A garage cleanout in Northeast Philadelphia is priced by volume — how much space your stuff takes up in the truck, not by counting individual items. Pricing starts at $150 for an eighth-load, and a typical mixed garage pile often lands closer to $275 for a quarter-load. You can get a ballpark number by sending a photo before anyone shows up at your door.
Pricing in this business comes down to one question: how much of the truck does your pile fill? Nobody’s counting keyboards or cables one by one. A crew looks at the whole pile and matches it to a load size — eighth, quarter, half, three-quarter, or full — and that size sets the starting price.
The ladder looks like this, straight from the current rate card. All figures are “starting at,” with the final price confirmed once a crew physically sees the pile.
| Load Size | Starting Price | Capacity (up to) |
|---|---|---|
| 1/8 Truck Load | $150 | ~825 lbs |
| 1/4 Truck Load | $275 | ~1,650 lbs |
| 1/2 Truck Load | $395 | 1.5 tons |
| 3/4 Truck Load | $525 | 2.25 tons |
| Full Truck Load | $695 | 3 tons |
If you want the full breakdown of what’s included at each tier, our junk removal pricing page lays it out alongside the senior discount and the recycling credit. For a general sense of what cleanouts run across the city, there’s also a cost guide at junk removal cost philadelphia.
An eighth-load is small. Think one corner of a garage — a few boxes, an old chair, maybe a broken lamp. That’s the $150 tier.
A quarter-load is a different story. In one recent booking, the pile was a mix of e-waste and keyboards, all kinds of cables, a dehumidifier, a wire spool with an extension cord, and a bag of leaves. On its own, that might have stayed an eighth-load. Then a concrete container packed with tools showed up in a second photo. That pushed the whole pile to a quarter-load, priced at $275. One dense item, added late, moved the whole estimate up a tier.
Say your garage has a similar mix — old electronics, a couple of appliances, some loose hardware. Expect it to land somewhere between an eighth and a quarter-load, not because of how many things are in the pile, but because of how much floor and truck space they’d take up together.
Here’s something most people don’t think about: a quarter-load often has room left over. If your pile fills, say, two-thirds of that quarter-load space, you’re not charged less for the unused third — so it makes sense to fill it.
That means anything else you’ve been meaning to get rid of — an old end table, a busted microwave, a stack of lumber scraps — can usually go in at no extra cost, as long as it still fits inside the load size you’re already paying for. It’s worth walking the garage, the basement, and maybe the shed one more time before pickup day. You’re paying for the space either way.
You don’t need a crew standing in your driveway to get a number. Send a photo of the pile, and a dispatcher estimates roughly how much truck space it fills, then gives you a price range on the spot. That’s not the final word — the crew confirms the exact number once they’re on site and can see everything up close, including anything the photo missed.
This two-step process protects both sides. You’re not committing blind to a price based on a phone description, and the company isn’t guessing at what’s actually in the garage. Our junk removal services page covers how this applies across garages, basements, and full estate cleanouts.
A rushed photo leads to a rough estimate, and a rough estimate can shift once the crew arrives. A few minutes of prep avoids that gap entirely.
Before You Send the Photo
Missing something changes the number. In the quarter-load example above, the concrete container wasn’t in the first photo at all. A second look caught it, and the estimate adjusted accordingly, before anyone drove out.
Not everything in a load costs the same per pound, in practical terms. Dense, heavy materials push the price up — concrete, brick, tile, roofing material, dirt, and gravel all fall into this category, mainly because of what it takes to haul and dispose of them, and sometimes because they require an extra trip.
The caller in our example flagged this himself before being asked: “it even shows a thing of concrete, I know you guys charge more for that.” He was right. A concrete container full of tools is going to weigh far more than the same volume of cardboard boxes and cables, and that weight is reflected in the final on-site number, not the photo estimate alone.
In our view, this is one of the more reasonable pricing rules in the industry — it’s expensive to dump, and that cost has to land somewhere. If your garage has a mix of light clutter and something heavy like a concrete planter or old patio pavers, mention it up front. It won’t change whether the job gets booked. It just sets expectations correctly.
Most household and garage items are fair game for a standard load. A few categories need separate handling, and knowing the difference in advance saves everyone a trip.
A few things typically stay out of a standard load:
These generally need separate drop-off at a permitted facility rather than a standard load — the risk of leaks or contamination during hauling is the reason most companies in this space handle them apart from everyday junk. If your garage has old paint cans, pool chemicals, or batteries sitting around, mention it when you call so the crew can tell you your options before pickup day. If you’d rather sort through city-run alternatives for some of these categories first, the philadelphia bulk trash rules page covers what the city itself will and won’t collect curbside.
