Robert Sipp Built JUNKCO+ to Recycle, Donate, and Give Back

Jason: What if the things we're ready to throw away could still matter to somebody else? Today we're sitting down with a man who spent 40 years learning exactly that, and who just started over to build something new with his son. Welcome to You Matter Nashville, where we celebrate the people and stories that make our community so special. We believe that everyone has a story to tell, and more importantly, everyone here matters.

Mindy: We're your hosts, Jason and Mindy Hoover, and we're passionate about shining a light on individuals who are making a real impact right here in Middle Tennessee. This is about community, connection, and the incredible people who are making a difference.

Jason: Let's dive in as we uncover powerful stories and meet remarkable people whose journeys will inspire us all, right here on You Matter Nashville.

Jason: Hey friends, welcome to You Matter Nashville. I'm Jason Hoover, here with my beautiful, amazing wife Mindy, and we're so glad you're spending time with us today. Today we're joined by Robert Sipp. He's the owner of JUNKCO+ of Nashville. Robert, welcome to the show.

Robert: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jason: It says here, Robert, that you spent more than 40 years in the junk and recycling industry, and that for most of your career you were a lean process improvement manager. That sounds impressive. It basically means he'd go into facilities that were struggling and figure out how to make them safer, better run, and more successful. And then in 2025 he decided it was time to go into business for himself and his family. So he opened JUNKCO+ right here in the Nashville area. He runs it with his son Colton, who came over from managing at a guitar manufacturer. And when they're not working, the two of them serve together in their church and get to a ball game when they can. Robert, you've got quite a story, and we're looking forward to diving deeper into it.

Robert: Yes, sir. Glad to share it with you.

Mindy: Well, Robert, before we get into JUNKCO+, tell us a little about you. I know Jason just shared that you've done about forty-plus years in this industry. Tell us what got you into it, why you stayed in it so long, and why you're passionate enough to open your own business here in Middle Tennessee.

Robert: Well, believe it or not, I started in the junk business when I was about six years old. My grandfather was a mechanic. He retired in '55 from being a mechanic, and he had contracts with manufacturers like Chevy and Toyota. He'd go around and pick up their scrap metal and recycle it. He'd give the business owner a percentage of that, and he'd take a percentage. Then he brought me in to help him with it. I was born to a single mother, so I stayed with grandpa and grandma a lot. He was kind of a father figure, and he was an entrepreneurial type of guy, so he put me to work at a very young age separating metal. You take an air conditioner, for example. It has copper tubing on it, it has aluminum on it, it has different metals, and each one has a different price. I'd be the one who got to separate those out for him at a very young age. I got a passion for it early on, and it just followed me throughout my career.

Robert: I was mainly in manufacturing and process improvement, but one of the big cost savings I found through my manufacturing career was the recycling piece. I'd put in balers for cardboard and plastic and other things we were paying to get rid of. We'd take it out of the landfill, bale it, and actually sell the material to recyclers. It was one of the biggest cost savings I'd have in the industries as I went around. I did that side of things all my career, always looking for a better way to do it, a way to be efficient and environmentally conscious, to keep that stuff out of the landfill and repurpose and reuse it.

Mindy: I love that. Of course, I'm a huge thrifter. I even have a dress nonprofit where I take donations and give them away. I just think anything you can do to reuse is so important, for our landfills and everything. People don't realize how much junk we throw away. Every house. And even those of us who are recyclers, the amount of trash we throw away is crazy.

Jason: Seems like I'm going to the dump every other week. Well, not the dump, the recycle facility.

Robert: I should know those numbers. I have the actual numbers for how much each person uses per pound, but I don't have them off the top of my head.

Jason: I bet it would blow our minds.

Mindy: Well, you went from that to wanting to have your own business. I'd love to hear how you and Colton decided to join forces.

