31-year-old dumpster diver made $140,000 selling trash

When Carter Stevens tells people he makes six figures a year digging through dumpsters, they often assume he’s “blowing smoke,” he says.

Not everyone sees the dollar signs in a overflowing dumpster. But Stevens made about $140,000 in total sales between September 2025 and September 2026 by taking discarded items, cleaning them and selling them on platforms like eBay and Facebook Marketplace, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Stevens operates primarily near luxury office parks and condominiums around Nashville, Tennessee. Since March 2024, when he started digging through trash, he has found and sold handmade Persian rugs, high-end office chairs and even samurai swords, he says. Collecting trash allows him to reduce his shipping costs, he adds: Some of his supplies, like boxes and packing tape, also come from dumpsters, so much so that he doesn’t have to pay for them about “90 percent of the time.”

“The amount of trash you find in this country is incredible. We throw away so much stuff,” says Stevens, 31.

Sometimes Stevens asks a building for permission to sort its waste, presenting itself as a waste disposal service. In this way, his work is similar — but not identical, because he generally only takes what he can sell, he says — to that of other entrepreneurs across the United States who follow advice from Reddit threads or YouTube tutorials to launch waste removal side hustles or full-time businesses. There are approximately 10,000 junk removal companies in the United States, according to the Better Business Bureau. They range in scale from independent operations to national companies like 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which touts more than 150 franchises.

Other times, Stevens finds himself up to his neck in garbage, dodging worried security guards, sifting through real trash and rotten food in hopes of discovering abandoned treasures, he says. He tries to avoid sneaking and watches for “no trespassing” signs. He prefers to leave his items behind if a landlord or security guard tells him to leave the premises, he said.

Even Stevens is surprised at the amount of money he’s made, saying he doesn’t necessarily think his annual income is sustainable. When he “got into” dumpster digging, he was about $12,000 in debt after years of bad spending habits fueled in part by a drug addiction, a stark change from his affluent childhood, he says.

“I dug myself out of a hole. I built up my savings. I really did more than I thought I could,” Stevens says.

Stevens, a Nashville native, is the son of a five-time Grammy Award-winning country and gospel music producer who has worked with artists like Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood. His life took a turn in college when he developed an addiction to prescription Adderall, leading him to drop out during his senior year in 2018, he says.

His lack of a college degree made it difficult to obtain full-time employment. He says his parents can afford to support him financially, and they have done so during specific emergencies. But most of all, his father wants his children to learn to fend for themselves, he says: “He lets me sit on the hot coals to learn how to swim. It taught me a lot (and) gave me a lot of valuable skills and a tough mentality.”

Unemployed, Stevens began scouring thrift stores and Goodwill clothing racks to find vintage clothing to sell on eBay. He was inspired by YouTube influencers like Rick Senko, he says, whose Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based clothing resale business Technsports generated $6.5 million in annual revenue as recently as 2024.

But Stevens’s returns were erratic, and he often spent his profits on drugs or luxury shopping sprees, he said. After his parents funded rehab in 2021 – helping him “stop doing hard drugs,” he says – he spent his money chasing more dopamine hits. Those gifts included a $1,200 pair of Christian Dior Birkenstock sandals, an 85-inch flat-screen TV and a $30,000 down payment on a Mercedes-AMG sedan that he later lost because he couldn’t afford the full cost, he says.

In June 2023, he no longer had the means to pay his rent. So he rented a warehouse until company security found him and kicked him out, then he stayed in his Nissan Sentra for three weeks, he says. Homelessness pushed him to learn to manage his “reckless” spending habits. He says: “Being punished by my own spending addiction was an ordeal I promised myself I would never endure again.

In October 2023, a cousin loaned him money to start renting an apartment, and Stevens worked to stick to a reasonable enough budget so that his thrifty income would cover future rent and basic expenses, he says. Five months later, he found a pair of mint black Nike Air Force Ones next to a gas station pump. He took them home, disinfected them and sold them online for $35, he said.

“It was the first time I found something that was trash, sold it and made some money,” Stevens says.

Once he started digging through dumpsters, Stevens was hooked “because I never stopped finding good things in those dumpsters,” he says.

His biggest win yet: Dozens of discarded Steelcase office chairs, worth more than $1,000 each when new, in front of an overflowing dumpster at an office park, he says. He got his car – at this point, a used van and a trailer he had built himself – and hauled in 190 chairs to put them online at hundreds of dollars each. He sold the majority of them in bulk transactions on Facebook Marketplace for $17,000 and brought in another $10,600 by selling the remaining chairs individually, documents show.

If Stevens can find about one valuable crop per month, he can fill his storage unit with $400 per month and start inventorying items. For the most part, he’s interested in corporate environments, preferring “dry dumpsters” to those loaded with food waste, he says. Office waste is especially profitable when companies downsize, Stevens says: One day, he found 120 standing desks abandoned outside a building.

Near high-end apartment buildings, Stevens found furniture from brands like West Elm, iPads, electronics and working power tools, he said. “Almost all the furniture in my apartment came from a dumpster,” Stevens says.

Stevens works alone and minimizes gas costs by limiting himself to locations within a few miles of his apartment. The majority of its revenue comes from big runs during its five highest-earning months, reflecting the hit-or-miss nature of the business. “I got really lucky earlier this year and won a lot of money. I don’t act like it’s something I could do every year,” he says.

So he saves as much of his income as possible, “constantly” opting out of unnecessary purchases, he says. And he’s exploring the real estate wholesaling business — which involves securing contracts for distressed properties and turning them over to investors for a fee — as a potentially safer way to make a living, he adds.

Still, he recognizes the allure of knowing his next big payday could always be a dumpster away.

“I can’t see myself turning down a nice dumpster,” Stevens says. “I found so much cool stuff that I feel like I’ll always be curious about what’s in that dumpster.”