How to Price Junk Removal in 2026: By Load Size, With the Dump Fee Built In

Price by load size, with your dump fee built in

Price junk removal by how much of your truck the load fills, and put your local dump fee inside every price. We opened 13 city and county rate pages on October 22, 2026. Dump fees ran from $30 a ton in Albuquerque to $243.38 a ton in King County, Washington, which is $60 against $487 to dump the same two-ton truck.

That gap is why a price list copied from another town can lose money. For scale, Two Men and a Truck in Lansing, Michigan listed a full truck at $599 on October 22, 2026, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK puts its 2025 averages for a half to a full truck at $600 to $1,099. Your chart has to start from your dump, not theirs.

Consumer cost guides tell homeowners what to expect to pay. This guide is for the hauler: what the dump bills you, what a load costs to move, and what is left. Haulers mix four pricing models:

Housecall Pro, which sells field service software, calls load size "the most common model for junk removal" and warns that "profitable pricing always starts with your numbers, not industry averages." The rest of this post builds a load-size chart from your numbers.

Dump fees in 13 places run from $30 to $243 a ton

Each row is from the city or county's own rate page, opened October 22, 2026, cheapest to most expensive per ton.

Four things on those pages change what a load costs you:

• Minimums. They run from $10 in Orange County to $98 for a large load in Fairfax County, or $109 for a large load of construction debris. A small job pays the minimum, not the weight.
• Uncovered loads. Eight of the 13 pages add a fee for a load that is not covered or secured: $5.54 at Albuquerque's landfill, $20 in Phoenix, $20 or $25 in Snohomish County, $25 in King County, $40 in Dallas, $50 in San Diego, and a double fee in Orange and Larimer counties.
• Flat rates by vehicle. San Diego lists flat city-waste fees of $75 for a pickup with a payload under one ton and $148 for a box truck, which it charges to vehicles with no tare weight on file. Larimer County lists $37 for a residential pickup or cargo van with no side planks and nothing above the cab, and $13.25 a cubic yard plus a Colorado surcharge for other vehicles, with a 2 cubic yard minimum. Ask each dump which rate your truck pays.
• Which dump. Dallas lists $71.28 a ton plus 8.25% sales tax at its Bachman transfer station and $45.78 at the McCommas Bluff landfill, each plus $4 in fees.

Weigh your loads, because the dump charges by the ton

A load size is how much room the pile takes. The dump bills what it weighs. EPA's 2016 conversion table puts loose mixed trash at 250 to 300 pounds a cubic yard and mixed construction debris at 417. College HUNKS describes its truck as 11 feet long, 8 wide, and 5 tall, which works out to about 16 cubic yards. The arithmetic:

• A full 16-yard truck of loose mixed trash is 4,000 to 4,800 pounds, or 2.0 to 2.4 tons.
• A full truck of mixed construction debris is about 6,700 pounds, or 3.3 tons.

The table uses 250 pounds a yard, the low end of that range, so a half truck weighs about a ton and a quarter truck about half a ton. It is the dump bill for one load, before minimums:

Debris changes the math. San Diego charges $241 a ton for construction debris against $102 for general refuse, both for waste from inside the city, so a 3.3-ton truck of debris costs about $804 to dump there, against $204 for two tons of trash. College HUNKS prices construction debris by volume and weight, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK prices dirt, concrete, and gravel by volume, up to a maximum of one foot in height for a full truck. The only weight that counts is the scale ticket, so collect every one for a month and use your own average.

What published price lists charge for each load size

College HUNKS and Junk King publish no price list on their pricing pages. College HUNKS says you'll always get a free, no-obligation estimate, and Junk King gives a free written estimate on site. Two Men and a Truck's Lansing office and a locally owned Denver hauler do publish prices, and we read both lists on October 22, 2026. Two Men and a Truck adds that some items carry additional fees. A "full" load is not the same truck everywhere, so the table shows the size.

Compare price per cubic yard, not the word "full." Lansing's full truck is up to 15 cubic yards for $599, about $40 a yard. Denver's full load is 8 cubic yards for $595, about $74 a yard. Both charge more per yard on small loads, which helps a small job cover the trip: Lansing's quarter truck is about $71 a yard and Denver's is $112.50.

1-800-GOT-JUNK lists 2025 averages of $107 to $396 for loads up to a quarter truck, $396 to $600 for a quarter to a half, and $600 to $1,099 for a half to a full truck, and says its price includes "all the lifting, loading, cleanup, and any disposal fees." Its single-item averages are $101 for a mattress, $125 for a sofa, $130 for a refrigerator, and $431 for a piano. LoadUp prices by item plus one area service fee per pickup: in its sample for ZIP code 30312, a $30 couch and a $35 queen mattress plus a $59 fee came to $124.

The same half truck pays very differently from county to county

Here is one half-truck job run through three of the dumps above: a ton of junk, a two-person crew for two and a half hours, and 40 miles of driving. Every number except the dump rate is an example, so replace it with yours. Everything but the dump costs the same in all three places:

• Crew: 2 people for 2.5 hours at $25 an hour is $125.00.
• Truck and fuel: 40 miles at 76 cents is $30.40.
• Insurance: $662 a month spread over 60 loads is $11.03.

