Good Times

Ahh September, summer holidays are over, students go back to school and everyone else settles back into their regular work routines.

This was an unfamiliar experience for Jake.

After graduating high school in June, he spent the summer ramping up the odd jobs business he and his best friend, Bruce, had started in grade 7.

Though they lived in a very affluent community, Jake’s parents did not spoil or coddle him in his teen years, they merely mentored him. If he wanted something, he had to work for it.

It started off with the boys mowing lawns and shovelling snow up and down the street. Then, once he got his driver’s license, his dad used his connections to help Jake buy his first truck.

His dad worked for a large corporation and they were always auctioning off older vehicles, but staff always had the chance to buy them before they went to auction. The trucks may have been older, but the price was right and they were all 4-wheel drive.

The truck allowed Jake and Bruce to service the whole neighbourhood. Then the next summer, Jake’s dad used his staff status to help Jake buy a second truck, which allowed more of Jake’s friends to work for him and they added garbage removal to their services. They added a third truck after graduation, and then a fourth truck in August.

Besides himself, his company now had 6 full-time employees and a handful of part-timers—mostly friends from high school. His mom worked part time for the company as the accountant, and the software they used handled the scheduling, invoicing and even the VoIP phone system. It was a pretty efficient company, and the plan was to expand the commercial business. He had a few small business contracts, but they were strictly landscaping contracts and sidewalk shovelling, no large-scale parking lot snow removal—yet.

Each truck had 2 people, and they kept them booked solid. 2 trucks for garbage hauling, 1 truck with a covered trailer with all the snow/lawn equipment and the remaining truck was his for everything else and a spare for when one of the other trucks was in for repairs. The plan was to venture into the more lucrative commercial snow clearing contracts this winter. They just needed to put salt/sand spreaders in the back and snow blades or blowers on the front.

The software he used made scheduling and billing easy. His mom, the accountant, took care of the payroll, taxes and also helped with dispatching. Since the trucks and phones were all tied to the software, anyone could see where everyone in the company was at any moment. Plus, having the VoIP phone system managed by the software saved all the photos, videos and emails out in the cloud. It was a beautifully efficient and redundant system, which had a messaging app, but could also redirect calls as required, from a single phone number. Jake just did all the scheduling, business development and also helped whenever required.

The neighbourhood was conducive to their business success, being one of the more affluent communities that bordered the river valley. All the houses along the ridge had large yards and driveways—they had money—and were more than happy to support the local teen. They were along the south side of Fish Creek Provincial Park, one of the largest urban parks in North America, bordered on 3 sides by the city of Calgary and on the west side by the Tsuu T’ina Nation. Then it met up with the Bow River on the east end, which snaked through the entire city, so although the park stretched 19 kilometres, it connected to natural areas on both ends that just weren’t part of the park. The park comprised hundreds of kilometres of pathways and various amenities, but most of the park was still in a natural forested state.

His parents’ house overlooked the park from the low ridge. Like most houses along the ridge, the basements had been developed into separate residences and almost all had full-width balconies, which made for covered patios for the lower residence.

So, despite living under the same roof as his parents, he had his own place. This practice was actually quite common along the ridge. As kids graduated high school, they could have their own place with separate entrance yet still be close to home. Then, when they did eventually move away, the parents could rent out the basement.

Moving out of the basement wasn’t a priority for Jake, but the way his business was growing, he hoped he could afford his own place by next winter, but it had to have a garage, as that would be the maintenance shop. Although he was also entertaining the idea of just leasing an actual shop.

Saturday was usually the busiest day of the week, but with it being the first weekend of September, it was even busier than normal. Everyone finally realizing all the tasks they kept putting off during the summer were still outstanding and getting them done now that work and school schedules were returning to normal.

This meant most of the business was garbage removal and he had all 4 trucks doing that today.

To speed up the garbage removal process, Jake had a deal with a nearby mechanical shop and, for a small fee, they allowed them to park a large commercial dumpster at the edge of their lot. This saved a ton of time for garbage loads, as each dumpster held the equivalent of about 16 truck loads and the trucks didn’t have to drive to the city landfill or wait in line. They normally emptied the bin twice per week, but in anticipation of this weekend, they had actually ordered a second bin.

All trucks had two person crews, since it expedited loading and unloading of garbage. Today, one guy had called in sick, so he was working with Bruce.

Bruce didn’t live right on the ridge, but was only one street over. Though they started the business together, Bruce never wanted the leadership or management role. He hated doing business development, administration and sales. So he would step up and take control if Jake was sick or gone, but solely to manage crews. He was happy to just be an employee.

Fortunately, since the company was expanding so fast, new customers were calling them and they weren’t having to go out and drum up new business. Although Jake did meet with the new customers to write up the contracts.

All the full-time employees in the company were friends from school. Now that they had graduated, two of the full-time guys switched back to part-time so they could go to post-secondary schools. So Jake just partnered them together and scheduled garbage hauling jobs for after their classes.

To celebrate the end of summer and the official start of their full-time business, they had gone out to a bar with the crew. It was a common event after a busy Saturday. They’d convene down at the neighbourhood pub and enjoy a beer and a steak sandwich.

Steak sandwich Saturday, as they called it, went down just as usual. People arrived straight from their last tasks for the day and they all gathered at their usual table to enjoy a meal and a drink.

After the meal though, Jake, Bruce and Mario were going to a nightclub because Mario had recently met this girl, Kate, from across the park and she had planned to go out with a couple of friends on Saturday night.

So Jake and Bruce were going as Mario’s wingmen. They were all single with fit, athletic type bodies. Jake was the youngest at 18, but he was also the tallest at 6-foot-2, with dark brown hair that was buzzed short, brown eyes and tanned skin.

Bruce was heavier set, but still in great shape. He was roughly 5-foot-9, with red hair buzzed short. He was the oldest at almost 20 since he had to repeat a year in elementary school—it was that repeat year when Jake and he became best friends.

Chapter 2 »