After Ryan Frere’s father died in the spring, his mother moved from her Middlebury home to a senior community near him and his wife, Katrina, in Charlotte. Amid their grief, funeral plans and the usual commotion of their lives, the family didn’t want to deal with cleaning out the remaining rubbish and spare household items in his mom’s former place.
On their local Front Porch Forum, Ryan and Katrina read several enthusiastic recommendations for Junkit, a trash-removal business owned by a Charlotte 20-year-old who had graduated from Champlain Valley Union High School a year before their son. They called, and Miles Jordan showed up with a two-friend crew in matching T-shirts and his hefty Junkit dump truck.
“It’s just been everything all at once, so we needed the help,” Katrina said, her voice echoing in her in-laws’ empty living room as the Junkit team carried out bags and discards. “I wanted to support a local kid. I hate to say he’s a kid … A young person who’s trying to create something and support the community.”
Jordan founded Junkit at age 16 and has collected a steady clientele of local residents who want to get rid of accumulated junk and support a budding Vermont entrepreneur in the process. Plenty of other companies, locally owned or not, will haul away people’s surplus stuff, but Jordan has carved out his niche with an upbeat attitude and a commitment to reuse and recycle as much as possible.
Junk removal is a lucrative business, he said, “because, at the end of the day, it’s junk. It’s disgusting. No one wants to deal with it, and there’s a whole lot of work on the back end involved” in disposing of it properly.
At each job, the Junkit team sorts items into piles: Trash goes directly to the nearest dump; metal, cardboard and other designated materials get recycled; and reusable items in fair condition are donated, usually to a Green Mountain Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Junkit can get a tax deduction for the charitable contributions.
Jordan recently struck a deal with Gillian Klein, owner of ReMaker Furniture in Shelburne: He offers her pieces in need of repair that he would otherwise donate so that she can refurbish and resell them. In June, she picked up a table with a broken leg, a cabinet and a couple of shelves.
Jordan is six foot three and lanky, with a wide smile and unwavering energy. He handles every customer call and job himself, often alone but sometimes with a couple of workers. “That way people have a service that they can fully trust, fully rely on,” he said. “I know that when I’m there, our employees are doing exactly what they need to be doing and are being respectful.”
The Freres were sold on Junkit’s efforts to keep as much as possible out of the landfill. “We’re just environmentally conscious; we’re socially conscious,” Ryan said. “We wanted to make sure that everything was going somewhere useful, if it could.”
In his mother’s kitchen, one item in particular found its way to a useful end. As Jordan and his crew emptied the contents of the refrigerator into a heavy-duty black trash bag, they stopped before dumping a nearly full jug of maple syrup.
“Who wants it?” Jordan asked.
“I’m pretty hungry,” answered Wolfie Weimersheimer, 18. He turned to a reporter and added, “Miles is a great boss, though. He’s buying me breakfast.”
After taking a truckload to a nearby dump, the team returned for recyclable and donation items. Stacks of artwork, china plates, a microwave oven, lamps and a few shelving units would go into a storage space at Jordan’s home garage until he had time to visit a resale store. Weimersheimer and Junkit coworker Oliver Nelson, 20, swept the garage and driveway and sucked up some spilled sugar with a Shop-Vac.
Junkit charges a minimum of $125 to come to a customer, even if it’s just to take away a few items. “That’s our margin that we need to cover our fuel, truck and transportation, and time to either sort things out or dispose of things,” Jordan said.
Removal prices are based on volume. A full truck of standard items costs $1,300. For smaller loads, Jordan prorates the fee based on fractions of the truck space. Additional fees apply for excessively heavy items, such as bricks or bulky furniture, or hard-to-move jobs with tight access or steep stairs. Hazardous waste, paint, mattresses and electronics incur extra disposal charges.
Jordan developed an app using an AI tool to calculate each total. “It took me months to create an app for absolutely everything I need, catered to how we run and with all the correct pricing,” he said. “I can display estimates. I can convert invoices. I have all my jobs listed, all of our customers.”
When he was in high school, Jordan watched a video of someone hauling away junk and figured he could make some money at it. He solicited a friend who had a small utility trailer on his car, and they started doing removal jobs. They posted on Front Porch Forum and quickly got a dozen inquiries.
The two later went separate ways, and Jordan bought his own utility trailer, then upgraded to a Ford F-150 pickup with a dump trailer that his father helped him buy for his 18th birthday. He earned enough money to invest in a used Isuzu dump truck with a high-capacity diesel chassis for $20,000 and spent another $30,000 tricking it out with a custom dumping bed, power tarp, ladders, and a half cover to carry wheelbarrows, buckets and other equipment.
Last year, Junkit brought in about $130,000 in revenue, Jordan said. After expenses including fuel, licensing fees, supplies and equipment, workers’ compensation, liability insurance, and commercial auto coverage, he made a small profit.
You wouldn’t imagine junk would be that fun, but I love it.
Miles Jordan
“You wouldn’t imagine junk would be that fun, but I love it,” he said.
Jordan didn’t love school and absorbed little in a classroom, he admitted. He enrolled last fall at Montana State University but only took classes for about a month during the seasonal break in his business. He stayed to live and snowboard with friends, then resumed his preferred hands-on education with Junkit.
With the business, there has been a learning curve. At the beginning, for example, Jordan didn’t know disposal protocols or recycling rules — until he toured Chittenden Solid Waste District facilities and did some research.
He also initially gave prejob estimates based on photos that people submitted, which involved a lot of back-and-forth. This not only inconvenienced potential customers but also often resulted in him miscalculating — usually charging too little for jobs that were more involved than expected. Now, Jordan determines the rate once he’s on-site and sees what’s needed.
Pete Macia and Jolene Kao own the Old Brick Store in Charlotte and have been renovating a farmhouse they bought in 2022. They called Junkit to remove some heavy cabinets and a kitchen range. Jordan knew the load would take up more than half the truck and required an additional weight charge, amounting to a little over $1,000 for the whole job.
Their contractors would have charged even more to haul away the debris, Macia said. “We were looking around and thinking about how we could do it ourselves, and it’s just a lot of work for us,” he said. “We really liked that Miles doesn’t just throw stuff away. He goes through everything and tries to preserve or donate as much as he can, which is very much aligned with our values.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Trash Can-Do: A 20-year-old Charlotte entrepreneur lends a helping hand with debris-removal company Junkit”
This article appears in Nest • Summer 2026.
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