I started Recycle Sumner County as the first curbside recycling service in Sumner County in 2004 with seven customers. I had a 1997 Ford Ranger and a golf trailer which I converted to hold garbage cans for recyclables. One day one of my customers, who owns a landscaping business, came out while I was picking up. He was chuckling about the trailer. He offered me an eighteen foot landscape trailer he wasn’t using to replace the golf cart trailer. I gave him three years of recycling for it and built walls on it to dump recyclables in. Later I backed the trailer into his expensive aluminum mailbox and destroyed it. I recycled it for him.

In 2005 I started work on a Master of Education degree at Tennessee State University with a view toward teaching English in a high school. I was also working as a substitute teacher in Sumner County. In the fall of 2007 I started student teaching. On Saturdays I picked up recycles from about 100 customers.

Despite my lazy attitude toward advertising, business started picking up very quickly that fall. At the rate I was adding customers, there was no way I would be able to student teach and run the business. I decided to quit student teaching and concentrate on the business.

In November of 2007 I replaced the Ford Ranger with a black 1997 Ford 7.3 Liter Turbo Diesel Crew Cab Dually, which I wish I still had. In January of 2009, I bought a custom-built, 16 foot dump trailer. By the summer of 2008, I had 440 customers.

Unfortunately I also had to have surgery for a hernia in the summer of 2008 and was also experiencing a lot of pain from tendinitis in both elbows. By September no amount of ice and ibuprofen could relieve the pain. I had to quit.

At the same time, I found out that AB Recycle had started curbside recycling. I e-mailed them to see if they would be interested in buying me out. We were able to come to terms easily and AB Recycle took over my customers on November 1, 2008.

I have since returned to my previous career in graphic arts and web design–just in time for the recession. If you just happen to need a web designer/graphic artist, please visit my web site at michaelwalker.info.