Worked Numbers
Junk Removal Pricing: How Much to Charge Per Load, Worked Out
Price junk removal by the share of the truck the customer fills, but build each price from what that load will weigh, because you sell volume and the disposal site charges you by the ton. Add the crew time and fuel to the disposal cost, then divide by one minus the margin you want. In the illustrative example below, the same $500.00 full-truck price nets $357.12 on furniture and loses $571.00 on concrete. Nothing about the price changed. The material did.
None of the figures here are market prices, and nothing here says what your area pays or what your local transfer station charges. Disposal fees vary by facility. These are made-up inputs run through the same steps you would run on your own.
The formula
For one load:
Weight in tons = share of truck x truck cubic yards x pounds per cubic yard / 2,000
Job cost = weight x tipping fee per ton + crew cost per hour x hours + fuel
Price = job cost / (1 - target margin)
And the one number worth keeping in your head on a walkthrough:
Breakeven weight = (price - crew cost - fuel) / tipping fee per ton
That is how many tons of disposal a given price can absorb before the job loses money.
The illustrative inputs
- A 15 cubic yard truck
- A tipping fee of $55.00 a ton (call your own facility; this is a placeholder)
- Crew cost of $42.00 an hour for two people, loaded, over 1.5 hours, so $63.00 a job
- $18.00 of fuel per job
Crew and fuel come to $81.00 on every full load, whatever is in the truck. Only the disposal changes with the material.
One price, six materials
Here is a full truck at $500.00, filled with each of six materials. The densities are the product’s illustrative pounds-per-cubic-yard figures; weigh a few of your own loads to replace them.
| Full truck of | Lb per cubic yard | Weight | Disposal | Net on $500.00 | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Furniture and bulky items | 150 | 1.125 tons | $61.88 | $357.12 | 71% |
| Mixed household junk | 250 | 1.875 tons | $103.12 | $315.88 | 63% |
| Yard waste and brush | 400 | 3 tons | $165.00 | $254.00 | 51% |
| Construction debris, mixed | 800 | 6 tons | $330.00 | $89.00 | 18% |
| Roofing shingles | 1,200 | 9 tons | $495.00 | -$76.00 | -15% |
| Concrete, brick, dirt | 2,400 | 18 tons | $990.00 | -$571.00 | -114% |
Take the two ends. A full truck of furniture is 2,250 pounds, 1.125 tons, so disposal is $61.88 and the whole job costs $142.88. A full truck of concrete, brick and dirt is 36,000 pounds, 18 tons: $990.00 of disposal and $1,071.00 of cost against a $500.00 price.
The heaviest material here is 16 times the density of the lightest, so the same space in the truck costs 16 times as much to dump. That is the whole business in one line: the customer sees cubic yards, the scale sees tons. In this example 2 of the 6 materials lose money at $500.00 - roofing shingles at -$76.00 and concrete at -$571.00 - and mixed construction debris only clears $89.00.
Before price even comes into it, compare a weight like 18 tons with your truck’s rated payload. A truck full of rubble by volume may be over its legal weight long before it looks full, which is one more reason heavy material is priced and loaded differently.
The breakeven weight: how much a price can carry
Turn the formula around. After $81.00 of crew and fuel, every dollar left in the price can pay for disposal at $55.00 a ton:
| Load price | Disposal it can absorb | Heaviest full truck that still breaks even |
|---|---|---|
| $250.00 | 3.07 tons | Yard waste and brush |
| $350.00 | 4.89 tons | Yard waste and brush |
| $500.00 | 7.62 tons | Construction debris, mixed |
| $650.00 | 10.35 tons | Roofing shingles |
| $800.00 | 13.07 tons | Roofing shingles |
A $500.00 price can absorb 7.62 tons of disposal. A full truck of furniture uses 1.125 of them, a full truck of concrete would need 18. To break even on that concrete load, the price would have to be $1,071.00, before any margin at all.
This is the number to carry on a walkthrough. When a customer says “just some stuff from the garage” and the garage is broken paving slabs, they are answering a question about volume. The quote has to ask about the material.
A junk removal pricing guide by load size
The standard fractions (1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and full truck) are how a job gets agreed, so here is what each needs to charge for a 45% margin, once for mixed household junk and once for concrete, brick and dirt. Crew time here scales with the load, as in the product’s rate card: 0.5 hours on site whatever the size, plus 1 hour of loading per full truck (illustrative - log your own):
| Load | Crew hours | Weight, household | Price, household | Weight, rubble | Price, rubble |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1/8 truck | 0.62 | 0.23 t | $103.89 | 2.25 t | $305.45 |
| 1/4 truck | 0.75 | 0.47 t | $136.88 | 4.50 t | $540.00 |
| 1/2 truck | 1.00 | 0.94 t | $202.84 | 9.00 t | $1,009.09 |
| 3/4 truck | 1.25 | 1.41 t | $268.81 | 13.50 t | $1,478.18 |
| Full truck | 1.50 | 1.88 t | $334.77 | 18.00 t | $1,947.27 |
Three things fall out of this table.
Heavy material needs its own rate. A full load of household junk needs $334.77 at a 45% margin. A full load of rubble needs $1,947.27, about 5.8 times as much. One rate card cannot cover both.
A small heavy load is a big load. An eighth of a truck of rubble weighs 2.25 tons, more than a full truck of household junk at 1.875 tons. Price it by weight, not by how little of the truck it fills: $305.45, not $103.89.
Small loads cost more per yard. The fuel and the time on site before loading starts are the same on an eighth of a truck as on a full one, so the eighth-truck household price of $103.89, if you could sell eight of them, would add up to $831.14 - far more than the $334.77 full load. That is not overcharging. It is $39.00 of fuel and fixed crew time showing up on every visit. At a 45% margin, no job in this example should go out for less than $70.91, that unavoidable cost grossed up, which is the case for a minimum charge.
The disposal fee changes the heavy jobs, not the light ones
Tipping fees are set by each facility and they change, so here is the same $500.00 full load at four illustrative fees:
| Tipping fee per ton | Net, full truck of furniture | Net, full truck of concrete |
|---|---|---|
| $40.00 | $374.00 | -$301.00 |
| $55.00 | $357.12 | -$571.00 |
| $80.00 | $329.00 | -$1,021.00 |
| $110.00 | $295.25 | -$1,561.00 |
Going from $40.00 to $110.00 a ton costs the furniture load $78.75 and the concrete load $1,260.00 - 16 times as much, because it is 16 times as heavy. If your facility raises its fee, your light-load prices can probably hold for a while. Your heavy-load prices cannot. One phone call to the transfer station reprices every heavy quote you give.
How these were calculated
Load weight is the truck fraction times truck cubic yards times the material’s pounds per cubic yard, divided by 2,000. Disposal is weight times the per-ton fee. Job cost adds crew cost per hour times hours and a fixed fuel cost per job. Net is price minus job cost; margin is net divided by price. The rate-card prices are job cost divided by one minus the target margin, and the breakeven weight is price minus crew and fuel, divided by the fee. Every figure was computed twice, by the code behind the product and by an independent implementation, and the two agree to the cent. All inputs - truck size, fees, crew cost, hours, fuel and material densities - are illustrative, not market or typical figures; disposal fees in particular vary by facility. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.
If you want to run this on your own truck, crew, fees and loads, the kit below lays out the same arithmetic with density figures for six materials, a breakeven-weight table, blank surcharge and load worksheets, and scripts that include declining rubble at the standard rate.