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Dunk Disposal’s Christmas Drive returns next week

December 15, 2022   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

“[We] do whatever we can to help within the community … keep our plans fluid.” This is the business mantra for Dunk Disposal, founded and owned by Cameron Dunkerley. He and his brother Devon Dunkerley have been building the business up since they began with a basic pickup truck seven years ago, to three large trucks, suited to the kind of all-encompassing service they offer to private and business customers.

A few years ago, they began a community-wide collection day in December to pick up food and toys as a drive to provide some Christmas cheer to families in need.

This year again, the pickup date is Dec. 21.

“This is a similar campaign to what we have done in the community,” said Cameron Dunkerley. “Accepting non-perishable food and unwrapped toys from people in Orangeville, Caledon, Erin, Shelburne, Brampton and surrounding areas. How far around and how many trucks we’ll need depends on the response; whenever everybody calls or contacts us, we’ll map out our route to see if we need more than one truck. This is our basic customer area.”

The years have brought them regulars, repeat customers and many routine pick-ups for all aspects of their disposal services.

Response in other years to this Christmas pick-up has been “great,” Mr. Dunkerley told the Citizen. “Every year, it’s grown and grown. Last year we doubled our pickups from the previous year. We take the food to the Orangeville Food Bank and all the rest to Toys for Tots, which we deliver to the Orangeville OPP station.”

The feedback the Dunkerley business has received from their Christmas pickup has been very positive. Mr. Dunkerley told us that a lot of people enjoy being able to just leave their items on their porch.

“People leave notes thanking us,” he said. “People want to donate but don’t know where to take things or they don’t have time. It’s better for the receiving end too.” 

Stories about the thankfulness of the kids who receive toys come through but without the specifics of who they are.

In the first year of their Christmas drive, it was probably just the two brothers who had thought of the idea. Their focus on looking for ways they could donate brought them to reason that they could call their customers and help both people wanting to donate and those receiving.

This year has been good for Mr. Dunkerley’s disposal business, as he says, “doing our best to keep busy, working with businesses and doing our best to continue to grow.” He is ambitious, admitting that one never knows how things will turn out but he is working “to become the name in southern Ontario, so that everybody knows and trusts us as the known name and trusted name.”

He acknowledged there is competition for the disposal business, from franchises to the people who are doing how he and his brother started; people just doing it themselves, in a van. 

“Let’s make your life a whole lot easier and get it done in a much shorter time” is his pitch to potential customers. Stress-free and fast cleanups are two of the benefits of working with Dunk Disposal, according to Mr. Dunkerley.

Philosophically, “You always have the grassroots; at some point, everyone starts at ground zero.”

He considers competition as healthy but when seeing people try to promote themselves over others, he commented, “We don’t fight fire with fire. It’s important to stay positive.”

There are countless life lessons every single day, he maintains. He and his team work with “great, great customers” and Mr. Cameron himself learns from his employees every single day. Every day it’s something new. 

He remarked, “Every single day, my employees are always teaching me with a different viewpoint of how things can be done. Putting people in a position to excel so that they can do good and make it all happen.”

As an example, he talked about an incident just last week, on a day when they were really busy, with most of their trucks going, they got a flat tire. They had to call several customers to explain their delays. However, rather than give it all up for the day, his own crew insisted and were able to fix the tire on the side of the road.

“An hour or two later we were back on the road.”

For 2023, they are looking at getting an office front as the business is starting to outgrow where they are now, checking out a couple of locations. Currently, they do have a place in Caledon Village, hoping to continue in Caledon as it is central to where they work.

“We’ll just see what happens,” adding, “we do definitely have to roll with the punches. Our plans are always fluid. I never like to be too [rigid]. When it comes to safety, though, there’s no give and take to that. We do the job 100 per cent every time; there’s no shirking for that. But there’s always flexibility to how things can be done or how they can be done a little bit better.”

For the business to succeed, he is sure, good relationships with clients matter, saying, “The friendlier we are, the more we’re likely to get that callback.”

Also top on the bill as essential is attention to disposing and continuing as much as possible to do things as environmentally safe as can be. That will always be their focus.

As for the Christmas pickup itself, Mr. Dunkerley said, “Anyone that wants to donate, it’s completely free; there’s no charge, just leave it on your doorstep. So, this takes a little bit of stress off your shoulders.”

To donate non-perishable food or unwrapped toys for this Christmas drive, give Dunk Disposal a call at 519-217-7149 or an email at dunkdisposal@gmail.com and they will come and pick it up. 

The date set is December 21.

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