Robert: I'd always wanted to do something on my own, but I'd had pretty good luck in corporate America with my career, so it was hard to justify doing both, because I stayed pretty busy with my corporate job. When COVID hit, I got downsized a little bit and I started consulting, and I started doing really well with it. My son went straight out of high school and did the Tennessee Promise. He went to a Lutheran school and did machine tool technology on top of that, since they were paying for it, so he was going to two schools at once and got both degrees. I started my career building tires; he started building guitars. He's a guitar guy, plays guitars, really passionate about them. He started with a boutique guitar builder. After about eight years, the company did well and kept growing, it's still growing, but he became more of a machine operator than a craftsman building guitars. So he was looking to make a change.

Robert: I'd always wanted to do something like this, and the junk business was always something that had been in my life at some level. So we decided to do this. We have the opportunity not just to help people with their situation, but to find avenues to recycle and upcycle. We've got partnerships with our church and other churches. A lot of the stuff we bring in, we try to get it to help someone else, not just take it to the landfill and throw it away. We recycle about 40 percent of what we bring in.

Jason: Wow, that's amazing.

Robert: We try to track that too. We have KPIs where we're trying to hit those numbers and improve them each year.

Jason: It's a brand-new business, a brand-new venture for you and your son. I like that when we talked before, a big part of your focus for getting the message out and marketing is getting involved with the community and finding ways to help out. When you think of junk removal, that doesn't necessarily go hand in hand. So to know there's a company like yours that, when there are instances that could use some services on a gift or volunteer basis, that's fantastic to have in your arsenal. But I want to ask, because it's such a brand-new business, and you mentioned the KPIs, you really haven't gotten to good enough data yet, if I'm understanding right, to really know what all that is. But you kind of know if you're tracking or not, correct?

Robert: Yeah, we're just checking the bulk of the loads right now. We know what we take to the landfill and what we don't. We don't have it broken down by, you know, we've donated so many clothes or recycled so much metal or so many beds or couches. We have a group of folks, and we don't tell everybody, because we can't service everybody, but we do help.

Jason: We won't tell a soul.

Robert: We do ask, what's your need? Because if you need it, we'll probably come across it at some point, and instead of putting it in the landfill, we'd like to let somebody have it. People say, hey, I need a bed, or a couch, or this or that, and usually within a week we come across that stuff and have it to give.

Mindy: That's what it takes, a lot of different nonprofits all working together and seeing what you come across, because like you said, you don't know what you're going to come across that week or who you're going to be helping. We've had Foster Love Closet on here. They're always looking for bunk beds, toys, different things for people who are getting kids in the middle of the night. And of course Graceworks, who takes a lot of stuff, and a lot of places like them that serve the community. So it's great that you can recycle a lot of that.

Robert: It's exciting to hear about all those groups, and I'm excited to learn more about them, because the more we can partner, the more synergies we get from working together, and the more people we can serve.

Mindy: Absolutely. I'm happy to send some along, people we've had on the show and people we've worked with over the years. The more places you have, the better, because some places can't take a couch this week, and you're like, well, I need to get rid of this today. So having more people or programs on your list, the better.

Robert: Like you said, sometimes it's hard to donate, hard to give somebody something. We need to create an environment where it's easy to give.

Mindy: I completely agree, or people will just say, I'll take it to the dump if you can't take it today. People work on convenience, unfortunately.

Jason: What does it look like if somebody calls you up and hires you to come remove, say, because we're real estate agents, it's usually sellers who are moving out and there's stuff they don't want. They can call you, or we could call you on their behalf, and you come over. Take us from that point. What does that look like for the consumer?

Robert: We usually just assess the size of the load. We basically have a 15-yard dumpster on the back of our truck. We charge by how much of the truck it takes up, so we have price points inside the truck, from a minimum charge up to a full truckload, and sometimes it's two or three trucks. But we don't charge any more than that. Labor, labor taxes, everything's included in that price. There are no surprises. We give you a quote, and if we quote it wrong, we don't ask for more money. If we messed up, we eat that. We don't do business like that. But we do charge, because we have gas and labor and maintenance fees and dump fees. We have costs as well, so we've got to stick to that.

