Haul away unwanted furniture, appliances and clutter with a pickup or trailer, charging by truck volume and keeping dump fees low by donating and scrapping what you can.
Saturday, nine in the morning. A man you have never met rolls up his garage door and waves at forty boxes, a sagging sofa and a rusted barbecue. He wants every bit of it gone by lunch, and he is glad to pay a few hundred dollars for that. All you needed was a pickup and the nerve to ask.
How is your own month looking? The paycheck lands and is gone by the twentieth. Your supervisor treats overtime like a favour. You keep reading that warehouses and call centres are testing robots and software on the shifts people like you rely on. Nobody is close to a robot that carries a fridge down a narrow staircase.
Here is the uncomfortable part. Realtors and property managers keep a short list of haulers who show up on time, and once they find one, they stop looking. Families clearing out the homes of ageing parents book online and pick whoever answers first with a clear price. Every weekend you hold off, another local hauler gets saved in a realtor's phone.
If you already own a pickup or a sturdy trailer, you can start for about $500 in straps, tarps, a dolly, gloves and insurance. Your first paid load can come within one to three weeks of telling people you exist, and a part-timer working weekends can realistically clear around $800 a month after dump fees and fuel.
Tonight, check your nearest transfer station's prices and write down what a pickup load costs to tip. That number is the floor under every quote you give.
Someone has things they no longer want, too big or too many for the bin, and you load them, haul them away and dispose of them responsibly. You sort as you go: the good furniture goes to a charity or to resale, metal goes to a scrap yard, and the rest goes to a transfer station or landfill where you pay by weight.
The people who call you fall into a few groups:
- Homeowners clearing a garage, basement, shed or yard, often in spring or before a move.
- Families handling an estate, where a parent has died or moved into care and the house needs emptying, usually on a deadline.
- Realtors who need a listing cleared before photos, or a house emptied after a sale where the sellers left things behind.
- Property managers and landlords facing a unit full of abandoned belongings after a tenant leaves.
- Small businesses replacing office furniture, shop fittings or old equipment.
The homeowner is your easiest first job. The realtor and the property manager are the ones who turn this into a business, because they call again and again.
What you are really selling is relief: a pile the customer has stared at for months, gone in an afternoon, with the floor swept behind you.
Who in your life is sitting on a garage they keep promising to clear? That person is probably your first customer, and their neighbour is probably the second.
What It Really Pays
Start with what employers pay for related work, because it sets a floor for your time. O*NET, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, puts the median wage for refuse and recyclable material collectors at $23.89 an hour, or $49,690 a year, in 2025. If your own business pays you less than that per hour after costs, you would be better off working for someone else.
Now the customer side. Cost guide Fixr puts the average junk removal job at about $300, with most jobs between $150 and $600. 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the largest franchise, publishes its own 2025 averages: $107 to $396 for a minimum to quarter truck, $396 to $600 for a quarter to half truck, and $600 to $1,099 for half to full. Franchises carry advertising, call centres and royalties, so a solo operator can price a little under them and still sit inside the Fixr range.
Here is what that looks like as monthly income. These are my estimates built from the prices above, and you should treat them as a planning range.
| Your setup | Jobs a month | Gross at $300 average | Roughly what you keep |
|---|
| Weekends only, own pickup | 5 to 6 | $1,500 to $1,800 | $800 to $1,200 |
| Evenings and weekends, pickup or small trailer | 10 to 15 | $3,000 to $4,500 | $1,800 to $3,000 |
| Full time, dump trailer, one helper | 40 to 60 | $12,000 to $18,000 | $6,000 to $9,000 |
What you keep depends on dump fees, fuel and labour. A load of plaster or soil can eat half the job price at the scale, while light furniture you can donate costs almost nothing to dispose of.
Which of those three rows matches the hours you could actually give this, week in and week out? Plan your first three months against that row and ignore the others.
