What an apartment cleanout costs in Philadelphia

The short answer

Two ways to price it, and you pick.

By volume. The truck ladder is $241 for a quarter load, $338 for three-eighths, $431 for a half, $513 for five-eighths, $587 for three quarters, $661 for seven-eighths and $732 for a full truck.

By item. Every piece has a published price — $126 a sofa, $143 a mattress and box spring set, $126 a dresser, $83 a desk, $72 a bookshelf, $68 a 55-inch TV — and you pay the sum.

The per-visit minimum is $75. Nothing is added for stairs, walk-ups or street parking, which in Philadelphia is the whole ballgame.

What Philadelphia apartments actually are

The word "apartment" covers four very different jobs in this city, and they price differently because they contain different amounts of stuff.

• The row-home conversion. A three-story in Fishtown, Kensington, Point Breeze or Brewerytown carved into two or three units. Narrow, vertical, one shared staircase. Usually a quarter to a half truck per unit.
• The West Philly twin apartment. Spruce Hill, Cedar Park, Powelton Village — bigger rooms, higher ceilings, often more furniture per tenant, and frequently a third floor. Half to three quarters.
• The Center City high-rise unit. Rittenhouse, Logan Square, Washington Square West. Smaller footprint, less accumulation, but the building has rules: reserved freight elevator, booked move window, a certificate of insurance on file. Usually a quarter to a half.
• The Northeast or Roxborough garden apartment. Ground-level access, sometimes a patio or a storage locker in the basement. Half a truck is common once the locker is counted.

A one-bedroom, itemized

Here is a real-shaped Philadelphia one-bed being emptied before handover:

$126 + $143 + $126 + $67 + $68 = $530. That same load by volume sits on the ladder between the $431 half rung and the $587 three-quarter rung, which is why a one-bedroom cleanout in Philadelphia is usually quoted in that band.

A studio in the same building with a futon at $111, a full mattress at $94 and a bookshelf at $72 comes to $277 — $111 + $94 + $72 — which is close to the $241 quarter-truck rung.

The bits people forget to count

Philadelphia apartments hide their volume in places that are not the living room:

• The basement locker. Almost every converted row home has a shared basement with tenant storage. Boxes, a bike at $37, a dehumidifier at $77 that has been running since the last wet spring.
• Bagged clothes and paper. A bag of clothes is $35, a box of books is $45. Ten bags of debris is $132, fifteen is $196, twenty is $259.
• The window AC. Nearly universal in Philly units without central air. Small is $87, large is $109, a portable unit is $85.
• Flat-pack that did not survive the move in. A particleboard bookcase is $100, a standard desk is $83, an office chair is $61.
• The pile that is just a pile. Small junk pile $82, medium $129, large $208.

Access is the part that actually decides your day

The price does not change for access. The scheduling does, so get ahead of it.

In a walk-up conversion: nothing to arrange. The crew handles the staircase, including the landing turn and the bannister. Tell us which floor so the right number of people come.

In a Center City tower: ring the management office before you book. Most want a reserved freight elevator slot, a move window inside set hours, and a certificate of insurance naming the building and the management company as additional insured. That paperwork takes a day or two to produce and buildings do not bend on it. Booking the truck before booking the elevator is the single most common way a Philly cleanout falls apart.

On any narrow street: nothing needed from you. No driveway, permit parking and a one-lane street once both curbs are full is the normal operating condition in this city, and it is not a line on your invoice.

Timing it around the Philadelphia calendar

Two weeks a year are genuinely busy here. Late August into the first days of September, when a very large share of Philadelphia leases turn over at once and every block near Temple, Drexel and Penn is a furniture pile. And the back end of May, when the academic year empties out of University City and North Philly at the same time.

If your cleanout falls in either window, book earlier than feels necessary. If it does not, a Philadelphia apartment cleanout is easy to schedule, and a midweek slot in February is the least contested thing in the city.

What is included

The carry from inside the unit, on whatever floor, including the basement locker if you tell us about it. Loading. Disposal. A sweep of the space afterwards. No stair charge, no walk-up charge, no same-day charge, no charge for the fact that the crew parked three doors down.

What is not included is anything you did not tell us about. If the previous tenant left a sofa in the basement you did not open, that is the published sofa price added on the day, shown to you before it goes on the truck.

Frequently asked questions