Mindy: Well, that's honorable.

Robert: We do the outreach stuff when we can for folks. Usually we try to do it at least once a month, the first Saturday of the month. We've done more than one a month. It's not a hard and fast rule. If we see an opportunity or a need and we have the capacity, we're going to meet it.

Jason: At least once a month is the goal.

Robert: The goal is at least once a month, minimum. We'll donate a full truckload of stuff to take away, or four hours of labor, usually is how we do it.

Jason: Can you share an example of that, where you helped somebody out on one of those weekends?

Robert: Most recently we partnered with Mix 92.9 and delivered 4,000 bottles of water to the rescue mission. We also went to a job for a disabled vet, an amputee. He called us for a service and said, I just can't afford it. We said, we've got a job to get to now, but we'll come back Saturday and just take it away for you. So we've done things like that. We did a Juneteenth celebration at Sunset Park. Sunset Park, if you're not familiar with it, was one of the first parks in Middle Tennessee with a baseball diamond for African Americans. During segregation it was a park that African Americans could go to. They have a festival there every year, and we partnered with them and were basically the trash service for it. We parked our truck and let them put all their trash in there, and we picked up whatever was left and hauled it off at the end. We're open to whatever. We're just trying to serve our community and the people in it, mainly those who need it the most, but need alone doesn't disqualify you. We'll help whoever we can.

Jason: Nice. I've heard of that before, and I love baseball. I'm right there waiting for the Nashville Stars. Come on, Nashville Stars. At least that's the working name of the major league team.

Robert: The Sounds are pretty good too, but yeah, I'd be happy to see major league baseball.

Jason: I love the Sounds. My dad and I used to have season tickets. My only problem, as much as I love baseball, is it's hard to root for a minor league team, because once they get good enough, they're gone.

Mindy: They're gone. You start rooting for someone, and then they're gone.

Jason: That's why we need the Stars. So when you pick somebody's stuff up, maybe a bed or whatever, if you see something that could be donated, that's what you do, you take it from there and donate it?

Robert: We try to separate it out as we're loading it. It's not a perfect process, because when you've got something nice mixed with trash, sometimes it doesn't work out great. But for the most part you can clean it up or fix it or set it to the side, and if the truck's full enough, we'll have one of the smaller trucks come out and pick it up.

Mindy: Get the nice stuff. I was going to ask, when somebody hires you to come out and do a pickup, do you ask them to have everything separated, or do you guys just fish through it when you get there?

Robert: We take it as is. A lot of people separate it and think they have to, but they don't. We try to communicate that as best we can. Just call us up and we'll come get it wherever it's at. Surprisingly, I didn't realize until I started this how many people store stuff in their crawl space. I knew attics were a thing, but not crawl spaces. We've been in a lot of crawl spaces.

Mindy: We've seen stuff in crawl spaces. As realtors, we've had to write into contracts that everything in the crawl space must be removed, because people just threw trash under there. Not even storage.

Robert: Yeah, that's the thing, a lot of it isn't stored. Half of it wasn't stored.

Mindy: Right, they're like, I'm just going to throw this broken bike under the house and let the next person deal with it. I don't know what they're thinking, or maybe they don't have a truck to get to the dump.

Jason: The only thing under ours is firework launcher tubes. We live outside the city limits.

Mindy: It's important. Franklin's trying to make us be a part of, no. We're the Fourth of July house. You can't do that.

Jason: You had mentioned before we move on that you've done work with Both Hands, an organization we've worked with in the past with friends who were adopting. I love this organization, and we need to get them on here.

Mindy: We do, because they're really great as well.

Jason: So anybody listening, or anybody who knows them, we need to get them on here. Send them our way. Can you share a little about Both Hands and how y'all helped them?