For a sense of the ceiling, the 2024 Franchise Disclosure Document for 1-800-GOT-JUNK reported a median gross revenue of $1,413,257 per franchise business in 2023, across 213 franchisee businesses. Those are multi-truck operations with staff, and the figure is revenue before every cost, so read it as proof of demand and leave it out of your own forecast.
If those weekend jobs settle at around $800 a month, think about the bill that arrives each month and makes your stomach tighten. That one could simply be paid, on time, from two Saturdays of hauling other people's old sofas. It is relief money, and it is a real start.
Two Saturdays a month can look small on paper. Then the gas tank is full on a Sunday night without any sums in your head, and your kid's football boots get bought the week they are needed. Add one realtor who calls every month and the slack in your budget starts to feel like breathing room.
Start-Up Costs, Itemised
You can start small and let the jobs pay for the bigger kit. Here are two honest starting points.
Starting with a pickup you already own
| Item | Rough cost |
|---|
| General liability insurance, first month | about $100 |
| Ratchet straps, cargo net, heavy tarp | $60 to $120 |
| Two-wheel hand truck or appliance dolly | $80 to $200 |
| Furniture blankets, gloves, safety glasses, steel toe boots | $100 to $200 |
| Plywood sideboards to raise the bed walls | $50 to $100 |
| Business cards, yard signs, door hangers | $50 to $100 |
| Total | about $440 to $820 |
Insurance cost here comes from Insuranceopedia, which puts general liability for junk removal businesses at about $100 a month and commercial auto at about $180 a month. Your quotes will vary by state, driving record and how many people work for you.
Adding a dump trailer
A dump trailer saves your back, because you tip the load at the transfer station instead of unloading it by hand. Current dealer listings show a new 7 by 14 foot low side dump trailer with 2 foot walls and a 7 yard capacity at $9,245, and a 7 by 14 foot model with 4 foot walls at $14,595, both before tax and registration. Add insurance, gear and marketing on top and your all-in start-up sits somewhere up to about $17,000.
That figure assumes you already own a truck rated to tow a loaded trailer of that size. A 14,000 pound trailer needs a heavy-duty truck, so check your truck's towing rating before you buy anything. If you have to buy the truck as well, that cost comes on top, and a used trailer can cut the trailer cost a long way.
I would start with the pickup, run it until you are turning down work, then buy the trailer with money the business has already earned.
Could you lose the $500 or so of the starter kit tomorrow without the rent noticing? If you could, you can start this month with almost no risk beyond your weekends.
How Much Your Truck Holds, and How to Price by Volume
Almost everyone in this trade prices by volume. The maths is easy. Measure length, width and height in feet, multiply them, and divide by 27 to get cubic yards.
1-800-GOT-JUNK lists its full truck at 10 feet long, 5 feet high and 8 feet wide, roughly two tons or about eight standard refrigerators. That is 400 cubic feet, or about 15 cubic yards.
A typical full-size pickup with a 6.5 foot bed, about 4 feet between the wheel wells and sides around 1.7 feet high holds roughly 44 cubic feet loaded level, which is about 1.6 cubic yards. Add 2 foot plywood sideboards and you get closer to 96 cubic feet, about 3.6 cubic yards. Measure your own truck, because beds vary.
A 7 by 14 foot trailer with 2 foot walls holds 196 cubic feet, which matches the 7 yard rating in the listing above. Double the walls to 4 feet and you are near 14 yards.
Your price list
Fixr's load table gives you a sensible market map:
| Load | Cubic feet | Typical price |
|---|
| Eighth load (minimum) | 60 to 80 | $75 to $125 |
| Quarter load | 80 to 120 | $125 to $175 |
| Half load | 120 to 300 | $175 to $375 |
| Three quarter load | 300 to 350 | $375 to $450 |
| Full load | 350 to 475 | $450 to $650 |
The same guide says companies charge roughly $1.25 to $2.08 per cubic foot, which works out to about $34 to $56 per cubic yard. A simple way to set your own prices:
- Pick a per-yard rate in that band for your area.
- Set a minimum charge, so a single chair still covers your drive, your time and the gate fee.
