Editor's note: American Way's profile on Billy Mays was completed and went to press prior to Mays's unfortunate passing on June 28, 2009. American Way extends its condolences to Mays's family.

Infomercial guru extraordinaire and Pitchmen star Billy Mays has made a fortune hawking household cleaners and cooking supplies. What’s next for this one-man brand?

Illustration by QuickHoney



He could sell even before he was this guy -- this black-bearded, blue-shirted, barrel-shaped, loudmouthed TV pitchman who incessantly, emphatically introduces himself with the line, “Hi, Billy Mays here!” He could sell when he was just Bill Mays, an 18-year-old high school linebacker from McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, a town of aging iron and steel plants, lumber mills, and castings factories. He could sell, even when the product was garbage.

Actually, it was garbage removal. Mays’s dad ran a trucking company that once made some coin by hauling miscellaneous hazardous waste.

“This was around 1976,” recalls the now 50-year-old Mays, who has amassed a fortune on his way to becoming the nation’s most famous commercial pitchman. “Nobody knew what this waste stuff really was; there were no regulations then. So we would offer to haul the drums, the solids, the liquids. And here I was, just 18. But somehow, I got up the nerve to get in there and sit in front of the head of U.S. Chemicals and say, ‘Hi, I’m Bill Mays. I’m here to tell you about our service.’ I called myself Bill then, and I had a real monotone sales pitch.”