Apollo Disposal
A two-dumpster driveway rental business booked through a one-page site and a phone number.
Nicholas Murphy · Houston, Texas, USA · Sales Manager
The story
Nick didn't set out to start a dumpster company. His brother needed one for a small house project and couldn't get anyone on the phone. When he finally reached a provider a stranger showed up with the bin. The company he booked was a broker, marking up the rental 40% over what a local operator would have charged.
The fix seemed obvious. Answer the phone.
His brother had the truck and the willingness to do the physical work. Nick handled the business side. Setup, rentals, dispatch, customer calls, and eventually marketing. The catch was that Nick lived in California. Their service region was greater Houston where his brother ran a mechanics shop. The whole thing was built to run with one person on each end, 1,500 miles apart.
They put together $25,000, bought a used truck, a dump trailer, and one bin, and had around $3,000 left for operating costs. A $29 a month rental software handled bookings. They spun up a website and went live.
It started out slow. The first customers came from Facebook Marketplace. They eventually moved to Google Ads and SEO and Nick started writing weekly blog posts targeting local search terms. By month six they were the top result for dumpster rental in League City.
He got pretty good at SEO. Most local operators had no digital presence at all so showing up consistently was most of the battle.
By year three they had four dumpsters running. But his brother's mechanics shop had grown and was the more profitable business. Something had to give.
They listed it as a business first. It sat for months. At the end of 2023 they reframed it as an asset sale, equipment, truck, software, customer list and route, and found a buyer quickly. They walked away with $75,000.
The honest part
The catch
The work is physical and weather-dependent. A single bin means you turn away jobs whenever it's already out, and hauling to the transfer station eats an hour each load.
What failed first
Competition was tough. We were competing against operators who did not operate as a business and didn't carry insurance or licensing. This allowed them to under cut the industry price by lowering their expenses.
Would do differently
Buy the second bin sooner. Demand was there months before I trusted it, and every weekend we were sold out was money left on the table.
The full breakdown