What Philadelphia residents actually pay for junk removal

The short answer

Most Philadelphia households land in one of four bands.

• One awkward item: from the $75 minimum up to $164 for a standard refrigerator. A sofa is $126, a queen mattress $103, a washer $133.
• A room: the $241 quarter-truck rung up to the $431 half. A bedroom, a front room, a basement corner.
• A unit or a floor: $431 to $732. The half, five-eighths, three-quarter and full truck rungs.
• A whole house: multiple full loads at $732 each.

The per-visit minimum is $75. There is no stair fee, no walk-up fee, no same-day fee, and no charge for the parking situation on your block — which in this city is the fee everyone is quietly expecting.

The per-item numbers people use most

The truck ladder, for when counting is pointless

If the job is "this whole basement" rather than "these six things", price it by how much of the truck it fills:

A useful Philadelphia rule of thumb: one floor of a standard two-bedroom row home, cleared of furniture, is usually somewhere between the half and the three-quarter rung.

Six real-shaped Philadelphia jobs, with the arithmetic

1. A sofa off a Fishtown second floor. $126. One line, one number.

2. A bedroom in a Cedar Park twin. Queen mattress and box spring set $143 + bed frame $68 + dresser $126 = $337.

3. Basement laundry swap in Grays Ferry. Washer $133 + dryer $128 = $261.

4. A Center City studio handover. Futon $111 + full mattress $94 + bookshelf $72 = $277.

5. A South Philly front room after a downsize. Sofa $126 + loveseat $119 + coffee table $67 + entertainment center $96 + 55-inch TV $68 = $476.

6. A Northeast Philly kitchen refit. Refrigerator $164 + gas range $137 + dishwasher $109 = $410.

Every one of those totals is the plain sum of published item prices. You see it before you book, not after a truck is parked on your street.

What Philadelphians pay that people in other cities do not

Nothing, and that is the point worth making. The things that are structurally harder here are the things we deliberately do not price for:

• The staircase. Row homes turn at the landing. Trinities in Queen Village and Bella Vista have winder stairs with pie-shaped treads. That is the hardest part of the job and it is not a line item.
• The third floor. Normal housing stock in West Philly and North Philly, not an exception.
• The basement hatchway. An outside bulkhead with a concrete lip is how a lot of South Philly laundry gets out. Included.
• No driveway. There is nowhere to put a truck except the street, and the street is one lane once both curbs are parked. Our problem.
• Permit parking zones. Also our problem.

Where the real savings are

Two levers, and both are free.

Batch the visit. The minimum is per visit, not per item. If you have a sofa now and a mattress in three weeks, one visit covers both and you pay $126 + $103 = $229 rather than two trips with their own minimums. In a small Philly house, storing the old sofa in the back bedroom for two weeks is usually feasible.

Rehome the good stuff first. Philadelphia moves furniture well. A clean sofa on a Passyunk or Spruce Hill pavement with a sign on it has a genuine chance of being gone by dinner, and campus areas absorb serviceable desks and bookshelves every August. What does not move: anything sagging, anything particleboard, anything that has sat against a damp basement wall, and mattresses of any description.

How to get your own number in about two minutes

Walk the space once and write down the pieces. Look up each one, add them, and that is the price. If the list gets past about ten lines, stop counting and pick a rung on the truck ladder instead.

Do not accept "we'll price it when we see it" as the only option in this city. Stairs, streets and access are exactly the variables that get re-priced on a doorstep, and you are in the weakest possible position to argue at that moment. Get the number first.

Frequently asked questions