Chris Dorsey In the second year of The Recession, construction is off, way off, so Chris Dorsey’s roll–off containers aren’t filling up with construction debris like two years ago. His company has 200 roll–off containers, five trucks and seven drivers. Still, for his first four years into the company’s five–year plan, the roll–off container business has exceeded projections.

Then there’s the Big Red Box service and its POD (portable on demand) mobile storage. Instead of loading a truck or a SUV and taking the furniture to a rented storage unit, where it has to be unloaded, the customer can have the Big Red Box placed in the yard to be filled over several days, and Dorsey’s truck comes by to cart it off to a storage warehouse or to the customer’s new house. Or the Big Red Box is a temporary storage unit while the house is being renovated. Dorsey can do it all.

Chris Dorsey was born in Columbia. His father was in Bangkok at the time, serving in the military. His mother Margaret Harrelson worked in the Thomas Cooper Library at USC and also managed properties for Columbia’s J. Donald Dial Sr. His younger brother Jimmy is the talk show host for The Zone, an ESPN radio program from 3 until 6 in the afternoon on 93.1 FM.

After elementary school at Seven Oaks, Dorsey went through Irmo Middle and Irmo High School. In high school he was an All–State point guard on the basketball team, and he was good in baseball, good enough to score a scholarship at Anderson Junior College and later at USC–Aiken.

Dorsey’s USC–Aiken baseball team had a 60–7 record. Dorsey took that record into the New York Mets minor league teams in Kingsport, Tennessee, and St. Lucie, Florida, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In the off–season, the fall semesters, Dorsey moved back to Columbia to take courses in sports management at USC, where he graduated.

After almost three years in professional baseball, after it was clear he was not headed for “The Show,” Dorsey became a sales representative for United Resin, an adhesives company. He marketed

his adhesives line along the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to New Orleans.

Then Dorsey connected with the machines that took in the adhesives. The Nordson Company brought Dorsey back to Columbia, where he was responsible for the Carolinas and Georgia.

About the time he began with Nordson, Dorsey began in residential real estate as a developer and as his own contractor. His first house buyer was Eddie Wells, who bought Motor Supply, the Gervais Street restaurant begun by the Nord family, as in the Nordson Company.

Over a 10–year period up until today, Dorsey probably bought, renovated, and flipped about 40 downtown Columbia houses a year, 400 altogether.

As he learned how to discard his construction debris, Dorsey got himself into the solid waste management business. With him are Coley Brown Jr. (as in Columbia Athletic Club) and Brown’s wife Ellen. Both Browns have master’s degrees in finance, and Coley handles the operations while his wife takes care of the books. Dorsey is the marketing man.

The company is building a new warehouse off Bluff Road to house the storage boxes for Big Red Box. The next opportunity for expansion might be installing and servicing garbage compactors or maybe front–loaders or maybe both.

Dorsey and his wife April have two boys: Cannon (5) and Grant (7), both enrolled at Rosewood Elementary.

Dorsey wants to share his admiration for the men who coach his boys in sports. And his parting advice: Never buy a used truck.