The caller behind this article had already sorted his pile correctly before the call — “I don’t have any chemical type stuff, I don’t have any batteries either.” That kind of pre-sorting isn’t required, but it does make the estimate faster and more accurate.
Keyboards, cables, extension cords, a dehumidifier — this is the bulk of what a lot of Northeast Philly garages accumulate over the years. Old electronics don’t belong in regular trash, and most municipal pickups won’t take them anyway.
E-waste that comes through a standard load is routed toward recycling where that’s possible, rather than straight to a landfill. It still counts toward your truck-load volume the same as anything else — a tangle of cables takes up less room than it looks like it will, but a dehumidifier or an old monitor adds up fast.
The process is short on purpose. Nobody wants to spend a week coordinating a garage cleanout.
Same-day and next-day booking is common. In the example that shaped this article, the job was booked for the next morning in a 9–10 a.m. window, with a call ahead before the crew left for the job and a text confirmation right after the booking call ended. You’re not left guessing whether anyone’s actually coming.
Owner-operator Mike Sullivan still rides along on jobs and answers the phone himself — you can read more and meet owner Mike Sullivan on the about page if you’d like to know who’s actually showing up at your door.
Labor, loading, hauling, disposal, and cleanup are all bundled into the load-size price — no hourly add-ons, no separate dump fee tacked on at the curb. A senior discount of 10% off applies for qualifying customers; ask when you book whether it applies to your situation. There’s also a recycling and resale credit — if items from your load get resold or recycled for value, that gets credited back to your bill.
Two smaller fees exist on the standard rate card worth knowing: a $75 cancellation fee if you cancel after 6 p.m. the day before service, and a 3% card-processing fee if you pay by credit card. Neither applies if you keep your appointment and pay by other means.
Want an exact number for your garage before you commit to anything? Send a photo and call (215) 608-6297 — most garage piles get a working estimate in minutes, with the final price locked once the crew sees it in person.
This same load-size pricing runs across Northeast Philadelphia’s rowhome blocks and the suburbs just past the city line. The booking behind this article came from ZIP 19111 — junk removal fox chase — but the same crew covers junk removal mayfair, junk removal bustleton, junk removal holmesburg, plus Torresdale, Rhawnhurst, Oxford Circle, Frankford, Tacony, and Somerton.
Out past the city line, the same pricing and scheduling extend to junk removal bensalem pa, junk removal huntingdon valley pa, and junk removal abington pa. If you’re not sure your block is covered, it almost certainly is — ask when you call.
If your garage pile looks anything like the one in this article — e-waste, cables, an old appliance, maybe something heavier like concrete — the fastest path to a real number is a photo. From there it’s a scheduled window, not a vague “sometime this week” promise.
Send a photo for a quick estimate, or call (215) 608-6297 for same-day or next-day scheduling. The on-site estimate is free, and there’s no obligation to book.
Pricing is volume-based, starting at $150 for an eighth-load. A typical mixed garage pile — electronics, an appliance, some loose hardware — often lands around a quarter-load at $275. Both figures are “starting at” prices, confirmed once the crew sees everything on site.
Yes. Sending a photo gets you a ballpark estimate within minutes, the same way it worked in the call behind this article. The final price is set once the crew physically sees the pile.
Yes — keyboards, cables, extension cords, and appliances like a dehumidifier are all accepted and routed toward recycling where that’s possible, rather than straight to a landfill.
Paint, household or pool chemicals, and batteries of any kind are generally handled separately from a standard load. Mention these when you call so the crew can advise you on the best option for your situation.
Dense, heavy materials — concrete, brick, tile, dirt, roofing — weigh far more than the same volume of household clutter, and that weight drives up disposal cost. Heavier loads can also require an extra trip, which adds to the total.
Often, yes. One recent booking was scheduled for the next morning in a 9–10 a.m. window, with a call ahead before the crew left and a text confirmation right after the call.
Most load sizes have some room to spare. If your pile doesn’t fill a quarter-load completely, you can usually add other items you want gone — an old table, a broken appliance — at no extra cost, as long as it still fits the space you’re already paying for.
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About the Author
Founder & Owner-Operator
Mike Sullivan is the founder and owner-operator of Northeast Philly Elite Junk Removal. Born and raised in the Northeast, Mike brings 20 years of junk-removal and hauling experience to every job. He started his own crew after years on the trucks, and he still runs every quote himself and rides along on cleanouts across Mayfair, Bustleton, Somerton, Torresdale, Holmesburg, Fox Chase, and Rhawnhurst. His approach is simple and no-BS: give you the full price up front, show up in a real arrival window, and haul it all away — donating and recycling whatever can be saved before anything goes to the landfill. When you call, you get Mike, not a national call center.
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