What to charge for junk removal
Price it from four things: the cubic yards the job takes up in your truck, the hours your crew is on it, the trips, and what the dump charges, which may be by weight and not by size. Add them up, pick a price above that, and divide by the cubic yards.
By TailGateBid. .
Half a load of what truck?
If you sell this work by the share of a truck, a quarter load or a half, nothing here says to stop. It is a fair way to talk to a customer, because they can see it.
But a share is only a size once the truck is measured. Half of a small pickup bed and half of a tall dump trailer are very different piles, and very different trips to the scale.
So measure your own once. The boxes below turn its length, its width and the height you stack to into cubic yards, and from then on a half load is a number you can price.
The sum
- Length times width times the height you stack to, all in feet, divided by 27, is the cubic yards in a full load.
- The share of it this job fills is the job's cubic yards. That is the size that goes on the quote.
- Count everyone's hours: carrying out, loading, the drive to the dump, the line at the scale, unloading.
- If the dump charges by weight: the cubic yards, times the pounds in one, divided by 2,000, is the tons. Tons times what a ton costs is the fee.
- The hours at what an hour costs you, plus the fee, plus the trips, is what the job costs you. Pick a price above it and divide by the cubic yards.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the truck bed
These boxes turn your truck bed or trailer into cubic yards, take the share this job fills, and work out the hours and what the dump will charge by weight. All of it goes in the calculator below.
To the top of the sides, or to where you tarp it.
Half a load is 50, a quarter is 25. Leave it empty for a full load.
Leave it empty if you work alone.
Carrying out, loading, the drive to the dump, the line at the scale, unloading.
From your own dump tickets: the pounds on a ticket divided by the cubic yards you hauled. Leave it empty if your dump charges by the load.
The rate on its sign. A fee by the load goes in the box for anything else, below.
Type the length, the width and the height of your load. The cubic yards show here.
Two people for a day of 8 hours is 16.
A rental, dump fees, a sub.
Type the size of the job to see a price for each cubic yard.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your hours and what an hour costs you, or your materials. The answer shows here.
Half a trailer, worked through
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say your trailer is 12 feet long and 6 wide and you stack it 3 feet high: 216 cubic feet, which is 8 cubic yards when it is full. Say a garage fills 50 of every 100 of it: 4 cubic yards. Say 2 people are on it for 2.5 hours each, with the run to the dump: 5 hours, which at $57.05 an hour is $285.25. Say loads like this one have weighed 300 pounds a cubic yard on your own tickets: 1,200 pounds, 0.6 of a ton, and the dump charges $60 a ton: $36. Say the trips cost you $55. The job costs you $376.25. Charge $538 and you keep $161.75, which is $30 of every $100. That is $134.50 a cubic yard.
The same half load at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $419 | $42.75 | $10 |
| $471 | $94.75 | $20 |
| $538 | $161.75 | $30 |
| $628 | $251.75 | $40 |
| $753 | $376.75 | $50 |
Why a guess at the weight costs you
- The same pile can weigh very different amounts. The EPA's table of conversion factors puts a cubic yard of carpet at 147 pounds, of mixed trash that has not been compacted at 250 to 300, of gypsum board at 467, of construction and demolition debris in bulk at 484, of roofing at 731, of concrete at 860 and of dirt and sand at 929: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Volume-to-Weight Conversion Factors (April 2016).
- Read across that line. A load of old drywall weighs more than three times what the same load of old carpet does, and a load of dirt more than six times. The pile looks the same in the trailer. At a dump that charges by the ton, the fee does not.
- The table has no figure for furniture or for a mattress, and its figures are for planning, not for your loads. Your own dump tickets are the record. Divide the pounds on a ticket by the cubic yards you hauled that day, and keep one figure for each kind of load you take: a house clean-out, a remodel, a yard.
- Some things are counted, not measured. The same table puts one refrigerator at 250 pounds. Ask your dump what it charges for by the piece, and put each of those on the quote as its own line.
What gets missed
- The run to the dump. It is a drive, a wait and an unloading, for everyone in the truck. It belongs in the hours, and its miles belong in the trips: what a trip costs you.
- Where the junk is. A pile at the curb and the same pile in a basement are not the same hours. Ask before you quote, or look.
- What the dump will not take, or charges more for. This page does not say what that is where you work: ask the dump, and ask your town.
- The one-item job. A single couch fills little of the truck and still costs the whole trip. That is the sum under a minimum, and the trip page works it out.
- The truck. If it is not already in what your hour costs, it has an hour of its own: what an hour of your machine costs you.
On a quote
A line on a TailGateBid quote is charged by something that grows with the job, and a cubic yard and a load both do. Whatever the dump charges for by the piece can be a line of its own beside it. How quotes work.
If the hour you price with is still a guess, work out what an hour costs you first. And if what you haul in the fall is mostly leaves, that job is sized by the lot: what to charge for leaf removal.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
- A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. That is how feet of length and width, and a depth, become cubic yards.
- A ton is 2,000 pounds. That is how the pounds of a load become the tons a dump bills by.
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.
This page is about one kind of job. TailGateBid works for any trade, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.
Sources
Related
- Trip and minimum chargeIn the example, a job 25 minutes away costs $93.92 before any work is done. See what your smallest job costs with the trip in it.
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- What a machine costs an hourIn the example, a machine that works 500 hours a year costs $26.60 for each of them, before anyone is paid to run it.
- Leaf removalFrom the lot, the crew, the visits and the loads to a price for each 1,000 square feet cleared.
- QuotesOptions, add-ons and a signature on your customer's own phone.
Put the hauling on a TailGateBid quote by the cubic yard or by the load, and send it while you are still in the garage.
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