When Jason Brown first got into the trash collection business, it was just him and a truck.
His father, the late entrepreneur Mike Brown – founder of Mike’s Ice, BPC Plumbing and Mike’s Esso stations – was not immediately convinced.
“He told me, ‘I didn’t send you to university to become a garbage man’,” Brown recalls.
But working as an apprentice plumber, cleaning up construction sites behind the trades, Brown had spotted a gap in the market.
Contractors needed dumpster rental services and there were few organised options out there. He persuaded his father to go into business as co-founder and front him the money for his first truck.
“He took 50% of the shares and charged me interest on the loan. There were no freebies,” said Brown, who says he inherited his entrepreneurial instinct from both parents. His mother Joanne Brown founded events and destination wedding company Celebrations.
More than two decades later Island Waste Carriers has opened up its first purpose-built headquarters. It now runs a fleet of 24 vehicles collecting solid waste, construction debris and recycling from hotels, supermarkets, condo complexes, contractors and commercial businesses across the Islands.
For most of its history, staff operated out of whatever location it could find.
In the earliest days, staff took shade under an almond tree on the property. Later, a tent borrowed from Celebrations was propped on barrels so a truck could park underneath. That gave way to what Brown calls “the termite trailer” – a 50-foot mobile office.
“My first office was the passenger seat of our first grapple truck. I was dispatching jobs, answering calls, running the business, and working alongside the crew from that seat.”
The new facility includes a full mechanical workshop staffed by diesel technicians, welders, fabricators and body workers.
For Brown, the success of the business depends on keeping his trucks on the road.
“Ninety percent fleet availability is considered excellent,” Brown says. “World-class operations typically operate between 93 and 95 percent. With this facility, that’s exactly what we’re striving for.”
The building also sits well above the local floodplain meaning he can sleep easier in hurricanes.
Solving Cayman’s waste issue
Brown sees Island Waste Carrier’s next chapter as inseparable from Cayman’s unresolved waste issue. The company’s sister company already processes metals for recycling on a government contract and was part of the ReGen consortium on the recycling side.
He hopes his business can be part of the private and public sector solution for the long running problem.
“What I’d like to see in Cayman, and what we’d like to form part of, is world-class solid waste and recycling infrastructure,” Brown says. “That’s what the country has to work towards.”
And his message to young people in Cayman is that there is money to be made from hard work. He spoke to youth at the Inspire Cayman trade school recently, hammering home the value of blue-collar jobs in trades like plumbing, welding and electrical.
“You can have a very rewarding career. It’s tough. It’s not necessarily easy work … not a lot of people want to do it, but you can have a very rewarding career. And a tradesman never starves. There’s always something that needs [doing].”
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