Junk Removal Pricing Guide: Volume Sold, Weight Billed

Short answer: A junk removal pricing guide has to reconcile two units, because you sell volume and you buy weight. A 12 by 8 by 4 ft body holds 14.2 cubic yards, so a half load is 7.1. The same 7.1 yards ticketed at 1,180 lb on a garage cleanout and 4,640 lb on a bathroom demo. Cost ran $247.28 against $635.76, so the identical fraction has to price near $412 and $1,060.

Volume is what the customer can see and agree to, so volume is what gets sold. Weight is what prints on the scale ticket two hours later, and it is the only number the transfer station cares about. Every dollar this trade loses sits in the space between those two units. What follows is how to size your own fractions, how to guess the tonnage before you commit, and one half load priced under two completely different sets of contents.

What is a truck fraction actually measuring?

Space in your specific body, which means the first thing to do is measure it rather than repeat somebody else’s numbers.

Inside length times width times usable side height, divided by 27. A 12 by 8 by 4 ft dump body is 384 cubic feet, or 14.2 cubic yards. From there the fractions are arithmetic.

Fraction	Cubic yards	What it looks like
1/8	1.8	A couple of pieces of furniture, a few boxes
1/4	3.6	A small bedroom’s contents
1/2	7.1	A single-bay garage cleared to the walls
3/4	10.7
Full	14.2	Level with the sides

Two decisions belong to you and should be written down. Does “full” mean level with the sides or heaped above them, and are you selling the space or the space after your crew breaks things down? A sectional that fills a quarter of the body intact fills an eighth once it is cut apart, and the customer who watched you do that will expect the lower number.

Paint a line inside the body at each fraction. The crew and the customer then look at the same mark, and the fraction stops being a conversation.

Why does the same half load weigh 1,180 lb one day and 4,640 lb the next?

Because volume says nothing at all about density, and the spread across the materials this trade actually hauls is more than an order of magnitude. The EPA publishes standard volume-to-weight conversion factors used for waste reporting, and they make the point immediately.

Material	EPA factor, lb per cubic yard
Trash bags, loose	35
Carpet	147
Wood — dimensional lumber, treated	169
Metal — ferrous and non-ferrous	225
Mixed MSW, residential, uncompacted	250–300
Mixed construction and demolition debris	417
Gypsum board	467
Asphalt paving	773
Concrete	860
Dirt and sand	929
Rock and gravel	999

Note what is not in that table: there is no row for bulky household furniture, which is the single most common thing this trade hauls. Nobody is going to hand you a factor for a sofa.

So the field correction matters more here than the anchor, because a real load is never one material. The garage cleanout below ticketed at 166 lb per cubic yard, well under the residential MSW figure, because a garage load is mostly void — a sofa, a mattress and stacked lawn chairs trap air that the MSW number assumes compacted away. The demo load ticketed at 653 lb per cubic yard, half again the generic C&D factor, because a mortar bed, wall tile and a cast iron tub sit nearer the gypsum and asphalt end of the table than the mixed-debris middle.

Use the EPA table as your starting anchor, then replace each row with your own scale tickets by load type. You already pay for those tickets, so the data is free — it just has to be written down next to what was in the truck.

How do I turn a pile into a tonnage before I quote it?

Three steps, in this order, and none of them can be skipped on a heavy job.

Name the dominant material class first. Estimate the fraction second. Multiply by your own pounds per cubic yard for that class third. A quarter load of household goods and a quarter load of tile are the same picture and a $200 difference in disposal.

Then put the assumption on the estimate in writing: the fraction, the assumed tonnage, and an overage rate per hundred pounds or per ton above it. That single line converts the worst surprise in the trade into a billable adjustment the customer already agreed to. It also gives you a reason to ask the question that saves the job — “is any of this plaster, tile, dirt or concrete?” — before a price leaves your mouth.

Never quote a demolition load by volume alone. If you cannot see what is under the top layer of a basement pile, quote the removal by the hour plus disposal at cost, and say so.

What has to leave the volume price and get its own line?

Anything with its own facility, its own certification or its own per-piece fee at the gate. These are not part of a fraction and they should never be buried in one.

• Refrigerant appliances. Under EPA’s Section 608 refrigerant management program, the final disposer of small appliances such as refrigerators and window air conditioners must ensure and document that the refrigerant was recovered before disposal, and technician certification is required to dispose of larger appliances. That is a recovery step, a record and a specific facility. Charge it per unit.
• Tires. Per tire, and most transfer stations cap how many they will take in a load.
• Paint. Latex and oil-based go different places. Oil-based is household hazardous waste with its own site and its own opening hours, which usually means a second trip.
• Electronics and CRTs. State e-waste programs price per unit or per pound, and a tube television is the worst weight-to-value ratio you will ever carry.
• Mattresses. A per-piece fee at the gate, plus a recycling council fee in the states that run one.
• Propane cylinders, batteries, fluorescent tubes and smoke detectors. Each has a separate handling path.

And one category is not a revenue line at all. Asbestos-suspect material, drums of unknown liquid, medical or biological waste, and anything leaking are refusals, in writing, on the spot. Hauling them is a liability you cannot price and are not permitted to carry.

What breaks the fraction before anything is loaded?

Crew-hours, which volume does not carry either. The same 7.1 cubic yards can be an hour of work or four.

Stairs and floors. Carry distance from the pile to the tailgate. A loading dock that has to be booked, or an elevator that has to be padded. Nowhere to park, which means a shuttle. Disassembly — a bed frame, a sectional wider than the door, a treadmill, a shed, a hot tub. Weight per piece, since a cast iron tub is a four-person item and a dresser is a two-person item. Mud, ice and a basement with no working light.