Robert: Yeah, it was a couple from our church who are trying to adopt and just needed some help. I don't know if listeners know about it, but the way it works is, if you're trying to adopt and you need money, you donate time to a widow or someone who needs help with projects around their home. Businesses donate time and money to that, and a lot of that money goes to the family for the adoption, so they can afford it. We partnered with them and came out to help. There was an old fence that needed to be torn down, and some of the house needed to be cleaned out, and we were there to help load that up and get rid of all the trash involved. That was actually one of our very first service opportunities.

Mindy: That's really something. It's kind of a double, triple win for everyone involved. You're helping a child be adopted into a family, and you're helping a widow who doesn't have the funds or the strength to fix up their home. They'll do everything from painting to tearing down things that are broken and hauling it away. So that's really incredible that you've helped in that way. I really respect their organization. It's a really cool collaborative, and not enough people know about it.

Robert: That was my first knowledge of it, and since then I've donated financially to it as well. I was pretty impressed with it.

Jason: It's a very expensive process to go through.

Robert: That's another conversation for another day, but it shouldn't be that way.

Jason: Absolutely. We could go way down that trail. Now, your son works with you. What's that dynamic like?

Robert: He's the general manager and runs the day-to-day stuff. I help with marketing and sales, I help with the books and the back-office stuff, and I share the phone duties right now. We're growing, and we're not trying to be heavy on staff right now. We're pretty lean, from my background in lean manufacturing.

Jason: That goes back to your previous work.

Mindy: It's just paying attention, keeping everything lean and making money. That's how entrepreneurs work.

Robert: Yeah, if we don't do it that way, we may not be around to do it.

Mindy: That's right. I did want to mention that you and Colton, like me and Cohen, work or volunteer at your church. I'd love to hear a little about how you guys volunteer your time.

Jason: And what that means to you and your business.

Robert: We volunteer with the handyman ministry. It used to be monthly, but they moved it to quarterly, so it's quarterly now. It's different projects with widows and things like that. It's similar to Both Hands, but it's the church's outreach to community members or church members, and it doesn't have to be a church member, it could be a friend or family or somebody they know who needs help. But it runs through our church. The thing we do every Sunday is the welcoming. Both he and I agreed to it. We welcome people into the church every Sunday at eleven o'clock.

Mindy: I love that.

Robert: We've been doing that for about ten years, actually. It's hard to believe it's been that long.

Mindy: That's really cool, and needed.

Jason: That's the first time I've heard of that.

Mindy: I like it. I had it drilled in my head to respect your elders, period. I grew up in that environment, and I'm sure you did too, being raised by grandparents. To take care of the widow and the fatherless has always been a huge thing on my heart, and I know it's on Jason's too. I love that there's a local ministry. I'm all about foreign missions and going other places to help people, but I love the simplicity of just going and helping the person down the street, the widow in your church, and making sure they're taken care of. That gets lost in the shuffle sometimes, a lot of times.

Robert: Single mothers are part of that too. Coming from a single mother, I understand the struggle, so I have a heart for that as well. I think a lot of our problems in society could be pointed back to the absence of fathers. So if I can be an influence in that capacity, I'd be happy that God used me that way.

Mindy: I agree. Be the guy who shows up. That's powerful.

Jason: How long have you lived in this area?

Robert: I've been here since 2003.

Jason: Okay, so fairly seasoned. Words are hard sometimes, right?

Mindy: This day and age, if you've been in Nashville over ten years, you're kind of a native, right?

Robert: It's the same, it bothered me after ten years.

Jason: So you started this business, but you've been here a while. Has it given you a different insight into the community, or does it hold true to what you already knew?

