In the News

Home & Garden: College Hunks Think up a Slam Dunk

By Kat Glass
Current Correspondent
Wednesday, August 23, 2006; Page 18

When Sidwell Friends alums Omar Soliman and Nick Friedman finished college, they took prestigious jobs.

Forest Hills native Friedman started as an analyst at an economic consulting company, and Soliman, who grew up in Dupont, worked as a market associate for a healthcare consulting company. But it didn't take long before they wanted out.

"We both started getting antsy about the corporate 9-to-5 plan," Friedman said.

So just a few months after they'd started, they shifted gears- from suits and ties to trucks and dollies.

Soliman and Friedman turned back to a small business they had run one summer during high school, hauling junk with a cargo truck from Soliman's mom's furniture business. During his senior year at University of Miami, Soliman extended the model into a formal business plan, which won the 2004 Rothschild Entrepreneurship Competition.

Using the model as a blueprint, the two 24-year-olds spent several months planning, raising capital, creating a Web site and a logo. They recruited some guys, and their business was ready: College Hunks Hauling Junk.

Now they've grown out of parking their truck in Friedman's parents' driveway on Davenport Street and operate a fleet of five commercial trucks based in Rockville.

Friedman said his hunky haulers are "clean and well-groomed," without any beards and with their shirts tucked in.

"Not really something you'd typically associate with guys hauling junk," Friedman said.

The customers seem to like the promise of attractive young men.

"Sometimes I tell people the name and they say, 'I don't have any junk; just send the hunks over,'" Friedman said.

The company does not screen their potential employees based on looks- "'hunky' is somewhat of a subjective term," Friedman said- but they do offer a "Hunk 'Haul' of Fame" on their Web site, where customers can vote for their favorite hauler.

The business charges a minimum fee of $115. A recent job for U.S. Airways of 50 truckloads raked in $20,000. Friedman would not divulge the company's earnings but said it became profitable after six months.

The company shelled out a large sum of money for a phone number- 1-800-Junk-USA- in January, upping the call volume "significantly," Friedman said.

Now Friedman, the president, and Soliman, the chief executive officer, have plans to expand, with ambitions of going national.

"We kind of look at it like playing a video game where we're always trying to get to the next level," Friedman said.

He hopes to extend the business within the year to satellite offices in Baltimore and Annapolis in Maryland and Loudon County in Virginia.