Why a junk load is priced by the yard it fills
Customers understand space in a trailer far better than they understand hours or tons. A quarter, half or full load is something you can point at, and the yards the junk takes up drive the two biggest costs: how long two people spend carrying it out and how much the dump charges to take it.
So this calculator asks for cubic yards and turns each one into crew time and dump fees. In the example a yard costs 0.59 crew hours and $15.14 in fees and supplies. That second number is mostly weight: furniture and boxes are light, but shingles, tile, dirt or a pile of wet carpet weigh far more per yard, and the scale charges by weight.
Reading the pile in yards before you quote
Picture the pile inside your own trailer. The example trailer holds 14 yards loaded level to the sides, so a pile that would fill it halfway is 7 and a quarter is 3.5. For a loose pile in a driveway, multiply length, width and height in feet and divide by 27.
Then look at what is in it. Full cabinets, loose small stuff that needs bagging and a garage the customer wants swept broom-clean all add time per yard. Mattresses and tires carry their own disposal fees, so count them. If the load hides tile or concrete under the furniture, the $25 line for heavy material covers a small amount; a lot of it needs a separate price.
Quarter, half and full trailer on the same settings
Set the volume to 3.5 yards and the heavy material line to zero, and a quarter load comes to $261.14, or $74.61 a yard. A half load at 7 yards comes to $469.48, or $67.07 a yard. The full 14-yard cleanout is $65.44 a yard.
The yard price falls as loads grow because the $44 for running the truck and trailer is the same whether the trailer leaves full or a quarter full. Go all the way down to a single yard and the cost before profit is only $93.61, so the $150 minimum sets the price. That minimum is what pays for the drive on single-item pickups.
The $968 cleanout: what the full junk spreadsheet adds
The $52 break-even rate is the example company's $52.44, rounded. It covers the owner's pay, a helper, insurance, the truck payment and the hours spent on calls and quotes. Work out your own with the free true hourly rate calculator, and see the overhead and profit guide for why the profit sits on top of it.
The spreadsheet charges the truck and trailer by their own hourly cost, keeps your dump and recycling fees on a price list, adds a cushion, works through the load costs haulers forget, prints a customer quote and logs each job's real dump ticket. It prices this cleanout at $968. For the load prices owners quote, read the junk removal pricing guide.