The Founder's Story

Why Mike built Long Island Junk Co.

In the fall of 2012, Mike Scalise spent a weekend cleaning out his grandmother's house in Amityville after she passed. She'd lived there for 40 years. The house was full — furniture from three decades, appliances, boxes, and decades of accumulated items that needed to go somewhere.

Mike called three junk removal companies. One never called back. One quoted a price on the phone and then doubled it when they showed up. The third never showed up at all. He ended up renting a truck and doing it himself over two exhausting days.

By Monday he'd made a decision: Long Island needed a junk removal company that actually showed up, charged what they quoted, and treated customers like adults. He bought a used truck with money he'd saved, got his NYS Waste Transporter license, and took his first paying job four days later.

What Mike found was that there was a huge underserved market — estate cleanouts, basement clearing, and renovation debris removal that sat between the overpriced national franchises and the unreliable Craigslist guys. He built a company for the space in between: professional enough to be trusted, local enough to care.

Today Long Island Junk Co. employs eight people, runs four trucks across Nassau and Suffolk County, and has completed over 8,400 jobs. Mike still takes calls personally, still drives the truck when needed, and still shows up to estate cleanouts to make sure the job is done right.