That is $166.43 before the dump. Add each place's dump bill:

The price that leaves 35% is $313 in Wake County, $407 in Fairfax County, and $630 in King County. The King County loss depends on weight. At EPA's 138 pounds a yard for uncompacted commercial waste, an 8-yard half truck weighs 1,104 pounds, King County's dump bill is about $134, and the $399 leaves about $100.

Where the example numbers come from: Housecall Pro uses $25 an hour for each person on a two-person crew and a 35% margin in its own add-on example, and the BLS median for hand laborers and material movers was $18.38 an hour in May 2025, before payroll costs. The IRS standard business mileage rate is 76 cents a mile from July 1, 2026, a rate it sets for the cost of operating a car, so a loaded truck can cost more. Insurance is MoneyGeek's modeled October 2026 national average for a business with one to four employees: $142 a month for general liability, $198 for commercial auto, and $322 for workers' compensation. That is $662 a month. MoneyGeek calls these benchmarks, not quotes, and leaves Washington, North Dakota, and Wyoming out of its workers' compensation data because they run state funds.

To get the price that leaves 35%, divide the cost by 0.65. Do not multiply it by 1.35. Housecall Pro's own example does it this way: $210 of cost at a 30% margin is $300. The $399 is Lansing's half-truck price from the table above. None of this counts overhead, your own pay, payroll costs, or taxes. A lead you pay for comes out of the same margin, and our junk removal lead costs guide does that math channel by channel.

Charge extra for stairs, heavy debris, and items the dump bills by the piece

List add-ons as separate lines on the estimate so the customer sees what raised the price. Housecall Pro's May 2026 guide gives the typical charges in the middle column, built from marketplace data such as HomeAdvisor and Angi, and the last column is what the dump bills you, from the pages above.

Two rules. First, anything the dump bills by the piece goes on the estimate as its own line. JDog calls these "pass-through surcharges for specific items." Second, decide what you won't take. The EPA says products such as paints, cleaners, oils, batteries, and pesticides can contain hazardous ingredients, and that many communities have collection programs for household hazardous waste. Point the customer to the county program. Rules differ by state and county, and this is not legal advice.

Recycling and donation can cut your dump bill, because the scale only bills what is left. King County charges nothing for a load of recyclables only, and Snohomish County says recycling is free at its transfer stations and drop boxes. Junk King says it recycles "up to 60% of every job," and JDog says it gives customers a receipt for what it donates.

Build your chart in five steps

• Step one: read your dump's rate page. Write down the per-ton rate, the minimum, the uncovered-load fee, and the date. If the page shows no date, call them.
• Step two: measure your truck and weigh a month of loads. Length times width times height in feet, divided by 27, is your cubic yards. Keep every scale ticket and note the load size beside it.
• Step three: cost each load size. Add the dump (average weight times rate), crew hours times wage, miles times your cost per mile, and insurance per load, including workers' compensation if you pay a crew. Divide by the share of the price you want to keep, 0.65 for 35%, and round to a number you can say on the phone.
• Step four: set a minimum that covers the trip. For example, at the same hourly, mileage, and insurance rates, a 1.5-hour job for two people with a 20-mile drive in King County costs $40.25 for the dump, $75 for the crew, $15.20 for the truck, and $11.03 for insurance. The total is $141.48, or $218 to leave 35%. That is above Housecall Pro's $70 to $150 benchmark minimum, and the dump's $40.25 alone adds about $62 to the price at a 35% margin.
• Step five: quote a range from the photo, then fix the price on site. 1-800-GOT-JUNK gives no exact price online because "it can be hard to estimate the volume of junk from a photo," and Junk King says a texted photo gets an estimate that "is not a firm price." Give the range, confirm on site before the first lift, and write it down, as Housecall Pro advises.

Reprice when fuel, labor, or dump fees rise 10% to 15%

Housecall Pro says to update prices at least quarterly, and sooner if fuel, labor, or dump fees rise 10% to 15%. The U.S. average for diesel was $6.276 a gallon on October 19, up $2.656 from a year earlier, according to the EIA. The IRS raised its business mileage rate from 72.5 to 76 cents on July 1. Snohomish County's dump went from $105 to $160 a ton on January 1, 2026, its first increase since 2009, and King County's rises 8.5% on January 1, 2027, to $264.01. If fuel spikes, Housecall Pro suggests a flat $10 to $25 per job on the estimate.

Then put the chart where customers look. Our marketing guide covers the page and the Google profile, and the startup guide prices the truck, insurance, and permits that feed step three.

Where ServicePro fits

ServicePro starts with getting you found. It does not set your prices or plan truck routes, and it has no estimate or quote document. If you need estimates, dispatch, or fleet tracking, a field service app like Housecall Pro lists them. The free plan ($0, no card) builds a website from your Google Business Profile with five service pages and a booking page, and leads are unlimited with no per-lead fees. Pro is $99 a month with no contract and adds a toll-free number that forwards to your cell and, after carrier approval, lets you text customers. Sam is the AI office manager that never sleeps. He works by text. He drafts and emails invoices from the prices you give him, and asks before he sends one he started himself. He is invite only today, and the Sam page says how to ask. Build the free site, then put your prices on it.

How this post was made: drafted with AI from the sources linked on this page. Figures and links were checked on October 22, 2026.