Logan Sullivan.

Logan Sullivan was 17 when he started Junk Punks in June 2022 as a summer side hustle in Wisconsin. His partner Ryder Radke joined later, at 20, and in September 2022 the two moved to Florida, formally launching the Tampa Bay operation in October 2022. They started it with a Chevy Tahoe that had more than 200,000 miles and a trailer that cost roughly $2,500.

The hardest stretch was moving from a founder-run operation to one that could perform without Logan or Ryder in every decision. In the early stages they did everything themselves: answered calls, quoted jobs, loaded trailers, handled disposal, followed up with customers. It does not work when you are trying to add crews, enter new cities, and hold quality steady across all of it. 'The knowledge in our heads became a bottleneck,' Logan has said. Pricing varied. Scheduling was inconsistent. Service quality depended too much on who happened to be handling the situation. The fix was not glamorous. It was documentation, pricing guardrails, training checkpoints, scorecards and clearly assigned ownership — all built while the business was still running at full pace.

The move that changed the trajectory of Junk Punks was building a centralized call center in 2024. Logan and Ryder recognized that the customer experience started long before a truck arrived — that missed calls, slow responses and inconsistent estimates were losing customers before the crew ever showed up. Centralizing call handling gave every market the same booking and pricing framework, removed a variable that had been causing inconsistency, and freed local operators to lead their teams rather than manage inbound calls. That operational foundation was what eventually made franchising viable. 'Franchising magnifies whatever already exists, including weak systems,' Logan says. They waited until the systems were genuinely repeatable, then began offering franchises in February 2026. Today Junk Punks operates seven markets: company-owned markets in Tampa Bay, Palm Beach County (operated through Junk Punks Florida East LLC) and Milwaukee, and franchise markets in Sarasota County, Orlando, Madison and Port St. Lucie. Four more — Naples/Fort Myers, Raleigh, Baton Rouge and Kansas City — are in the pipeline.

The lesson Logan returns to most often is about founder centrality — and why removing yourself from the center of the business is harder than it sounds. 'The more difficult lesson came later: the founder cannot remain the center of every decision.' Early on, being the person who handles everything feels like dedication. Over time it becomes a ceiling. The only way to grow past it is to document what you know, make responsibilities explicit, make performance visible, and then actually let go. The other lesson is simpler and harder to argue with: start with what you have. A high-mileage truck and an inexpensive trailer were enough to prove that customers wanted the service. They did not need perfect equipment, a large team, or an impressive office to begin.