How junk removal is priced

You quoted a quarter truck for $225 and loaded it in forty minutes. Then the mattress came off at one counter, the tires at another, the fridge waited on someone to recover the refrigerant, and the paint rode home with you: the county hazardous waste site takes drop-offs from residents, not haulers.

You sell space in a truck. You get billed by weight, per item, and per stop.

The truck is the price list

Junk removal sells fractions of a truck bed because the bed is what the customer can see. The common junk-removal box truck runs around 13 to 18 cubic yards — the widely-copied national-franchise bed is about 10 by 8 by 5 feet, near 15 — and dump trailers vary more than that. Measure your own bed rather than trusting a number in an article, then cut it into a minimum, a quarter, a half, three-quarters and full. Your crew hour is buried inside those tiers, so work it out from your own overhead first: a fraction of the truck has to earn more than that fraction costs to get rid of.

Two quarter loads, and only one of them made money

Both loads are about four cubic yards, both quoted at the same tier.

Every dollar figure below is a placeholder, including the $225 tier price. Disposal costs are set locally and vary by a large multiple. The Environmental Research and Education Foundation put the 2024 national average landfill tipping fee near $62 a ton: the Northeast in the mid-$80s, the South Central states in the mid-$40s, and sites in Alaska and around some coastal metros well past $120. Transfer stations charge more again. Use your own facility's current rate sheet — the shape of the comparison transfers, the figures do not.

Same volume, same price, and only one paid for the crew time. The fix is line items: each surcharge covers the fee plus the detour it forces. At the placeholder costs above — $35 a mattress piece, $75 for the fridge, $40 for the TV, $20 a tire — Load B quotes at $490. And Load A shows why small loads are worth combining: 820 pounds still paid the full one-ton minimum.

The items that get billed twice

Handled apart from the main load nearly everywhere, though the amounts are local:

• Mattresses and box springs. Each piece is its own fee at most facilities, but check your state. California, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Oregon run mandatory stewardship programs, paid for by a fee charged when the mattress is sold, so drop-off at a participating site is free there, within per-visit limits and site rules. Your surcharge in those states pays for the detour and the handling, not a tip fee — say so when a customer asks.
• Tires and electronics. Most states bar whole tires from landfills, so they price per tire, often at a yard across town. Roughly half the states ban covered electronics from landfill too, and CRT televisions and monitors are the priciest line on most e-waste sheets, because leaded glass needs a specialty processor. Published fees commonly run $20–$50 and rise with screen size.
• Appliances with refrigerant — fridges, freezers, window AC units, dehumidifiers. Section 608 of the federal Clean Air Act prohibits knowingly venting refrigerant; it has to be recovered before the unit is scrapped. Two details get misreported. Technician certification is not required for small appliances — the factory-sealed, five-pounds-or-less units that cover almost everything a hauler picks up — though the recovery equipment itself must be EPA-certified. And the duty lands on the final disposer: the scrap yard or landfill has to recover the refrigerant, or hold a signed statement that someone already did. So either the yard does it and bills you, or you hand over paperwork; ask which before you quote a fridge.
• Paint, solvents, chemicals and fuel. County household hazardous waste sites are typically residents-only and explicitly refuse business and contractor loads, so the paint you carried off may be a load you cannot legally hand in — the customer has to take it themselves. The exception: PaintCare runs free architectural-paint drop-off in twelve states and DC, generally open to contractors as well as residents, within per-visit limits. Elsewhere, ask your county about dried-out latex. Many let you dry it and bin it; California presumes latex hazardous and will not let you dry it out without a permit.
• Things no one takes on a normal load. Propane and other pressurized tanks, loose lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries, fluorescent tubes, and anything that might contain asbestos — old floor tile, pipe wrap, popcorn ceiling. Asbestos is not a surcharge item at all: it is licensed abatement work, and a liability you are not insured for. Refuse it in writing, in the quote, before the crew arrives and gets asked nicely.

Mixed household junk runs in the low hundreds of pounds per cubic yard. EPA's conversion factors put loose residential waste around 225 to 300 lb, and furniture-heavy loads come in lighter. Construction debris, dirt, concrete and roofing weigh several times that: a half truck of tear-off outruns a full truck of furniture on the scale, often at a different facility and rate. Do not lean on published averages. Write the fraction and the ticket weight on every job for a month, and your own numbers will beat them.

Keeping the tiers and the surcharges in one place

Your tiers and surcharges are two short lists that have to survive a busy Tuesday. In DoneQuote you paste in the price sheet you already have and it becomes your catalog: the mattress fee you worked out is the fee that goes out, and one edit changes it everywhere.

Quote from photos, not from the driveway

Ask for two photos, one from the doorway with something in frame for scale and one wide. Then three questions:

1. Anything above in the pile: mattresses, tires, appliances, TVs, paint, propane, batteries?
2. Construction debris, dirt or concrete? Anything to take apart, like a shed or a hot tub? How old is the building?
3. Stairs or elevator, and how far can a truck park from the door?

Quote the tier and the surcharges as separate lines, and say in writing that the price holds for what the photos show: anything past that is repriced before loading. Once the fridge is on the truck, you own the fee.

Put the same fees on your website, a dozen lines in whole dollars. A fee the customer read on your site last week is a price; the same fee announced in the driveway is a hustle. When someone pushes, give the real reason, which is not the same everywhere. Where the facility bills per piece, say so. Where drop-off is free under a state program, say that it cannot ride in the same load and the separate stop is what they are paying for. A customer who checks and finds you called a free program a recycler fee will not believe the rest of your sheet.