Send us Fan Mail From a Twisted Ankle to a Temple in Cleveland: A Week Inside the Junk Refund Business Host Alan Cook recounts a rain-soaked day of junk removal jobs, a broken rental truck and an ankle injury at the scrap yard, a quick trip to visit the new Cleveland Ohio Temple, and a decluttering client who happens to share his name with a famous golfer. Fresh Off Two Jobs and a Rainstorm Alan Cook opens the show still damp from an afternoon rain shower, fresh off two jobs in the Washington, D.C. area. He describes clearing part of a storage unit in Laurel, Maryland, for a client named Jewel, noting with amusement that nearly everything she owns is lavender, from her T-shirt to her phone case. Earlier that morning he helped a longtime customer named Archie load up a driveway full of items. Both jobs used the company's Groupon special, a pickup truck load of junk removal for ninety-nine dollars instead of the usual two hundred twenty-nine. Cook explains the yearly birthday voucher he sells every May, discounted to match his age, sixty-eight dollars this year, and the radio-only deal available by calling in during the broadcast and leaving a name with producer Don, who passes the information along so Cook can follow up after the show. The Four-Part Junk Refund System Cook lays out the mechanics behind 1-800-Junk-Refund. Every job gets sorted four ways: true junk goes to the dump, metal and wire are recycled, usable items like clothing and dishes go to charity with a donation receipt sent back to the customer, and anything that looks sellable is listed, with the customer receiving thirty-five percent once it sells for twenty dollars or more. He runs through pricing, a twelve-foot box truck around six hundred ninety-five dollars, a pickup load at two hundred twenty-nine, and a one-hundred-nineteen-dollar minimum for something like a single refrigerator pickup. Referrals from realtors earn customers ten percent off, and paying in advance earns another ten percent. He also plugs free scrap-metal pickups around the D.C. area and his habit of running thirty-day Craigslist ads for five dollars, which he credits with generating thousands of dollars in scrap and cleanout business over the years. A Referral, a Broken Truck, and a Bad Fall Cook credits realtor Mike Parente for a referral to a couple named the Millers in North Potomac, Maryland, a job that started rough. Days before the scheduled start, the company's rental box truck loses power after a diesel exhaust fluid sensor malfunctions and limits it to thirty-five miles per hour, and it stays in the shop for over a week. Cook shows up to the multi-thousand-dollar cleanout with a pickup truck instead. At the scrap yard, he steps into a dip in the pavement, rolls his ankle, and falls backward onto a pile of scrap pipes, badly scraping his knee and thumb and losing the ability to put weight on his foot. He fashions a cane from the handle of a discarded floor-waxing machine and keeps working. A Zelle payment from Mr. Miller is delayed several days by bank limits, leaving him briefly without cash to pay his crew, but the job still wraps up in roughly nineteen pickup truck loads. Movie Chairs From a Mansion in Great Falls Back from the injury, Cook turns to a job for a friend named Brian in Great Falls, Virginia, a former Bank of America mortgage employee who now buys and flips distressed properties. Brian tells Cook the first sign of a distressed home is overgrown landscaping, since upkeep is usually the first expense an owner cuts. Brian, who has built a mansion with an indoor theater seating twelve in stadium-style rows, is replacing worn reclining movie chairs and hires the crew to haul the old ones away. Cook and his helper June load the chairs, heavy with metal frames and upholstery, into a pickup truck and a repurposed SUV outfitted with a salvaged rear cargo carrier. The scrap yard pays for some loads of chair bases but rejects one for having too much upholstery and not enough metal, so that load goes to the regular dump instead, wrapping up a job worth about eight hundred fifty dollars. A Fast Trip to the Cleveland Temple With his ankle still tender, Cook takes off for one of his long-running personal projects: visiting temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints around the world, a hobby that has taken him to roughly one hundred thirty of the church's temples over about nine years. He flies Southwest from Baltimore to Cleveland for fifty-nine dollars each way, takes a cheaper Lyft over an Uber to reach the new Cleveland Ohio Temple in Independence, Ohio, and spends a couple of hours there before heading back to the airport. Rather than pay for a hotel, he sleeps for free on a cushioned bench near a not-yet-open Chick-fil-A, phone charging nearby, and boards his six a.m. flight home. He recounts a story from his friend Thayne, who volunteers at the temple and was invited into the small celestial room when one of the church's Twelve Apostles dedicated the building in mid-August. Family, John Daly, and Giving Back Cook shifts to family news, describing his son-in-law Jake's surprise-hit class on parallels between The Lord of the Rings and the Gospel of Jesus Christ during Brigham Young University's Education Week, which drew about four hundred people a night. He also has fun with a client named John Daly, sharing on Facebook that the crew is cleaning out John Daly's home and letting followers assume it is the golfer before clarifying it is simply a client sharing the name. Cook describes using AI to build mailing lists of realtors and gas stations for postcard marketing, and warns listeners that storage units can quietly drain thousands of dollars from people holding onto things they never use. He closes with a personal tithing habit, giving back ten percent quickly after each job, a National Cathedral appearance by church president Dallin H. Oaks the night before, and an update that his twice-injured ankles are nearly back to full strength.
