What a garage cleanout costs in Philadelphia

The short answer

Price it by volume or by item, whichever you prefer.

By volume: $241 for a quarter truck, $338 for three-eighths, $431 for a half, $513 for five-eighths, $587 for three quarters, $661 for seven-eighths, $732 for a full load. A single-car detached garage in Roxborough or Mount Airy that has become a storage room usually comes out somewhere between the quarter and the three-quarter rung.

By item: a lawn mower is $65, a propane grill is $71, a charcoal grill is $59, a bicycle is $37, a weight bench is $69, a weight set is $93, a treadmill is $115, a storage cabinet is $74. Loose accumulation prices as a junk pile — small $82, medium $129, large $208.

The minimum is $75 per visit. There is no access charge, no long-carry charge and no charge for the fact that your garage opens onto a back alley you cannot get a truck down.

First, the Philadelphia caveat: most of us do not have one

Philadelphia is a row-home city. The vast majority of houses in South Philly, Fishtown, Kensington, Point Breeze, Fairmount and West Philly have no garage at all and never did — the street is the parking. If you searched for this page and you do not have a garage, you probably want the same prices applied to a basement, a shed or a small back yard, and they are identical.

Where garages genuinely exist in this city:

• Northeast Philadelphia. Twins and row homes in Mayfair, Somerton and the far Northeast with drive-under or attached garages, often half-height and used entirely for storage.
• Roxborough, Manayunk and East Falls. Hillside houses with a garage cut into the slope underneath, reached off a steep street.
• Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy and Overbrook. Detached garages at the back of a driveway, stone or frame, frequently older than the cars they were built for.
• Girard Estate and parts of South Philly. Some blocks have rear garages off narrow service streets that a full-size truck cannot enter.

What comes out of a Philadelphia garage

Because garages here are rare, the ones that exist do double duty as the basement the house does not have, or the third basement it already has. The recurring inventory:

• Yard equipment that outlived the yard. A lawn mower at $65 from the years before the back garden became a patio.
• Grills. Charcoal $59, propane $71. Often two, because the propane one replaced the charcoal one and the charcoal one never left.
• Patio furniture that did not survive a Philly winter. A patio table is $89, chairs are $30 each. A set of four chairs and a table is $89 + $120 = $209.
• The home gym phase. Treadmill $115, elliptical $97, weight bench $69, weight set $93, a Peloton or similar smart bike $80. A bench and a weight set together is $69 + $93 = $162.
• Shelving and cabinets. Storage cabinet $74, particleboard bookcase $100, cube storage unit $71.
• Bagged and boxed everything else. Ten bags of debris is $132, fifteen is $196, twenty is $259. A contractor bag is $41.
• Bikes. $37 each, and in this city there are always more than you remembered.

A worked example

A detached single-car garage behind a Mount Airy twin, cleared before the house goes on the market. Loose accumulation across the back wall, the old mower, and the grill that has not been lit since before the pandemic.

That is $208 + $65 + $71 = $344. Priced by volume instead, the same garage sits near the $338 three-eighths rung, and you can choose either way of counting.

A bigger Northeast Philly drive-under garage with a treadmill, a weight set and twenty bags of miscellany would be $115 + $93 + $259 = $467, or roughly the $431 half-truck to $513 five-eighths band.

Access: alleys, slopes and the truck's actual position

This is where Philadelphia garages differ from garages in cities built after the car.

• Rear service streets. A lot of South Philly and older Northeast blocks have garages opening onto lanes too narrow for a loaded box truck. The crew stages at the nearest street and carries. That is included, not a surcharge.
• Hillside garages. In Manayunk, Roxborough and East Falls the garage is often below the house at the bottom of a steep street with cars parked both sides. Again, our problem.
• Half-height and drive-under garages. Common in the Northeast, and the ceiling clearance means nothing goes out standing up.
• Winter. A sloped Manayunk driveway with ice on it is a genuine scheduling factor. If we can pick a dry day, we will.

Things that need to be handled separately

A few garage staples are not general junk and should be dealt with through the proper route rather than loaded onto a truck:

• Gas, oil, solvents and old paint. Look up the current household hazardous waste guidance for the city and take them there.
• Propane tanks. Empty them and return them through an exchange rather than putting them in a load.
• Car batteries and tires. Most retailers that sell them will take the old ones.

Drain the mower before the visit and it goes on the truck as a $65 lawn mower without further thought.

When to book it

Two sensible windows in Philadelphia. Early spring, once the wet has passed and before you need the space for the garden, when you can leave the door open all morning without heating the house. And late autumn, before the first freeze makes a sloped driveway a bad place to carry a treadmill.

Avoid the last days of August if you can. That week the whole city is moving at once and every truck in Philadelphia is on a student block near Temple or Drexel.

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