This post is mainly for people who are starting out new in junk removal and still haven’t figured out their pricing structure yet. Junk haulers are actually a really helpful community overall, because we all know how hard it is to get started in this biz, and we respect anyone willing to put in the work. So it’s totally fine to ask for advice on how much to charge for a specific job. Just make sure that you ask the question in a way that can actually get you a useful answer. Here’s how.
You’ve seen the post a thousand times. Maybe you’ve written it yourself.
“Hey guys, got a cleanout coming up. 3-bedroom house, pretty full. What would you charge?”
And the replies roll in. $500. $2,000. $750. $3,500. Somebody says “depends.” Somebody else says “charge what you’re worth.” A third guy posts a crying-laughing emoji and moves on.
You close the thread more confused than when you opened it.
Here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: those posts are almost impossible to answer honestly. Not because the group doesn’t want to help. Most of us do. But because the question, as asked, is missing about 80% of the information needed to give a real answer. Jason Bulgin recently made this point in the Junk Removal Community group on Facebook, and I wanted to share the advice here with a practical template for any beginning haulers.
Why “What would you charge?” is the wrong question
Imagine calling your mechanic and saying: “My car is making a noise. How much to fix it?”
He’d hang up on you. Or he’d quote you something so wide it’s useless. “Anywhere from $50 to $5,000 depending on what it is.”
Pricing a cleanout is the same. The guys answering your post don’t know:
- How you’re structured
- How many crew you run
- What kind of trucks and trailers you have
- What your dump fees actually look like in your market
- What your daily overhead is
- What profit margin you need to hit to stay in business
- Whether you sort or toss
- Whether you own or rent your equipment
- Whether you charge by the hour, by the truckload, or flat-rate
A guy in Virginia with a two-man crew, one truck, and $180 dump fees is working a completely different business than a guy in California with four crews, three trucks, a sorting yard, and $450 dump fees. If the Virginia guy tells the California guy “I’d charge $800 for that job,” he might be off by $1,500.
So if you actually want useful answers, you have to give people something to work with.
The template
Next time you need pricing input, post this instead.
Your operation
- Location: City and state. Regional pricing varies more than most people realize.
- Crew size: How many guys, including yourself.
- Trucks and trailers: What you’re running. Dump truck? Pickup with trailer? Box truck?
- Dump fees in your area: Your actual per-ton or per-load cost.
- Daily overhead: Rough number. Truck payments, insurance, fuel, labor, admin. What does it cost you to roll out the gate each morning?
- How you price: Hourly, truckload volume, flat rate, or some mix.
- Target margin: What profit you’re trying to hit on jobs like this.
The job
- Property type: Single-family home, apartment, storage unit, garage, commercial.
- Square footage or room count: Enough for people to picture the scale.
- Access: First floor? Third-floor walkup? Driveway? Elevator? Long carry from the curb?
- Estimated volume: How many truckloads you think it’ll take. Even a rough guess helps.
- Type of material: General household, estate cleanout, hoarder situation, construction debris, yard waste, or mixed.
- Sort or toss: Are you sorting for donation/recycling/resale, or is it all going to the dump?
- Disposal complications: Mattresses, tires, e-waste, hazardous materials, or anything with special dump fees.
- Drive time: From your yard to the job, and from the job to the dump.
What you’re thinking
- Your initial quote number: What you were going to charge before you posted.
- What’s making you second-guess it: Too high? Too low? Unsure about the volume? Worried about access?
Then ask the question.
What a good post looks like
Here’s the difference in practice.
Before:
“3-bedroom cleanout next week. Full house. What would you charge?”
After:
“Quoting a 3-bedroom estate cleanout in Richmond, VA next Tuesday. I run a two-man crew, one 16-foot dump truck. Dump fees here are about $85/ton. Daily overhead is around $400. I flat-rate most jobs and aim for a 40% margin.
The house is a single-story ranch, maybe 1,800 sq ft. Driveway access, no stairs. Estimating 3 truckloads based on the walkthrough. Mostly furniture, clothes, and general household. Family wants us to set aside a few items for donation. Two mattresses and an old fridge (I’ll have to pull the freon tag or pay the extra fee). Dump is 25 minutes from the job.
I was thinking $1,400. Feels a little light to me because of the donation sorting and the fridge, but I don’t want to scare them off. Where would you land?”
One of those posts gets you eye rolls. The other one gets you a real conversation.
Why this is worth the extra two minutes
When you post the vague version, three things happen:
- You get useless numbers that might be way off for your market
- Experienced operators scroll past because it’s not worth their time to dig
- The advice you do get is based on assumptions that don’t match your operation
When you post the detailed version, you’re doing the hard part for everyone else. You’ve thought through your job and your numbers. You’re not asking someone to do your job for you, you’re asking them to sanity-check your thinking. That’s a question pros are happy to answer.
And here’s the quiet benefit nobody mentions: by the time you finish writing the detailed post, you’ll probably have your own answer. Laying out your crew cost, your dump fees, your margin target, and your load estimate tends to clarify the number pretty fast. Half the time people never even need to hit “post.”
That’s the real trick. The template isn’t just a way to get better answers from the group. It’s a pricing process you can run on every job, with or without an audience.
Use it next time. You’ll get real answers. Or you won’t need them.
