Meet 18-year-old Carter Grandbois who vibe coded his pricing calculator for ‘junk collection’, earns up to $15,000 a month, and wants to share the wealth too
Carter Grandbois was 16 when he started working for a junk-removal operator in Johnstown, Colorado, and noticed how much money he could make from relatively small jobs. His boss kept a stack of cash in the centre console of his truck, and Grandbois went home and spoke to his father about starting their own operation. Within days, they had bought a trailer. Their first job brought in $500 for about 30 minutes of work.Now 18 and working full-time for himself, Grandbois says his business, Carter’s Junk Away, can bring in as much as $15,000 a month during peak season, a Fortune report noted. He said he eventually improved its profitability by building a pricing calculator, tracking job data and creating systems for generating leads. “I’m really into vibe-coding and creating software,” he explained. The calculator helped his crews bid jobs more consistently, allowing Grandbois to oversee more of the business without being on the truck.
How Carter Grandbois used vibe coding to scale junk removal
Grandbois said his junk-removal business initially struggled to become profitable consistently. The pricing calculator changed how his workers estimated jobs by giving them a system for calculating what to charge customers.“After that, we were able to be profitable on every single job,” he said. “When our team is out… they’re bidding jobs spot-on every single time. So every time they complete a job, I mean, we’re making anywhere from $50 to $200 without being on the truck.”Grandbois said he typically earns between $125 and $1,000 per junk-removal job. His employees are high school friends, while he increasingly handles parts of the operation from home rather than working on the truck himself.The software has also become something Grandbois wants to share with other people entering the industry. He has two calculators: a universal version and a “private junk-removal calculator,” which he described as being designed for a “more experienced junk-removal business.”Grandbois said he recognised that giving away the tools could potentially help competitors, but decided to share them anyway.He said, “I was like, ‘Hey, like everyone else could totally use this for their business.’”When asked about creating potential rivals by distributing his tools, he said: “That is one of the things with giving away stuff for free. You never know who’s watching the content. But at the end of the day, I know I’m doing something good for anyone else who’s trying to start.”His approach has been influenced partly by social media, where young entrepreneurs can watch other people build businesses rather than relying only on traditional business stories.Grandbois said, “It’s probably just like Instagram reels where you’re scrolling, and you’re like, ‘That guy has a Lamborghini. That dude has a McLaren. Why can’t I have one of those?’” His posts about his work on TikTok are under the account american.junkremoval.
Carter Grandbois is building a business beyond junk removal
Junk removal remains physical work, and Grandbois is building his company while he is 18. Unlike a traditional corporate job, the business does not provide employer-sponsored health insurance, a 401(k), or other employment benefits.Grandbois has also expanded beyond removing junk. He said he bought a lightly used Ford F-250 with about 10,000 miles and has started offering coaching to people interested in building junk-removal businesses.“We’ve started to do coaching to help other people who are interested in junk removal scale really quick,” he said.Grandbois estimated that junk coaching now accounts for about half of his business activity and said he has made roughly $40,000 from coaching this year. He said social media has also brought older prospective entrepreneurs to his content, including “a bunch of 40-year-old dads who are also interested in starting a business like this.”The business model is therefore changing from simply sending crews to collect unwanted items to selling the systems Grandbois developed while building the company. His pricing calculators, social-media content and coaching now sit alongside the original junk-removal operation.
