How One Man Hauls in Big Bucks

Jerry Toste of Scotts Valley is only 21 and seems to have a perpetual smile on his face. He should — his low-tech startup, Cheap Hauling, is on everyone’s lips: Those trucks are everywhere.


Toste is grossing $800,000 per year after 1½ years in business, not bad for a guy who decided that “college and I just don’t mix.” Toste started hauling, instead.


What’s next? More Cheap Hauling trucks and a new business, Cheap Tree Service.


In a couple of years, he expects to launch Cheap Concrete, and later, Cheap Construction.


Toste’s an entrepreneur with at least one idea whose time had come.


“I tried to start two companies,” Toste said. “Both failed.”

This time, he invested $1,000 in an old truck and some signs. It worked.


“I figured if I got a second truck, I would double the revenue. That happened, so I doubled the number of trucks to four and revenue doubled again,” he said.


He kept expanding until the company had 51 trucks, which double as rolling billboards. His plan is to reach 250 trucks in Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties.


His fleet is stocked with 20-year-old pickups, and Toste runs them hard. “We beat ’em up pretty good,” he said, “so I have a full-time mechanic on staff, and he keeps ’em running.”


At any time, Toste has 18 to 25 employees doing the hauling.


The other trucks are parked at strategic intersections, reminding potential customers of his phone number. The same was true a couple of years ago with 800-Got-Junk’s new blue trucks, but “we drove them out of Santa Cruz,” Toste said with a smile. “I based my rates 10 to 30 percent lower than theirs, and we’re competitive with the single-truck guys.”


Toste lives with his parents, working out of a granny-unit office. His mother, Mary, does his payroll, as she does for his father, Geno, owner of Geno’s Landscape Service.
“My entrepreneurial spirit came from my dad,” Toste said. “He has 18 employees and 20 years in the business.”


But Toste will soon move his headquarters to San Jose. He has bought an office with a warehouse and yard to store the trucks. The granny unit will remain as the Santa Cruz County branch office.


His newest enterprise, Toste Tree Service, has white trucks with green signs, instead of the familiar Cheap Hauling yellow. Knowing that tree work requires more training than hauling, he has enlisted an experienced partner, Sam Jonas, who will manage the business and train personnel.


“It’s a great brand,” Toste said. “I want to take Cheap Hauling statewide in another year. Eventually, we can be the Wal-Mart of the service industry. Sam Walton is one of my heroes.”


Toste, a product of Catholic schools in Santa Cruz and Salinas, enrolled at Cabrillo College, but that lasted only “one or two semesters,” he recalled.


If a college degree isn’t a necessity for business success, what is?


“If you want to be good at something,” Toste said, quoting Thomas Edison, “it takes hard work.” via pressbanner.com