- Add surcharges for items that cost you money to dispose of: mattresses, tyres, appliances with refrigerant, and anything very heavy.
- Add a charge for stairs, long carries and disassembly.
For single items, Fixr lists a mattress at $75 to $150, a refrigerator at $100 to $200, tyres from $60 to $90 and a hot tub at $150 to $600. Those are useful anchors for your own item list.
Always quote on site or from clear photos, and confirm the price before you lift anything. Customers usually underestimate how much they have, so show them your fractions and point at where the pile lands.
When you look at your own pickup bed today, how many of those minimum loads would fit in it? Working that out tells you how many small jobs you could stack into one dump run.
Dump and Transfer Station Fees
Landfills and transfer stations charge a tipping fee, usually per ton, with a minimum charge per visit. The Environmental Research and Education Foundation tracks the national picture and found the average US landfill tip fee rose to $58.47 a ton in 2022, with the Pacific and Northeast regions the most expensive. Transfer stations, which are often closer to you, frequently charge more per ton than the landfill itself because they add handling and haulage.
You can estimate weight from the 1-800-GOT-JUNK figure above: a full 15 yard truck of mixed household junk weighs about two tons. A 7 yard trailer of the same kind of load would weigh close to one ton, so at the national average you would pay somewhere near $55 to tip it, before any minimum charge or item fees. Heavy debris changes everything. Concrete, roofing shingles, wet carpet and soil can weigh many times more per yard, which is why your price list needs a heavy-material surcharge.
Fees are far higher in some countries. In New South Wales, Australia, the state waste levy alone was $174.20 a tonne in the Sydney metropolitan levy area for 2025 to 2026, charged on top of the facility's own gate price. If you work in Australia, find out your levy before you set a single price.
Before you advertise, do three things:
- Phone every landfill, transfer station and recycling centre within 30 minutes and ask their rates, minimums, opening hours and what they refuse.
- Ask whether they offer a commercial account. Some do, and it saves time at the scale house.
- Find the free or cheap outlets: scrap metal yards that pay you, charity drop-offs, appliance recyclers and mattress recycling sites.
Every item you divert away from the scale is money you keep.
How many of those outlets could you name for your own town right now? If the answer is none, your week 2 phone calls matter more than your logo.
Donating and Reselling What You Haul
Donate the good stuff. Habitat for Humanity ReStores take new and gently used appliances, furniture, building materials and household goods, and many offer free pickup of large items. Drop the usable pieces on your way to the dump, and call ahead, because each store sets its own rules.
Scrap the metal. Barbecues, bed frames, washers and filing cabinets earn a small payment at a scrap yard where the dump would have charged you.
Resell the gems. Estate cleanouts in particular turn up solid wood furniture, tools, vintage items and decent appliances. Always get the customer's agreement in writing that items you remove become yours to keep, donate or sell. If reselling appeals to you, our guide to furniture and car flipping covers how to price, clean and sell pieces for profit.
Keep resale to items you can list within a week. A garage full of furniture you meant to sell is storage you pay for.
Items You Cannot Take
Some items are dangerous, some are illegal for you to throw away, and some get a whole load refused at the gate.
Household hazardous waste. The EPA counts paints, cleaners, oils, batteries and pesticides as household hazardous waste and says they should go to local collection programmes, never into the regular trash. Most haulers refuse them, so tell customers early and point them to their local drop-off.
Asbestos. Older homes can contain asbestos in insulation, flooring, pipe lagging and boiler wrap. The EPA's advice is plain: if you suspect material contains asbestos, do not touch it, and have removal done by trained and qualified people. Leave old pipe insulation and broken tile in older basements alone unless the customer has had it tested.
Refrigerators, freezers and window air conditioners. These hold refrigerant. Under EPA rules the last person in the disposal chain must make sure refrigerant is recovered before final disposal, usually with a signed statement saying who removed it and when. Your scrap yard or landfill will ask you for it. Find a local appliance recycler who can recover refrigerant, and build that cost into your price.
