Garbage can get expensive. Just ask any apartment complex, higher education institution or manufacturing facility with a roll-off and a waste management contract. Filled dumpsters require regular emptying, a budget line item that’s only becoming costlier.
A solution to this pain point has been trash compacting, or compressing a dumpster’s contents to reduce its emptying frequency. The latest player in the space is Baton Rouge-based Sasquatch Waste, a homegrown startup founded by father and son team Tony and Peyton Finical along with Joshua Crowdus.
Peyton Finical and Crowdus run the company’s day-to-day operations, which can include operating two specially designed trash compacting trucks sourced from a Baltimore vendor. They also jointly handle sales, familiar territory for them both. Finical previously worked for a national homebuilder, while Crowdus worked for a roofing company. Though content in those jobs, they say they were looking for a new business venture.
“The idea just kind of popped up. My dad had seen it on social media and said, ‘Hey, this is a cool idea,’” says Finical, 29. “Josh and I had been friends for a long time and wanted to do something for ourselves.”
The partners first looked at opening a national franchise but didn’t like the pricing structure. They opened an independent startup instead last year, originally calling it SmashR, but with so many national and independent trash compacting companies with the word “smash” in their names, they pivoted. “Sasquatch” sounded a little like smash, they figured, and the hairy cryptid has a tireless, attention-grabbing brand.
Read the full story about Sasquatch in Business Report’s latest Entrepreneur feature.
