He Started With a $7,500 Tow Truck and $40 Tows. 3 Years Later, Revenue Topped $1 Million
After leaving his job in security, Early Walker sought out a career with a higher ceiling. Now he’s helping other Black entrepreneurs find their own success.
Early Walker. Photos: Courtesy subject; Adobe Stock
Early Walker didn’t have a concrete plan. When he left his job working security for the Chicago Board of Education, he only had a couple thousand dollars from his pension funds. However, with a child on the way, Walker wanted to pursue a career path with a higher ceiling.
That desire soon resulted him turning to the towing industry. He saw that the average tow was about $60 to $65. His savings covered the purchase of an old $7,500 towing truck. He started his rate at $40 for local tows in 2013.
Everybody told me I was crazy, like $40?,
“Everybody told me I was crazy, like $40?,” he told Inc. “But it was a numbers game for me. I figured if I could do 10 tolls a day, that was $400 a day.”
A resident of Country Club Hills, Walker knew he could rely on his community for business and started working in the South Suburbs. Everyone was a potential customer, he said. As expected, the price point was “unbeatable. The requests piled up.
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To raise visibility, Walker invested in online advertising and set up an automated answering machine to give callers the illusion of a larger company. “I got to a point where my pricing was so great that people would wait,” he said. “I had a list of customers that would wait days because they wanted to pay $40 for a tow.”
Despite the good business, Walker was interested
Despite the good business, Walker was interested in pursuing municipal towing contracts with local governments. He learned that one towing company had held all of Chicago’s towing contracts for decades. He wanted in.
Under Walker, All Area W&W Towing grew to 13 trucks, multiple drivers, a wider area of coverage, and over $1 million in revenue annually within the first three years.
Source: www.inc.com
