| Load size | Price |
|---|---|
| One or two ordinary items, or a small handful of bags and boxes — a single mattress, one couch, one appliance, a small pile in a garage corner. Anything that plainly does not fill a quarter of a trailer. | $109–$169 |
| Up to roughly a quarter of the trailer — several large items, a bedroom's worth of furniture, or a modest garage or yard cleanup. More than a couple of items but clearly not half a trailer. | $209–$309 |
| Roughly half the trailer — a full room of furniture, or a substantial garage or basement cleanout. | $379–$489 |
| Roughly three quarters of the trailer — a large multi-room cleanout. | $499–$619 |
| A full 15-yard trailer — whole-home, estate, or major property cleanout that still fits in one trip. | $629–$799 |
| Clearly more than one full trailer, needing multiple trips. Choose this only when the volume plainly exceeds a single full load. | $749–$1,500 quoted per trip |
A full load is a 15-yard trailer, which holds roughly eight three-seater sofas or a two-car garage cleared out. Anything larger is quoted per trip.
Why we publish ranges instead of “from $89”
Nearly every junk removal company in the region advertises a starting price. That number is real, but it's the price of the smallest job that could theoretically qualify — one light item, ground floor, short carry, nothing heavy. It exists to get you on the phone, and the number climbs from there once someone is standing in your driveway and you're already invested.
We'd rather show the honest spread. If your job is a $109 job, it costs $109. If it's a $489 half load, you find that out from your kitchen table instead of from a person standing beside a trailer.
It also means the estimate and the invoice match, which is the entire reason to quote from photos in the first place.
Where our disposal costs come from
Every price here has to cover the Regional facility fees, and it's worth knowing what those are because they explain most of the pricing structure. Durham Region charges $175 per tonne for general waste, with a $7 minimum for loads under 40 kg. A packed 15-yard trailer of household material runs roughly 1.5 to 2 tonnes, so disposal alone on a full load is $265 to $350 before labour, fuel, or the truck.
Fill material — soil, brick, gravel, sand, concrete — is $375 per tonne, more than double. Freon appliances are $20 each. Electronics, household hazardous waste, and up to ten tires are free to drop, which is why we'd always rather divert those than bury them in a mixed load.
Regional fees in force since May 1, 2024. Verified August 12, 2026, source: Region of Durham.
What actually drives a junk removal price
Most companies will not tell you this, so here is the whole of it. Three things decide what a job costs us: what the material weighs, how long it takes to carry, and how far the truck drives. Volume — the load size everyone quotes on — is really just a proxy for the first two.
Weight is where the surprises live, because material of identical size can differ in weight by nearly fortyfold. These are the loose densities our estimator uses, in kilograms per cubic yard:
| Material | Per cubic yard | Tipping cost |
|---|---|---|
| Bulky but light — mattresses, bagged clothing, foam, cardboard | 35 kg | about $6 |
| Ordinary household junk and furniture | 110 kg | about $19 |
| Electronics and e-waste | 120 kg | free in a dedicated load |
| Scrap metal and appliances | 150 kg | about $26 |
| Renovation debris — drywall, lumber, shingles | 250 kg | about $44 |
| Fill — soil, brick, concrete, gravel, tile | 1300 kg | about $488 |
That spread is the entire reason a flat per-yard price cannot be honest. A cubic yard of bagged clothing and a cubic yard of broken concrete take up the same room in the trailer, and the concrete costs roughly eighty times more to dispose of — nearly forty times the weight, at more than double the per-tonne rate. It is also why heavy material is quoted by weight rather than load size: with fill, the trailer hits its legal payload long before it looks full, so the trip ends early and the cost per yard rises.
Why access changes the price
The second driver is carrying time, and it works in two separate ways that are worth separating, because only one of them scales with how much you have.
Part of it repeats per item: every trip up a flight of basement stairs is slower than the same trip across a driveway, so twice the material means twice the penalty. The other part happens exactly once — walking the route, propping doors, and laying protection on stair treads and floors — whether we are removing one mattress or twenty boxes. That fixed part is why a single-item pickup out of a finished basement genuinely costs more than the same item from a garage, and why pricing both as one flat band was never accurate.
For transparency, these are the factors our estimator applies to loading time. They are modelling parameters chosen to reflect how the work actually goes, not stopwatch measurements, and we would rather say so than dress them up:
- — the baseline every published rate assumes, at 1.00×
- — 1.15× loading time — the wait, not the lift
- — 1.4× loading time, plus a one-off allowance for laying stair and floor protection
- — 1.6× loading time, the most expensive access there is
- — up to 1.45× on its own, and it compounds with the access factor above
Drive time is the third driver, and it is the one we deliberately do not pass through. Every quote is built on a Region-wide average drive rather than your actual distance, which is how we can commit to the same rate card in Beaverton as in Oshawa. Distance changes how soon we can get to you, not what you pay.
When a job costs more than its band
- •Heavy material by volume — concrete, soil, sod, brick, tile, plaster, shingles. Quoted by weight instead of load size.
- •Fridges, freezers, and air conditioners — $20 per unit, passed through at cost.
- •Third floor or higher with no elevator.
- •A long carry from the items to where the truck can legally park.
- •Items that need taking apart before they'll fit through a door or stairwell.
- •Hot tubs, pianos, safes, and shed or deck teardowns — always quoted individually.
None of this appears as a surprise. Photograph it or mention it in your notes and it's in the estimate from the beginning.
Included in every price
- All labour, loading, and carrying — you don't lift anything
- Disposal and Regional facility tipping fees
- Fuel, truck, and trailer
- Sweep-up of the area we cleared
- Recycling and donation of anything genuinely reusable
- A price confirmed on-site before we load a single item
We can't take
- ×Hazardous waste — paint, solvents, chemicals, oil, propane tanks
- ×Asbestos or suspected asbestos-containing material
- ×Medical or biohazard waste
- ×More than ten tires in one load
- ×Septic, sewage, or animal waste
- ×Demolition requiring permits or structural work
Pricing questions
Still not sure which band your job falls into? See how the photo quote works or just send photos and find out.