From the Hilltop to Building JunkStart
This week on SMU Stories, we sat down with Daniel McCarty, Founder and CEO of JunkStart Junk Removal, a San Antonio-based company bringing a pay-by-weight approach to junk removal.
A former offensive lineman and three-year starter at SMU, Daniel graduated with a degree in economics before pursuing entrepreneurship. With family roots in the waste management industry, he saw an opportunity to rethink how junk removal companies charge their customers.
Daniel founded JunkStart in 2023 around a simple question: if landfills charge by weight, why shouldn’t junk removal companies do the same? Using certified scales built into its trucks, JunkStart charges customers based on the actual weight of their junk—bringing greater transparency to an industry traditionally built around volume-based estimates.
From college football to building an emerging franchise brand, Daniel’s story is one of identifying an everyday problem and creating a business to solve it.