Each of these belongs on the estimate as a named condition, not as a mood you got into afterward. The document side of that is in what to include on an invoice.

What does the same half truck cost on two different jobs?

Both loads are 7.1 cubic yards. Both are sold as “half a truck.” Two crew on both. The crew rate, truck rate and gate rates below are one operator’s numbers in one market — tipping fees in particular swing by a factor of three between regions, so treat the structure as the method and substitute your own figures.

Load A — garage cleanout. Sofa, mattress, thirty boxes of household goods, plastic bins, a bike, stacked lawn chairs. Ground level, garage door open, 20 ft carry, nothing taken apart.

Load B — basement bathroom demo. Cast iron tub, plaster and lath, wall tile with the mortar bed, a vanity, and the floor in bags. Up thirteen stairs, 60 ft to street parking, tub cut in half with a reciprocating saw.

	Load A	Load B
Volume	7.1 yd³	7.1 yd³
Scale ticket	1,180 lb (0.59 ton)	4,640 lb (2.32 ton)
Gate and rate	MSW, $92/ton	C&D, $118/ton
Disposal	$54.28	$273.76
Special-item fees	Mattress, $25.00	—
On-site crew hours	1.8	6.2
Crew at $38 loaded	$68.40	$235.60
Drive and scale time, both crew	1.4 hr = $53.20	1.8 hr = $68.40
Truck and trailer at $29/hr	1.6 hr = $46.40	2.0 hr = $58.00
Total cost	$247.28	$635.76
Price at a 40% margin	247.28 ÷ 0.60 = $412	635.76 ÷ 0.60 = $1,060

Gate charges are 26 percent of Load B’s price and, counting the mattress fee alongside the tonnage, 19 percent of Load A’s. And the trap is easy to see once it is written out: a rate card reading “half load, $425” collects $425 on Load B against $635.76 of cost. That is $211 lost before the truck gets home, on a job the crew worked six hours.

The margin arithmetic deserves the same care. Adding 40 percent markup to Load B’s cost gives $890, which is a 28.6 percent margin — $170 short. Markup goes on top of cost. Margin comes out of price. Divide by one minus the margin.

What is a published half-truck price worth?

Very little without the truck’s dimensions next to it. A company advertising a half load may be selling 5 cubic yards out of a 10-yard body while you are selling 7.1 out of 14.2, and tipping fees vary by region more than almost any other input in this trade. Scope differs too: some prices include one appliance, some include stairs, most include neither.

Treat published ranges as a check after your own number is built. If your figure lands far outside the local market, look at your tip fee, your crew-hour cost and your truck utilization before you move your price to match somebody whose costs you cannot see.

What do I have to record after the scale ticket prints?

Four things per job, and all four take a photograph. The pile before it moves. The load against the painted fraction line in the body. The scale ticket. The receipt for every special-item fee at the gate.

Do that consistently and the density table in the second section becomes yours instead of the EPA’s, which is worth more to this business than any pricing advice.

Keel is an iOS app built for exactly that pile, and it never leaves the phone — no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. Photograph the scale ticket at the gate and the fuel and dump receipts wherever you are; Apple Intelligence reads them on the device, and they land where you can find them, which is the whole point of a contractor receipt organizer. Every run to the transfer station logs as mileage, and on a two-dump day that is real money — the rules are in how to track mileage for taxes. The invoice goes out from the curb in about a minute with your own numbering, logo, brand color and a payment link as a QR code, and a filled-in one is walked through in junk removal invoice example. Freeboard shows cash minus tax reserve, minus committed invoices, minus a buffer, which is the number that matters in a business where a big week of gross can still be a losing week after the gate. Free covers unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

Should junk removal be priced by volume or by weight?

Sell volume, cost it by weight. Customers can look at a truck and agree to a fraction, but the transfer station bills by the ton, so a fraction quoted without a material class is a guess at your largest variable cost. Quote the fraction, state the assumed tonnage on the estimate, and add an overage rate per hundred pounds above it.

How many cubic yards is a half truck of junk?

It depends entirely on your body. Measure inside length by width by usable side height and divide by 27. A 12 by 8 by 4 ft body is 384 cubic feet, or 14.2 cubic yards, which makes a half load 7.1. Competitors advertising “half a truck” may be selling half of something considerably smaller.

How do I estimate the weight of a load before quoting?

Name the dominant material, estimate the fraction, then multiply by pounds per cubic yard for that class. The EPA’s standard factors are a starting anchor — 169 for wood, 417 for mixed C&D, 860 for concrete — but note that EPA publishes no factor for bulky household furniture, and real loads rarely match a single row anyway. Replace them with your own scale tickets as they accumulate.

Why do junk removal companies charge extra for appliances and mattresses?

Because both carry a fee outside the tonnage. Refrigerators and window air conditioners require documented refrigerant recovery before disposal, which means a certified step and a specific facility. Mattresses carry a per-piece gate fee and, in some states, a recycling program fee. Neither belongs inside a volume price where it silently reduces the margin on every load.

What junk can I refuse to haul?

Anything you are not permitted to carry: asbestos-suspect material, drums or containers of unknown liquid, medical and biological waste, and anything actively leaking. Refuse in writing at the job rather than sorting it out at the gate. Oil-based paint, tires, electronics and propane are not refusals but are separate lines with their own facilities and often a second trip.

How much do stairs and carry distance add to a junk removal price?

They add crew-hours, which is the half of the cost that volume never captures. In the example above, the same 7.1 cubic yards took 1.8 crew-hours from an open garage and 6.2 crew-hours up thirteen stairs with 60 ft of carry and a tub cut apart on site. Price the hours, and name the stairs and the carry on the estimate before the truck rolls.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.