Electronics. Several states, California among them, have rules keeping TVs, monitors and other electronics out of landfill. CalRecycle explains California's electronic waste rules here. Check your own state and keep a list of e-waste recyclers.
Mattresses. California, Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island run statewide mattress recycling programmes through the Mattress Recycling Council. Elsewhere, landfills often charge a per-item fee. Either way, mattresses earn a surcharge on your price list.
Other common refusals: medical waste and sharps, ammunition and fireworks, propane tanks, tyres in bulk, car batteries, fuel cans and anything you cannot identify. When in doubt, leave it and tell the customer who can take it.
What would you say to a customer who hides three cans of old paint under a tarp in the back of their pile? Decide your answer now, because one day it will happen, and the transfer station will hold you responsible.
Licences, Insurance and Legal Rules
United States
There is no single national junk removal licence. You will usually need a general business licence from your city or county, and some areas add a waste hauler permit. New York City is a strict example: businesses that collect waste from commercial customers need a Trade Waste Removal License from the city. Phone your city clerk and your county solid waste office, and ask both questions: do I need a business licence, and do I need a hauler permit?
Insurance matters more than the licence. You will want:
- General liability, about $100 a month on the Insuranceopedia figure, for damage to a customer's property such as a gouged floor or a cracked door frame.
- Commercial auto, about $180 a month on the same source. A personal auto policy may refuse a claim when your truck is being used for paid hauling.
- Workers' compensation as soon as you hire help, which most states require.
United Kingdom
If you carry other people's waste in England, you must register as a waste carrier with the Environment Agency. Upper tier registration costs £130.25 to renew and lasts 3 years, and operating unregistered can bring an unlimited fine. Businesses handing you waste have a duty of care, and must complete a waste transfer note for each load and check that you are a registered carrier. Keep your registration number on every quote and invoice, because careful customers will ask.
Canada and Australia
Rules sit mostly with provinces, states and councils, so start with your state environment protection authority or provincial environment ministry, and your municipality. Ask your insurer to confirm your vehicle is covered for commercial hauling.
Do you know today which office in your town issues business licences? Finding out takes one phone call, and it is the first real step that turns this from an idea into a business.
Getting Your First Clients
- Tell everyone you know. Send a short message to friends, family and neighbours: you have started a junk removal service, here is what you take, here is your rough price, and you are giving a discount on the first five jobs.
- Set up a Google Business Profile. When someone searches "junk removal near me", the Google Business Profile listings with photos and reviews get the calls. Add your service area, hours, price guide and before and after photos.
- Post on Nextdoor and local Facebook groups. Nextdoor reaches homeowners in exactly the streets you serve. One clear post with a before and after photo works better than daily spam.
- Photograph every job. A packed garage beside an empty one is the best ad you will ever have.
- Ask for a review the moment the job is done. Reviews are what move you up the local listings.
Realtors, estate cleanouts and property managers
This is where the steady money lives.
Realtors need houses cleared before listing photos and after sales. List the ten most active agents in your area and drop by with a one page sheet: what you clear, how fast you come, your price guide and your insurance. One happy agent can send you a job every few weeks.
Estate cleanouts are emotional work, often for a grieving family living far away. Be gentle and organised, and set aside photos, papers and anything personal in labelled boxes. Families remember who was kind to them. Estate attorneys, estate sale companies and senior move managers are good referral partners for this work.
Property managers and landlords deal with abandoned belongings every time a tenant leaves in a hurry. Offer a simple account with standard rates, monthly invoicing and a turnaround of a day or two. Make sure the manager confirms in writing that the tenancy has legally ended and the items can be removed, so you never haul belongings someone still has a legal claim to.
If one property manager and two realtors each send you a job a month, your weekends could fill without a single ad. Picture getting into the car on the first Monday of the month with your phone already holding three bookings. That steadiness is what lets you plan, perhaps for the first time in a while.
Who is the one realtor in your town whose sign you see on every second lawn? Their office is your first visit next week.
