Turning Trash to Treasure ~ Round 2

Some people struggle every day to make ends meet and believe it or not that also includes businesses. My business, that my wife and I run from home, helps businesses save money by taking their trash and making it treasure again. This is a skill I have seen many excel at but they just don't like the work itself. I watched employee after employee quit as I worked for others in my same profession. That always translated into me having to figure out how to complete jobs on my own or with just the help of someone I brought on for the day. These were the days that made me confident to open our own business from home once we moved. 

Everyone always wants to know what I do for a living. How my wife and I are able to have ten kids and how we support them. First off, I can tell you it is hard to juggle ANYTHING and 10 kids. Of course as they get older they are able to pitch in and help when you need someone but there are also many solo jobs that must be completed without help. These jobs have to get done in order to eat and feed everyone. Life is not free anywhere on the planet and my house is not the exception, unless you're one of my kids. 

As a business owner you deal with a ton of other business owners and the first thing most businesses want to do is barter and trade. This is a great option if you both have an item the other needs or wants but often this is not an option. No-one wants to work for free but many businesses have seasons and that is where barter can really work to both owners advantages. That is how I got to the job I am going to show you. 

Our house runs on electric heat and that is awesome as long as the electric is on. We have a large propane tank buried in our yard as the former owners used it to run radiators along the floor boards. Between the last owner of our house and us buying it, most of the pipes were stolen for scrap metal. So when we moved in we opted to go with vent-less wall units in place of the former heat the house used to have. This left us with a 1,000 gallon propane tank buried in our yard without a purpose.

This caused my wife and I to put our heads together and really think about that tank and rather we wanted a 1,000 gallon tank dug up from next to our house when we were living in a 250+ year old house. That is a huge tank and could in reality cause a pretty drastic shift in our house were anything to go wrong. So what were we supposed to do to keep things as they were? 

So the 1st step we took was to add a tank-less water heater, I was very against this one. My Uncle died in 2012 due to being burned to death in the shower when he slipped and fell during his shower. He lived alone at that point and once he fell, it was game over. I got over that and we had the tank-less unit installed. So at that point we are looking at maybe 100 gallons a years max use. Gas company still wanted their big tank back. Step 2, take out the old stove and add a new gas stove in it's place. Gas company still wanted to down-size our tank. Step 3 was add a vent-less gas only wall unit in the basement to help keep the pipes from freezing under the house. This wasn't a problem for the previous owners as the radiator pipes ran right along the water pipes keeping everything very warm in the winter. Finally they no longer wanted the tank as long as we filled it 100%. 

Wait, what? If we want to keep a 1,000 gallon tank, we are required to buy 1,000 gallons of gas in one shot. Not only 1,000 gallons but 1,000 gallons as we are still in another house. This tank has sat in the ground between owners for 10 years. It was also spring time so 1,000 gallons seemed silly at this point. So what were we to do? Chance the house shifting as this tank was pulled out of the ground? Cough up $3,000 in spring for an item we really wouldn't use until that winter?

That is when that little light bulb went off in my head and I thought. This is the type of business I can barter with and we will both benefit. So the deal was, I would redo their two oldest trucks as trade for ownership of the buried tank and that tank completely filled. I had a friend that worked at their company and I knew the tank was already written off 10 years earlier and they bought their current gas at $0.97  per gallon. So even though they were losing $2,000 and a tank they were saving $2,500 per truck between a new paint job and having them re-lettered. I wasn't losing anything but a little design time, a few yards of material and 2 hours to apply the graphics. So this was 100% a barter that was a 100% profit to both of us. 

This is the first truck of the two I did for them.