Former football teammates picking up the slack during Jackson, Mississippi, trash standoff
Justin Ragin and Alexander Shaw are going on about four hours of sleep each night this week.
The two entrepreneurial college friends from Jackson State University have been trying to take up slack from the Jackson, Mississippi, trash standoff last week by collecting garbage for some neighborhoods in the area.
Demand has been so great that if the standoff continues into this week between the City of Jackson and the City Council, the two will likely scale back their work.
"We just saw there was a need for this," said Ragin, a Memphis, Tennessee, native who graduated from JSU with a degree in biology. "It looked there could be trash to start piling up around the area. So, I just decided to do something."
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Ragin and Shaw have been friends since getting to know each other while playing football at JSU. The two had already been working together on occasion as they work a similar business offering junk removal from people's houses for a fee.
But nothing could have prepared the two for this week. Ragin, who led the Deion Sanders-coached Tigers with 10 sacks last season, showed his phone that had hundreds of missed phone calls and texts from people wanting them to pick up garbage since he published his number on social media earlier in the week
"I thought I was going to get 20 to 50 people," Ragin said. "I had no idea it was going to blow up like this. How many? I am really not sure. People are double texting and calling and it feels like I am the only guy out here. People need to have a little patience."
Now, larger Home Owners Associations in prominent neighborhoods have reached out to Ragin and Shaw, hoping to garner their services. When he started adding the numbers up off the top of his head, Ragin ended up with more than 2,000 homes that have reached out in one form or another.
On Wednesday, the two with their rented U-Haul Truck, drove through a neighborhood, collected all of the trash they could, then went and emptied the truck at the City Dump where they pay $5 per cubic yard for debris. They are charging residents $15 a week to pick up their trash.
While he jokes that he and Shaw need help, doing what they are doing, what they really need is for others to jump in.
"What we really need is for another entrepreneur to jump in and help and provide the same service," Ragin said. "There is money to be made. Believe me, but it's more than the two of us can do."
They have had a friend that has been able to help them the last two nights which has made the burden a little less, but they still have three consecutive 20-hour days behind them this week.
Far from the days they were hanging out at JSU and playing video games together.
"We've been best friends for a while now. We got to be friends playing Minecraft together," Shaw said. "We were both into that."
As one can imagine, while they are making pretty good money for the money, there are downsides, like the lack of sleep and what is in the trash, but they said they haven't picked up anything in the trash they weren't expecting.
"There's, the diapers and stuff like that," Ragin said. "That's pretty nasty, but you know that's coming when you offer to do this job."
After earning his biology degree, Ragin is currently in graduate school at Jackson State and using this side gig to help make ends meet. Shaw, originally from Vicksburg, Mississippi, has a degree in Kinesiology from Mississippi State, where he played cornerback for the Bulldogs last year after three years at Jackson State. He recently participated in the team's pro day and is hopeful of hooking on with a professional team in the next few months.
However, the two will continue to pick up trash in Jackson for as long as the standoff continues.
"It's good work. It's not easy, but it good work," Ragin said. "We are happy to do it."