Episode #146
🔥 Back to the board. The Ramen Hustle is starting the week with the kind of overlooked opportunity that feels obvious only after someone else quietly builds a business around it.
When you put the hustle on the back burner for now
The hustle: The pallet nobody wants
Field note: One car turned into 213 cars
Trend: Tiny toys, huge chaos
Fresh find: A tattoo balm grew into $56M
Learn AI in 5 minutes a day
You don't have to scroll every AI thread, track every new tool, or watch every demo.
The Rundown AI breaks it all down for you — the latest AI news, tools, and tutorials in one free 5-minute email every morning.
Trusted by 2M+ professionals at Apple, Google, and NASA.
❌ The problem: Pallets are everywhere, but most businesses treat them like clutter. Warehouses, distributors, stores, and job sites constantly receive products on wood pallets, then have to figure out where the leftovers go. That creates a boring, recurring waste problem hiding in plain sight.
💡 The pitch: Build a simple pallet recycling route. Find businesses with unwanted pallets, move them quickly, and resell or broker them to buyers who need usable pallets. The business does not need a storefront, a big crew, or a fancy brand at the start. It needs local routes, fast communication, and a clear idea of which pallets have resale value.
🚀 The bigger opportunity: This looks like junk removal, but the better version is closer to local supply chain arbitrage. Pallets move with almost every physical product, and many small businesses do not want to manage the mess. A solo person can win by becoming the easy button between unwanted pallets and buyers who still need them.
Frank Shean is a good old-school example. Valley Pallet in Salinas, California started in 1987 “out of the back of a station wagon” by buying used pallets and recycling them for a produce company. That is the whole play in miniature: find one industry with constant pallet flow, then become useful enough that the route keeps expanding.
Larry Meyer’s story is another version. After being laid off from Union Pacific Railroad, he started refurbishing pallets in Omaha with a pickup truck, a hammer, and nails. What began as temporary income became Palleton, a regional pallet and wood packaging network across the Midwest. The early move was not glamorous. It was repairing and reselling something businesses already needed every day.
Palleton
The smaller side-hustle angle is still there. Tri County Pallet says it works with entrepreneurs who pick up and sell used wood pallets from lower-volume businesses like restaurants and convenience stores.
The math depends on the market, size, and condition. LA Pallet says monthly pickups of 200 pallets can generate roughly $600 to $1,600 in revenue for sellers. That suggests a solo route built around several small suppliers could become meaningful if the pickups are dense and the pallets are the right size.
A beginner could start with three buyer calls before picking up a single pallet. Call local pallet yards, recyclers, warehouses, and small manufacturers. Ask what sizes they buy, what they pay, what condition they require, and whether they accept drop-offs. Then build the route backward from demand.
The side-hustle plays are simple:
Small-business pickup route: restaurants, appliance shops, flooring stores, furniture stores, print shops.
Pallet yard arbitrage: collect small loads and sell into larger recyclers.
Repair-and-resell: fix broken stringers or deck boards and sell higher-grade pallets.
Niche pallet sourcing: find odd-size pallets for manufacturers that need specific dimensions.
Recurring pickup contracts: charge or collect for free from businesses that want the space cleared weekly.
Broker model: connect high-volume suppliers with buyers and take a spread without touching every pallet.
Rate this hustle:
Turn Your Opinions Into Profit
Join millions of traders putting their knowledge to work on real-world events—from inflation to elections. Buy “Yes” or “No” shares and earn if you’re right.
No house. Peer-to-peer. Cash out anytime.
Get a free $10 to start. Claim it and start trading now.
Trade responsibly.
The Turo Fleet in Hawaii
Business Insider
Win: A Hawaii pastor turned a Turo side hustle into 213 cars and $2.95 million in 2025 vehicle-rental revenue. His first booking was a $200 reservation, and the operation eventually grew beyond him doing day-to-day work.
Mistake: New car-rental operators often buy cars before they understand airport logistics, cleaning time, utilization, and damage risk.
Fix: He started with one vehicle, proved demand, then expanded into a fleet with employees and operational systems.
Opportunity: The small version is not “buy 200 cars.” It is “test one underused vehicle in a high-demand pocket.” Airports, tourist towns, college areas, and event cities create spikes. The real edge is fast turnover, clean handoffs, and pricing around demand windows.
Squishy Toy’s Can Make Bank
NeeDoh squishy toys are selling like concert tickets.
Axios reported that NeeDoh sales have more than tripled this year, and Schylling’s president said six months of inventory sold out in six weeks. Parents were literally lining up and camping out for restocks. That is a ridiculous amount of demand for a squishy toy.
The opportunity is not “make the next NeeDoh.” That is hard.
The easier play is riding the panic around it.
Every viral toy creates three buyer problems: parents do not know where it is in stock, kids want specific versions, and gift-givers need substitutes when the real thing is sold out. That opens the door for a scrappy content-commerce play.
The restock play: Build a local or national restock alert newsletter for viral toys. Monetize through affiliate links, sponsored toy shops, and paid SMS alerts.
The substitute play: Create “if NeeDoh is sold out, look here” guides with Amazon, Walmart, Target, Michaels, and specialty toy affiliate links.
The kit play: Sell DIY sensory toy kits for parents who want the activity plus the toy. Parents.com is already showing DIY squishy versions using balloons, flour, cornstarch, gel, glue, glitter, and beads.
Zoom out: viral toys are not just toy trends. They are parent search spikes. The person who helps parents find the thing, replace the thing, or recreate the thing can make money without inventing the thing.
/////////////////////////////
📱 David built a $12K/month app in five months with no coding experience and no investors, which is a useful little reminder that cloning a proven demand pattern with a sharper twist can beat waiting for genius.
🍫 Ghirardelli is worth studying because the brand’s durability came from one simple wedge: chocolate as a premium San Francisco souvenir before premium food brands were everywhere.
🧵 This post about Product Hunt, portfolio growth, and hitting massive monthly revenue is worth studying because the real lesson is stacking products instead of betting the farm on one launch.
📕 Contagious is still the book to grab when you need to understand why people share some ideas and ignore others with better information.
📹 CapCut is useful for scrappy content teams because it makes short-form video editing fast enough that “we need a clip” does not become a production meeting.
🥯 Einstein Bros. Bagels is worth studying because breakfast is a repeat-purchase battlefield, and the winners package speed, habit, and comfort into something commuters barely have to think about.
That’s a wrap for today. Thanks for reading!
🎯 Most people have no idea how close they are to replacing their rent (or mortgage). This calculator breaks it down for you in minutes so you can see exactly what it would take. Check out our free Replace Your Rent Calculator
📈 Looking for Stock Market insider news? Copy strategy from our favorite Finance Newsletters