Only vets need apply:
New company offers franchises exclusively to ex-military
Jerry Flanagan poses with a Hummer 2 and cargo trailer emblazoned with the JDog Junk Removal logo and decorations.
You might view Jerry Flanagan’s entrepreneurial vision for jobless veterans as junk economics. That’s fine. He certainly sees it that way.
The Army veteran has launched what he says is the first company to offer former service members — and only former service members — a chance to buy one of his fledgling franchises. The business: hauling away people’s unwanted appliances, furniture and other household rubbish. In crude terms, junk removal.
Before you trash his plan, listen to Flanagan’s strategy to tidy up the 10.9 percent unemployment rate that’s been dogging post-Sept. 11 veterans (as compared to the 8.1 percent rate afflicting the rest of the nation in August).
“Offering the franchises only to military veterans gives them the opportunity to know, ‘In this program, I don’t have to compete against this guy who has a college degree or against that guy who just went to business school.’ Right now, these people need a leg up,” said Flanagan, who served in the U.S. Army from 1987 to 1989.
“So many veterans are going to be hitting the work force by 2014. I asked myself, ‘How can we put them back to work?’ They’ll be owning their own businesses and hopefully they’ll be hiring other veterans.”
He calls his enterprise JDog Junk Removal
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