Carter Stevens, a 31-year-old from Nashville, Tennessee, earned roughly $140,000 in total sales between September 2025 and September 2026 by salvaging discarded items from dumpsters and reselling them on eBay and Facebook Marketplace, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
Stevens operates primarily near office parks and luxury condominiums. Since March 2024, he has found hand-crafted Persian rugs, high-end office chairs and samurai swords. He keeps shipping costs low by sourcing packing materials like cardboard boxes and packing tape from dumpsters about 90 percent of the time.
His largest single haul occurred when he found roughly 190 Steelcase office chairs, each worth $1,000 or more when new, outside an office park dumpster. He sold most of them in bulk on Facebook Marketplace for $17,000 and sold the remainder individually for an additional $10,600.
Stevens stores items in a $400-per-month storage unit and focuses on "dry dumpsters" without food waste, particularly around corporate offices during downsizing. Near high-end apartment buildings, he has found furniture from West Elm, iPads, electronics and power tools in working condition.
He maintains a pickup truck and a self-built trailer to transport finds and keeps his gas costs low by staying within a few miles of his apartment. Stevens saves most of his earnings and acknowledges the venture's unpredictability. "I got really lucky earlier this year and I made a ton of money. I'm not acting like this is something I could do every year," he says.
He is also studying real estate wholesaling as a potentially more stable income source. "I don't see myself ever turning down a good looking dumpster," Stevens adds.