A Realistic First Thirty Days
Week 1: Set up. Register your business name, call your city about licences and permits, and get general liability and commercial auto quotes. Buy straps, tarps, a dolly and safety gear. Measure your truck and work out its capacity in cubic yards.
Week 2: Learn your costs. Phone every dump, transfer station, scrap yard and charity drop-off nearby. Write down their fees, minimums and refusals. Build your price list by load fraction, with surcharges. Set up your Google Business Profile and post on Nextdoor.
Week 3: First jobs. Message everyone you know with your launch discount. Do three to five small jobs, photograph each one and ask for reviews. Track your time, fuel and dump fees on every job so you know your true profit.
Week 4: Find steady work. Visit five realtors and two property management offices with your one page sheet. Review your numbers: which jobs paid best per hour, and which ones lost money at the scale? Adjust your prices.
By the end of the month, a realistic target is five or six paid jobs and one or two referral relationships starting.
Which of those four weeks would your current life make hardest: the phone calls, the weekends or the office visits? Plan around that week before it arrives.
Scaling the Business
- Raise your prices once you are booking a week or more ahead. Being busy is the market telling you that you are cheap.
- Buy the trailer with profits, so you can carry bigger loads and tip instead of hand unloading.
- Hire a helper for heavy jobs. Two people work more than twice as fast as one on a big cleanout, and lifting alone is how injuries happen.
- Build accounts with property managers and realtors, so a growing share of your work arrives without marketing spend.
- Add a second truck once you have more work than one crew can handle, and step back into quoting, sales and scheduling.
If the business grows into a full-time trailer operation clearing around $6,000 a month, you would be looking at the kind of decision most people never get to make. You could leave the job with the long commute, or keep it and put the hauling money towards your kids' school fees. Either way, the choice would be yours.
Be honest with yourself: do you want to run crews one day, or do you want to be the person in the truck? Both are good answers, and they lead to different businesses.
The Honest Risks
Physical risk is real. Refuse and recyclable material collectors had a fatal injury rate of 37.4 per 100,000 full-time workers in 2024, the fifth highest of any civilian occupation, with transportation incidents the main cause. Your work differs from municipal collection, yet you share the same dangers: heavy loads, traffic, unsecured cargo and long days. Strap every load, watch your mirrors, never rush a reverse and never lift alone what two people should lift.
Injuries end small businesses. One bad back can take you off the road for weeks. Use the dolly, break furniture down, and turn down hot tubs on steep slopes or pianos up narrow stairs.
Who would cover your bills if a strained back kept you off the truck for a month? Answer that before you take your first heavy job, because the answer shapes how much you save from each one.
Dump fees can swallow a job. Misjudge the weight of a load of tile or plaster and you can lose money on it. Price heavy materials separately and look closely before you quote.
Fly-tipping liability. If anything you hauled is found dumped illegally, it can be traced back to you. Keep receipts from every disposal site, and never hand loads to someone else to dispose of.
Uneven income. Winter can go quiet in cold areas, so save some summer income for slow months.
Hidden items. Pests, mould and needles turn up in cleanouts. Wear gloves and check bags before lifting them.
The work is heavy and the risks are real, and a careful person handles all of them with straps, gloves and receipts. What you cannot get back is the season. The spring clear-outs and summer moves happen whether your name is on anyone's list or not. Print twenty flyers tonight and drop them in mailboxes on your street tomorrow.
Who Should Skip This
This work is a poor fit for you if:
- You have a back, knee or shoulder problem that heavy lifting would make worse.
- You do not own a pickup or trailer and cannot afford one, since renting one for each job usually kills the profit.
- You dislike talking to strangers or quoting prices face to face.
- You need steady, predictable income every week from the start.
If two or more of those describe you, look at a lighter local service first.
2026 Market Snapshot
Demand is steady and broad, because homes keep filling with things that outlast their usefulness. The 1-800-GOT-JUNK figure above, a median of $1,413,257 in revenue per franchise business in 2023, shows the depth of demand in established markets.
