Everything in the house is going to end up in one of three places — shipped, in the vehicle, or left behind. Two of those depend on rules we can't see. The third is a fixed price you can get today, which makes it the one line of your move-out budget that doesn't have to be a guess.
Quarter truck $325 · half $580 · full $985 — quoted from photos
Upload Photos & Get Quote →Stated first, because it's the part that matters.
Nothing about BAH, entitlements, reimbursements or weight. Those vary by grade, location, dependency status and circumstance, they change, and a hauling company estimating them would be handing you numbers that could cost you money.
Your finance office and your personal property office are the authorities, and your lease is the authority on the deposit. Anything on those topics belongs with them, not with us.
What we can do is remove one unknown from the pile. The cost of clearing what's left behind is knowable in advance, exactly, from photographs — which is worth something on a move where most of the other numbers are still moving.
Every object in the house resolves to one of these, whether or not you decide deliberately.
Shipped. The movers take it. What qualifies and what it counts against is a question for your personal property office.
Carried. It goes in the car with you. This pile is bounded by physical space and it's always smaller than people plan for.
Left behind. It has to be gone before the walkthrough. This is the pile with a price, and it's the one nobody assigns things to on purpose — items arrive in it by failing to qualify for the other two, usually late, usually under pressure.
Here's the mistake, and it's almost universal.
People sort item by item. They pick something up, weigh its sentimental and practical value, make a call, put it down, and repeat several hundred times. It's exhausting, it's slow, and it produces inconsistent results because the standard drifts as you get tired.
Set the boundaries first instead. Decide the rules — anything not used since the last move doesn't ship; upholstery over a certain age doesn't travel; flat-pack doesn't survive another disassembly — and then apply them fast without relitigating each object.
That converts hundreds of decisions into three or four. And it makes the leftover pile predictable early, which is exactly what you need to get a quote before the week gets loud.
Civilians moving house have a soft edge; renters don't.
Someone is going to walk the property with you on a date, and the property has to be empty. Not tidy — empty. There's no garage to leave things in, no "we'll come back for that", no next weekend.
That's the whole structural difference, and it's why a move-out clearance is a scheduled task rather than an intention. Anything still in the house on that morning is a problem with an audience.
What the walkthrough covers and what may be withheld are matters for your lease — and if there's a dispute, for an attorney. We're not able to advise on either. Move-out clearances.
The trade-off people agonise over, reduced to what's actually knowable.
Whether something is worth shipping depends on rules we can't see — ask your personal property office how your shipment is counted before you decide anything on that basis.
What we can offer is the judgement about the object itself. The usual candidates for not travelling: a worn sofa, a mattress that has already moved twice, flat-pack furniture that won't survive another disassembly, anything you haven't used since the last move, and anything that was cheap and is now old.
The question worth asking about each: if this didn't exist at the other end, would you buy another one? For a surprising amount of what fills a rental, the answer is no — and that item is costing effort in both directions. What a charity will actually take · the free routes and their limits.
A pattern worth planning around, because it's predictable.
The left-behind pile is mostly empty until the packers have been. Right up to that point, everything is theoretically shipping — and then the shipment goes and what remains is suddenly, visibly, a pile.
Which is why so many people book removal at the worst possible moment: after the pack-out, days before the walkthrough, in the busiest week of the local calendar.
The fix is to book on the estimate rather than the certainty. Photograph what you already know isn't going — the garage, the worn furniture, the storage-unit contents — and get a quote for that. Adjust later if it grows. A quote costs nothing and holding a slot is worth more than precision.
The scheduling reality of this city, and it applies to every service you'll need.
The summer window concentrates an enormous number of household moves into a short period, across Fort Carson, Peterson, the Air Force Academy, and the surrounding communities in Security-Widefield, Fountain and Cimarron Hills.
Everything tightens at once: removal calendars, charity collection slots, rental trucks, and the second-hand market you were hoping to sell into. Donation capacity in particular gets scarce exactly when supply peaks — a great many households are offering good furniture in the same fortnight. Why acceptance tightens then.
