re-design process was done step by step, with a lot of back and forth and several iterations of the design I know for a fact that it is a 100% original design.
Here is what it looks like:
I really like this design and at the time I’m writing this entry, we are still using it; so it’s not a surprise that others like it too. What came as a surprise though is when a few months ago a friend forwarded me the url of another junk hauling website, which at the time looked like this:
Even though these guys are in completely different part of the country and not at all competitors of mine, I still felt robbed and was immediately very upset and very angry. I started researching right away what legal action I could take. While investigating though, I found out that the best course of action before involving lawyers is to simply get in touch with the site’s owner and basically send them a Cease and desist notification. If they ignore this, then that’s when you should get an attorney; there are actually several laws protecting you from this and the offender might end up giving you a lot of money for using your intellectual property.
In this case though, the email notification was enough and helped clear the situation: the owner of the other company didn’t even know that’s what happened. It was now his turn to be upset at the so-called web designer who charged him a lot of money to create an original website design but basically stole someone else’s work instead!
He temporarily reverted back to his old website and has had a brand new one designed since then.
This experience probably taught him a lesson I’ve learned a while ago and he will hopefully be more cautious of who he’s hiring in the future for his online needs. My past misfortune in this field also makes for a good story, but as I said above, it will be the topic of another post!
Posted in About Fast Haul, Fast Haul Website |
2 Comments
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