Costs are moving the other way. The EREF tracking shows US landfill tip fees climbing to $58.47 a ton in 2022, and New South Wales sets its levy each year. Rising disposal costs reward haulers who divert more to donation, scrap and recycling.
Labour is the other pressure. With refuse work paying a median of $23.89 an hour in 2025, finding reliable helpers costs real money, which favours small owner-operator teams with low overheads.
Key Players to Watch
- 1-800-GOT-JUNK: the largest franchise, setting customer expectations on volume-based pricing and same-day service.
- College Hunks Hauling Junk: a franchise combining junk removal with moving, which shows how the two services feed each other.
- Junk King: a national franchise competing on scheduled appointments and recycling claims.
- JDog Junk Removal & Hauling: a veteran-owned franchise building its brand on trust and community.
- LoadUp: an online booking platform that sends jobs to independent haulers at upfront prices.
- The Junkluggers: a franchise leaning hard on donation and reuse in its marketing.
- Habitat for Humanity ReStore: the donation outlet many haulers rely on to cut dump fees.
Common Objections & Counterarguments
"The franchises already own this market.": They own the premium end. Plenty of customers would rather pay a local operator less, and realtors value a direct line to the person who turns up.
"I would need a big truck to start.": A pickup with sideboards handles most small and medium jobs. Buy the trailer once the work proves you need it.
"Dump fees will eat all my profit.": They will if you price blindly. Knowing your local rates, charging by volume, adding surcharges for heavy items and diverting usable goods keeps your margin intact.
Predictions for 2026-2027
- Disposal costs keep rising in most regions, pushing haulers to divert more items to donation, resale and recycling.
- More homeowners book junk removal online with upfront prices, rewarding operators with clear price lists and fast responses.
- Estate cleanouts grow as more families handle the homes of ageing parents, making senior move managers and estate attorneys valuable referral partners.
- Solo operators who build realtor and property manager accounts stay busy through slower months, while those relying on ads feel the seasons more.
Each of those trends rewards the hauler who was already established when it arrived. Estate cleanouts go to the person an attorney already trusts. Online bookings go to whoever has the reviews. The operators building those accounts this year stay busy in the slow months while newcomers fight over ad clicks.
Junk Removal Business costs $500-$17000 to start. Many people start at the lower end.
Reported income: $800-$9K/month. Estimates built from published market prices (Fixr junk removal cost guide: about $300 average job, $150-$600 typical; 1-800-GOT-JUNK 2025 price tiers), the EREF national landfill tip fee ($58.47/ton, 2022) and Insuranceopedia insurance averages. O*NET/BLS median wage for refuse and recyclable material collectors ($23.89/hour, 2025) sets the labour benchmark. Not independently audited. Results vary by effort and market.
Most people see first profit within 1-3 weeks.
Yes, Junk Removal Business is a legitimate side hustle. Reported income is $800-$9K/month. Estimates built from published market prices (Fixr junk removal cost guide: about $300 average job, $150-$600 typical; 1-800-GOT-JUNK 2025 price tiers), the EREF national landfill tip fee ($58.47/ton, 2022) and Insuranceopedia insurance averages. O*NET/BLS median wage for refuse and recyclable material collectors ($23.89/hour, 2025) sets the labour benchmark. Not independently audited. Like any business, success depends on your effort, skills, and market conditions. Start with $500-$17000 and expect first results within 1-3 weeks.
Yes. Most successful Junk Removal Business practitioners started with no prior experience. The key is following a structured learning path, starting small, and iterating. Free resources on YouTube and blogs can teach you the fundamentals within 1-2 weeks.
Junk Removal Business offers higher income potential (reported $800-$9K/month) and location freedom compared to most jobs, but requires self-motivation and involves more uncertainty. Many people start Junk Removal Business as a side hustle while keeping their job, then transition to full-time once income is consistent.
Startup tools for Junk Removal Business cost $500-$17000. At minimum, you need a computer and internet connection. As you scale, invest in specialized software and tools to automate workflows and increase efficiency.
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