Robert: I think it holds true to what I always knew about the community. There are great people everywhere you go, good, solid, friendly people. I don't spend a lot of time watching the news or on my TV or phone, because I choose to experience the world I experience, not the world they're telling us is out there. All the crazy things going on in the world can create a lot of fear and anxiety, but if you just go and talk to folks, you realize these are just people like me. We're all trying to do the same thing, raise our kids, make it in the world, and get along. I always thought about the southern hospitality and how Nashville is such a good place, and I've truly experienced that everywhere I go. And even with the Transparency Company, I think they're conforming to our ways, like I've been here all my life.

Jason: How does your community involvement and the ministry motivate you in your business? As an entrepreneur, we all have hard days, hard weeks, hard months. How does that keep you going? Starting a business is not for the faint of heart.

Robert: Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was born with a servant's heart, and when I do those things, my tank gets filled up. I may not be blessed financially in that moment, but I'm blessed spiritually and emotionally. I have a belief that God put me in this spot for a reason, and I think the financial piece will work its way out as long as I keep doing His work.

Jason: Amen to that.

Mindy: I like that. What role do you think local family businesses like yours have, what responsibility do they have with the community? Did I make that worse?

Robert: No. I think small businesses are the backbone of every community, because they employ, I think the last number I saw is almost 50 percent, my numbers may be wrong, but around 50 percent of people are employed by small businesses. So they're important to the community. When you have a business that's willing to give to the community, the community is willing to give to that business. It's a mutual relationship that's beneficial for both parties.

Mindy: Agreed. And of course, if the community also uses the community businesses, that makes it even better.

Robert: Yeah.

Jason: Since you just started not too long ago, and it is a struggle as you build it, but there's a lot of gratification that comes from starting a business, what would you say you're most proud of so far?

Robert: I'm proud of the satisfaction we get from helping someone. A lot of these folks, the mess or the stuff in front of them is so daunting that they don't know how to get out of it. When you complete the job for them, the joy and relief on their faces is a good thing to be a part of. And I'm very proud of my son and the growth he's had in the ten or eleven months we've been in business. He has skills I hadn't seen in him, that I didn't know he had, that I'm learning about. He's a pretty talented kid, a pretty good kid. His mama must have done something right.

Jason: We were fortunate to have two good kids as well. It's a blessing. Staying on that topic, what's been the hardest thing since starting?

Robert: The hardest thing is still the one I knew going in, and that's the marketing piece. It's very ambiguous to me. I don't quite understand how the marketing pieces all work together, and everyone has a different opinion of how it works, so it's a real challenge. There's no silver bullet, no this-is-what-you-do. It's all kinds of things. I haven't talked about structure yet, I didn't mention this part, but I'm not one hundred percent full-time in the business. So the networking and the face-to-face stuff, which I think is the most valuable, is probably lacking a little bit, and I'll admit that. I'm looking for a time, maybe in the near future, when I can retire from my other work and do this full-time. I think that will help the business grow quite a bit and help the marketing and the sales a lot more than any paid ad or anything like that.

Jason: Definitely. It's big to have that social connection and networking. But Colton is full-time, right? So you're there imparting your years of wisdom.

Robert: One hundred percent. I'm trying.

Mindy: What's next for you guys? Do you have a five-year plan? What do you hope to see JUNKCO+ do in the next phase, now that you're getting well established?

Robert: We added our second truck recently, and we're looking at six to eight trucks as our goal. The way I'd like to model it, when I was a young man, I wanted to become someone I would have wanted back then. I would have loved to have a businessman who had the knowledge I didn't have, to give me some guidance and direction, to tell me and show me, here's how you do it, son, there's an opportunity. I didn't have that. I went to the school of hard knocks, and I still haven't graduated. So I'd like to set these trucks up almost like someone's own business. It wouldn't technically be their business, but it would be their business, and it's as successful or unsuccessful as they make it, by how much work and effort they put in. I'm looking for six to eight guys who could run trucks, be customer-facing, and talk to customers. It's hard work, you spend half the day in the truck, you get breaks, but I'd like to have, I don't know if franchise is the right word, an owner-operator model where they can have a piece of that profit share.

