Over the past couple of decades, junk removal has become an increasingly important consideration for businesses and government entities like schools. With the threats of climate change and resource drain looming, we’ve all been forced to put more thought into what happens to our things when we can’t use them anymore. In recent years, many people have been changing how they handle their junk removal – including the management of the Oakland Unified School District.
For the last few years, the district has kept a unique relationship with Junk King Contra Costa. During that time, we have been the exclusive supplier of junk removal services to all 80 schools operated by the Oakland Unified School District, as well as the district’s central warehouse. We handle regular warehouse clearances as well as hauling and recycling junk generated by the schools themselves, including electronic appliances like cafeteria refrigerators, school furniture like desks and chairs, and anything else they might need us to take care of. In this paper, we’ll talk a little bit about how that relationship formed, the lessons we’ve learned from working so closely with the Oakland school district, and how that can be applied to form similar working relationships with other local districts.
Background on Junk King and Our Relationship with the Oakland School District
Junk King was founded in 2005 as a private company with a focus on local franchising and green environmental policies. That emphasis on recycling has remained a central tenet of every Junk King location in the years since, including Junk King Contra Costa, and has become a major selling point for clients like the school district who want to make sure their trash is being disposed of in a responsible and environmentally-friendly manner. We’ll talk a little more about our recycling policies later on since they’re a significant facet of our work with the district.
The Junk King Contra Costa franchise was founded in 2016 by Krishna Vepa, a local resident with experience in the Silicon Valley tech industry. Krishna’s experience in tech and particular interest in renewables and recycling has led the Contra Costa franchise to great success in the area and continues to be a core part of our ethos as a business. Today, we’re proud to report that Junk King Contra Costa recycles about 70% of the junk we bring in from our clients, higher than Junk King’s national average of around 60%.
Our long-term relationship with the Oakland Unified School District grew out of a single warehouse clearance job we performed in 2018. That six-day project expanded into a regular contract to clean the warehouse and remove junk from the 80 schools in the district. Later, the scope was expanded again to include electronic appliances and other objects that are particularly difficult or complicated to recycle. Today, the district pays a purchase order (with a discount) and essentially keeps Junk King Contra Costa on a retainer. Whenever they need something cleared or removed, they give us a call and we send our team wherever it’s needed. This relationship is fairly unique within the junk removal industry but has proven to be extremely beneficial for both the district and our business. That’s why we’re hoping to expand it to other school districts in the area, using the knowledge we’ve learned from our experience in Oakland.
Personalized Service
One of the first things we learned was that school districts have very specific but important needs. A significant benefit of this relationship for the district is that they know they have a junk removal partner who understands their needs and is capable of following them to the letter. Having a stable and recurring contract with the school district means we can personalize our service to their needs, whatever they might be. In this way, a business relationship is fairly similar to a personal one – the longer the relationship has lasted, the deeper your understanding of your partner has become. After four years, we’re proud to have a thorough understanding of what the Oakland school district requires from a junk removal company.
The makeup and behavior of our junk removal team are important for any client, but doubly so when working with a school district. For this reason, we’re extra careful to make sure every employee we send to a school-owned property, whether it’s the warehouse or an actual school, is in full compliance with the regulations set by the district. Following the covid-19 policies of the school district, each employee is required to be fully vaccinated and masked for the entirety of the job. We also ensure that every member of the junk removal team is a fully legal US citizen, is covered by our insurance, and, most importantly, has passed an extensive background check before they step foot on school property. As a major client, it’s important to us that the district feels 100% comfortable with the team we send. Of course, these precautions would carry over to any other school districts we do business with in the future, as well as any extra ones each particular district might require. Just as our service is personalized entirely to the client, so is the team we send to do the work.
Another particular challenge of working with a school district has to do with time constraints. When the district calls us up with a job, there’s typically a very specific window of time when that job can be completed. They need to know that we can show up on time and get the work done without any delays, even on short notice. That can often be difficult to achieve with a junk removal company since scheduling is usually done in advance within our industry.
We decided that the best way to handle this challenge was to circumvent our call center entirely. While we’re very confident in the skills of our customer service representatives, the game of telephone involved with scheduling through them means that delays can sometimes be unavoidable. Even the most efficient junk removal call center in the world wouldn’t be able to put a team together and send them out in a matter of hours, especially when the job might require special services. However, by giving the district a direct line to management at all times, we’re able to respond quickly and effectively to any request they might have. This way, nothing is delayed and nothing slips through the cracks. It also allows us to form personal relationships with the people who manage the warehouse and handle cleaning in each school instead of working through the barrier of the call center. This is something that sets us apart from other junk removal companies in the area, and we’d extend the same privilege to any other school district we end up working with in the future.
