Two Men and a Truck franchise owners in Crystal Lake have expanded their services to include junk removal and finding new homes for lightly used items.

Cousins and co-owners of Two Men and a Truck, Rikki Forgwe and Erik Andersen, launched the junk removal Two Men and a Junk Truck franchise in Crystal Lake in October and in Aurora earlier this year.

The duo took over the moving services franchise in 2021 when the previous owners were ready to sell. Forgwe was an employee there when he turned to his cousin, who was a civil attorney in Chicago, to take on the business with him.

Two Men and a Truck launched the Two Men and a Junk Truck franchises in 2023, Andersen said.

Ruben Gutierrez , their Crystal Lake and Aurora operations director, helped them get the junk-removal franchise off the ground.

“It was something we had our eye on from the very beginning because it’s just such a natural fit with moving,” Andersen said.

Luckily, Anderson and Forgwe were able to expand their new Junk Truck services next door in Crystal Lake in a double unit at 1095 Pingree Road. The building has about 2,500 square feet of storage, where they can stack vaults to take advantage of vertical space, Andersen said.

The McHenry County location serves about a 50-mile radius that includes Woodstock, McHenry, Algonquin, Huntley and Elgin. Residential and commercial customers can schedule an appointment and specify what needs to be moved, with no need for to move the items out of the home themselves.

“We have a tremendous advantage because we’ve got professionally trained movers that we can slide over to the junk side,” Andersen said.

On the back end, the business will sort items to discard or “up-cycle” and donate to charities, new homeowners or renters, Andersen said. Forgwe said they has been busy connecting with local nonprofits and thrift stores.

“We’re still working on our system,” Andersen said. “Every load has at least one piece of treasure.”

At the Aurora location, Andersen and Forgwe dedicate about 8,000 square feet in the warehouse as a public resell area to give the items they receive new homes.

“I couldn’t believe how many people have too much stuff,” Andersen said. “We’re able to help with that, and at the same time, if you’re giving us something that has value we’re going to do our upmost to make that be valuable to somebody else.”

The duo would like to add more locations as a long-term goal. But for the immediate future, their sights are on expanding their one-truck, junk-removal fleet and possibly move to a bigger location in Crystal Lake, where they would be able to host warehouse sales.

Andersen envisions customers to book both the moving and junk-removal services to streamline the moving process, especially as he continues to see the trend of homeowners downsizing.

“We want to be the one-stop shop,” he said. “You need to move, you need to store stuff and you need to get rid of stuff.”