Mindy: Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Robert: I don't need much. It's not like I'm trying to make a billion or a million dollars a year. I'm just trying to eat, have shelter, and hopefully help some folks out with their lives and their careers.

Jason: So if somebody listening has some items in their home and thinks they could be of value to other organizations or people, what would be their first step? Can they call and ask you?

Robert: Yeah, they can reach out to us directly at 615-621-4065, or go to our website, junkcoplus.com/nashville. There's online booking on the website, where they can book a time and appointment.

Jason: If they're not sure it would be of value, can they just call and ask?

Robert: Yeah, to determine the value, just call and describe the item, and we can figure out whether it has value or not.

Jason: Not related to your business, but in our lives, you mentioned not having a business mentor, and we completely agree. We wish we'd had that as well. We still have bruises. But what's a lesson you've learned the hard way? This is kind of a lifetime question, but what's one of those hard knocks that has stuck with you?

Robert: So many.

Jason: Kind of putting him on the spot.

Robert: I think the one that sticks out the most, and it's a general one but it applies to everything, is that there's a process to everything, and during that process you've got to do the next right thing, and everything seems to work out. If you try to take shortcuts and get to the top the fast, easy way, you don't stay there very long. If you do the right things, follow the process, and are disciplined to do things the right way day in and day out, it's a more solid foundation to stand on. When the skyscraper gets tall, it's not going to crumble, because you built it on the right foundation.

Jason: Absolutely. I remember when they were building One World Trade Center. Once they got the area cleaned up, it took about two years going down and back up to level, something crazy like that. By the time they got back to level, so much time had passed. But like you said, you've got to put time into the foundation.

Mindy: It also helps you sleep at night, let's be honest. Doing the right thing, treating people with respect, and doing what you're supposed to do sure does help you sleep better at night.

Robert: Yeah.

Jason: Absolutely. So, did you have anything?

Mindy: No, I don't think so.

Jason: Please share your website again. This is for whether you're interested in donating, if you've got some stuff that needs donating, or for volunteer and general or paid purposes.

Mindy: Paid purposes, trash pickup, and all of that that's entailed in the title of your business.

Robert: We do all kinds of things. We do demolition as well. We do house cleanouts, garage cleanouts, we take sheds down, we take swimming pools down, we've done some handicap ramps, we've done some internal demolition of kitchens and baths, hot tubs, a little bit of everything, apartment cleanouts. You can reach us at junkcoplus.com/nashville or 615-621-4065.

Jason: Before we wrap up, I've got to ask, have y'all hauled off anything very interesting yet? Surely y'all see some things. I had an Aunt Sarah who had some interesting things.

Robert: We just got an old RC machine the other day. It's a working 1960s RC Cola machine. That was kind of cool.

Mindy: Seriously. I'd be putting that in my garage.

Robert: Well, anyway.

Jason: Right, or if you've got a short-term rental.

Mindy: Yeah, charge them, maybe.

Robert: That's a good idea.

Jason: We thank you so much for taking the time out of your day and joining us and sharing your story. Like I said, a lot of people don't think junk removal and giving back to the community go together. I love that you're on here sharing that it's something you're passionate about, you and your son and the company. We can definitely see that you speak from the heart and you truly want to pour into others. Thank you so much for that.

Robert: Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.

Mindy: Thank you for the reminder, and for even helping the people who are having a hard time letting things go, helping them pick it up and remove it, because sometimes it just has to happen. Thank you for supplying that service to Middle Tennessee.

Robert: You're welcome. Give us a call.

Jason: All righty. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and until next time, always remember that you matter.

Mindy: Thank you for joining us on this episode of You Matter Nashville. We hope you found inspiration and are reminded that no matter where you are or what you do, you matter.

Jason: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with your friends and family. Also, stay connected with us on social media and tune in next time for more incredible stories from the heart of our community.

Mindy: Until then, remember, your story matters, your voice matters, and most of all, you matter.