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Eric McBean was living on the 19th floor of a high-rise in Eccles, Greater Manchester, when he had his lightbulb moment. “Everywhere in the building was nice – apart from the bins,” he says. On Friday they’d get emptied; by Sunday they’d be overflowing. “People who don’t even live in the block decide: ‘There’s a place to chuck stuff.’ A sofa turns up, then a telly.”
McBean’s landlord, the housing association ForHousing, happened to be his boss, too. McBean was the lead for enterprise and innovation. “I thought: I’d like to find a solution to this.”
He trialled a mobile compacting service in 2020 – which proved effective – but owing to a restructure, his role was made redundant a few years later. McBean was 59.
Job-hunting felt like “starting over again. I didn’t think I had it in me,” he says. “I had more confidence in doing my own business.” He cashed in a small private pension and, with his modest redundancy, at 60 bought a vehicle and machinery to start his own rubbish-compacting service: Squosh. “We squash what’s in the bins and create more space.”
For many people, finding a job would feel like the easier option. But even as a child, McBean always thought: “I’m going to be a businessman.” He has had a few attempts. “I’ve gone through life thinking: ‘Is this the one?’”
His first effort, at 17, entailed hiring a minibus to transport friends and clubbers from their home town of Nuneaton to Great Yarmouth on Saturday nights. After that, he had a spell setting up an employment agency for people from the Midlands who were looking for work and accommodation in London. Then followed a company that distributed packed lunches; clients included Aston Villa’s youth team and Coventry airport, but then McBean’s partner went bust.
“My dad always said: ‘You can have anything you want – if you work for it,’” he says. “As parents, they always believed in me.” They had moved to Nuneaton from Clarendon, Jamaica. McBean’s father worked down a mine, his mother as a healthcare assistant.
The family didn’t own a car – McBean’s dad took the pit bus each day. But when he was 10, McBean joined a cub scouts trip to Baden-Powell House in London. “We were all looking out the window, car spotting. ‘There’s a Porsche … There’s another Porsche … Another Porsche.’ I thought: ‘How come no one drives them in Nuneaton?’”
When he saw a silver Porsche 911, he set his sights on driving his own.
In the meantime, he got his HGV licence so he would “have something to fall back on”, and intermittently drove lorries to support himself and his family – he has three children – while waiting for his entrepreneurial luck to break, “like an out-of-work actor who gets a job waiting tables,” he says.
In adulthood, he used to look at the Ford badge on the steering wheel of his car, and say: “One day that will be a Porsche.” Eventually, he bought a secondhand model “for less than the price of a new Ford”.
But on holiday in the Gambia three years ago, he was involved in a fatal car accident when the taxi in which he was riding collided with another vehicle. McBean suffered a broken hip and pelvis, and was hospitalised for months. He sold the Porsche, now too low-slung for him to drive without pain.
These days, McBean splits his time between driving the compactor van, pitching for new business and exhibiting at events. His first client was the Pennine Care NHS trust. Two housing associations followed, and Squosh has twice been shortlisted for a British business award. He has just ordered his second van.
“Some people shout: ‘What are you doing with our bins?’ We make it look like the rubbish was never there. The lids close and the place is tidy. That’s all people want.”
McBean hopes that, in business terms, he has finally found “the one”. He was 30 when his parents died, and “never had the chance to show them I was successful … Maybe I am going through life seeing what I could be, and giving it a go.”