Recycling
Junk King’s recycling policies are something else that distinguishes us from our competitors. Nationwide, the franchises average a recycling rate of about 60%, and that number continues to gradually rise as recycling technologies become more advanced. With a recycling rate of about 70%, however, Junk King Contra Costa manages to easily beat the national average for the company. Recycling is an important part of the culture here in the Bay Area, and it’s important to us that we do our part.
Recycling is also important to the Oakland Unified School District; in fact, one of the biggest reasons why they chose to hire Junk King Contra Costa in the first place was because of our proven track record of recycling as much as we possibly can. We’ve continued to honor that priority by recycling almost everything we bring in from both the schools and the warehouse, with only genuinely non recyclable objects ending up in the landfill. That rate will only continue to go up as more and more schools buy furniture made of recyclable materials.
Some things are easier to recycle than others. Printers, old computers, and other complicated electronics, for example, are difficult and sometimes expensive to break down and reuse, even though the materials inside are often extremely valuable. This is another area where Junk King Contra Costa offers an advantage to our clients. Because of our longstanding commitment to sustainability, we’ve developed relationships with a wide range of recycling companies all over the Bay Area. If something can be recycled, it’s practically guaranteed that we know exactly who to send it to when we’re done processing it. This allows us to recycle complicated objects that our competitors would just send to the landfill. Not only that, but we can also get it done at a much lower cost than you’d pay to bring in a dedicated recycling company. By charging less to recycle more, we allow the district to save money without having to compromise on its environmental ideals.
School computers also come with their own challenges, especially when it comes to security. Before we send any junked computers to a recycling center to be processed, we wipe every hard drive and make sure there’s no chance of recovering the deleted data. Nobody wants to worry about the security of their sensitive data, and it’s important to us that our clients always feel comfortable and at ease when we’ve finished a job. Having a close working relationship with the school district allows us to be responsive and flexible when it comes to special requests like these.
As the importance of sustainability becomes more and more apparent, a lot of junk removal companies have started advertising their recycling policies. At Junk King Contra Costa, we’ve been serious about renewal since the day we were founded, and we’re eager to use our experience and connections to improve the recycling rate of every school district we work with moving forward.
Convenience and Dependability
Besides the specific advantages offered by Junk King Contra Costa, there are always positives to working with a single company. There’s the convenience factor that comes with using one company to handle all your junk removal needs instead of having to coordinate multiple businesses. In fact, that’s how we ended up adding appliance removal to the list of services we provide to the Oakland school district. Since we were already taking care of warehouse clearance and hauling old school furniture, it just made sense for them to bring their electronics and appliance removal business to us as well. That way, they know they’re getting the same team and the same management no matter what the job is. Once you’ve found a company you can trust, putting every service under the same umbrella allows you to save time and effort when coordinating junk removal.
That also brings us to the question of dependability. Everyone who’s ever had to hire an outside contractor knows what a roll of the dice that can be. Each company you meet with will make promises, but you never know how dependable they’ll be until you actually give them a try. Our relationship with the Oakland school district started with a single warehouse clearance job, and we had to impress them with our competence and dependability in order to help that relationship grow and earn their trust. We’ve proven that we can handle any job they bring to us, and we’ll do it on time and without cutting corners. Ultimately, this is a win-win for both parties. We get a major client that provides a big chunk of our yearly revenue, and the district gets to rest easy knowing their junk removal work will be handled exactly the way they want.
Expanding Our Network
The idea of an exclusive annual contract between a junk removal company and the school district was a bit of an experiment on both ends. This is a new way of doing business for us and for the district, but so far it’s been successful beyond what we might have imagined. For that reason, we’re looking to expand our network and form similar relationships with other school districts in the area. We’re confident that the lessons we learned and the way of doing business we developed in Oakland will apply elsewhere in the Bay Area, and we’re eager for the opportunity to prove ourselves to more school districts.
At Junk King Contra Costa, we’re hoping that the dependable and personalized service that we’ve provided to the Oakland Unified School District will speak for itself. We’ve been successfully handling junk removal for all 80 schools as well as the central warehouse on High Street for several years now, we’re sure we can do the same for your district as well. If you have any interest, or you have more questions we can answer for you, please feel free to get in touch with us at any time.
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