Gum Buster
Washington, D.C.

Duane Cummins isn’t a gumshoe. In fact, gummy shoes are his nemesis. Having started out in the dry cleaning business, he traded random spots for gum removal five years ago. Now customers abound, particularly those who run tourist attractions, train stations, courthouses, and universities. He charges by the square foot and by how much gum infects the area. To date his biggest job was a bus station in Maryland that took three weeks to degum. Duane’s secret weapon is an environmentally safe gum cart engineered to produce hot steam with little pressure. It heats the gum to 300°F, using 96 percent dry steam mixed with a special cleaning agent that dissolves the gum. Duane has four of these devices, as well as a generator, and two employees. Typically the sticky season lasts from March through December.