How a carpenter went from bankrupt to financially independent with a novel business of renting dirt
Source: Business Insider ·
Chris Long turned a contractor's storage problem into a business that made him financially independent.
From the source
Chris Long, the CEO & Founder of Longyards, and his daughter at the Ottawa yard grand opening in 2019.Courtesy of Chris LongChris Long turned a problem he faced as a contractor — not enough storage — into a business.His company, Longyards, rents storage yards to contractors and other businesses on a month-to-month basis.He's expanded to four locations in Canada and the US, with more in the pipeline.Chris Long ran into a problem while running his construction company in Ottawa, Canada: He had bulky equipment but nowhere to store it.So he built the kind of place he wished existed.Long, 38, is the founder and CEO of Longyards, a company that rents secure outdoor storage yards to contractors and other businesses on a month-to-month basis. Customers can park work vehicles, containers, equipment, and materials behind a gate instead of signing a long warehouse lease."We brought this self-storage model to dirt," Long told Business Insider.As of 2026, Long operates four locations: the…
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