Booking early is the entire mitigation, and it costs nothing to do.
The practical shape that works best.
Let the shipment go first, then clear what's left. Once the movers have been, the left-behind pile has defined itself and there's nothing left to decide — which makes the removal fast and the quote accurate.
Book it for the day after, not the same day. If the pack-out runs long, a same-day booking becomes a problem on your side too; a day's gap absorbs that entirely.
And make sure somebody has access. Plenty of these clearances happen with the service member already gone or mid-transit — that's routine, but it needs arranging rather than assuming. The PCS move-out guide · military move-out.
There is actually a fourth destination, and it is the expensive one precisely because it feels like a solution rather than a decision.
Storage. Under deadline pressure it is enormously attractive — it converts an unresolved decision into a small monthly payment and buys you the one thing you have none of, which is time.
The trap is that you will be paying for it from somewhere else. A unit taken out during a move-out week gets reviewed rarely, because reviewing it means a trip you are no longer local enough to make casually. Plenty of units in this city belong to households that left years ago.
The honest test before you sign: is there a specific, dated reason this is coming out of storage — a house you are buying, a posting you know returns you here — or is storage standing in for a decision you did not have time to make? If it is the second, the removal you are avoiding today is cheaper than the storage you will forget to cancel.
Storage is genuinely right sometimes. It is just worth being the deliberate answer rather than the default one.
A well-meant habit worth being realistic about.
Leaving useful things for the family moving in is a real kindness, and in a community with this much turnover it is common — a lawnmower, curtain rails, a shelving unit in the garage, the shed that would be a nuisance to remove.
But it only counts as a gift if they want it. Anything left behind that the next household does not want becomes their disposal problem, in their first week, in a city they have just arrived in and where nothing is collected from the kerb.
The workable version is to ask rather than assume — if there is a way to reach the incoming family or the property manager, offer specific items and let them decline. What does not work is leaving a garage half full as a gesture, then discovering it counted against you at the walkthrough anyway.
And it is not a route for genuinely worn things. A sofa nobody wanted to ship is not improved by being left in an empty house. What a charity will take instead.
| Scope | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Minimum | $75 |
| A room's worth — quarter truck | $325 |
| Three-eighths truck | $455 |
| Half truck | $580 |
| Five-eighths truck | $690 |
| Three-quarter truck | $790 |
| Full 16-cu-yd truck | $985 |
| Each additional truck | Same flat rate |
| Sofa / loveseat | $170 / $160 |
| Mattress and box spring set | $192 |
| Dresser / bookcase / desk | $169 / $97 / $112 |
| Loading, stairs, long carry | Included |
No sales tax on the service in Colorado. Quoted from photographs before anyone travels, so it enters your budget as a fixed figure. Full price list · seven job shapes priced both ways.
The common shape after a pack-out from a two-bedroom rental.
A worn sofa, a mattress set, a dresser and a medium pile of odds and ends. Itemised: $170 + $192 + $169 + $174 = $705.
By volume that's roughly a five-eighths truck at $690 — so volume wins narrowly, and that's what we'd quote.
The useful part isn't the $15. It's that this figure was obtainable three weeks earlier from photographs of the same items, at which point it could have gone into the budget as a line rather than appearing as a surprise in the final week. That's the whole argument of this page.
Rarely worth moving. $170, and no free route once upholstered.
Set $192. Why it's three objects.
Usually doesn't survive another disassembly.
Worth shipping or worth donating — don't skip straight to disposal.
Sort hazardous out first. Garage method.
Deal with it now. It won't get cheaper from another state.
Working ones have real value. Sell before disconnecting.
Heavy, and rarely worth the shipment. Treadmill $155.
Not ours to remove. Check for asset tags.
Wipe before they leave your hands.
Full truck $985, additional loads at the same rate.
Remote clearance is routine — arrange access in writing.
Price the third pile early, because it's the only one you can. A PCS move-out is full of numbers that won't hold still — allowances, entitlements, what the shipment counts against, what comes back off a deposit — and none of those are ours to estimate. The cost of making the leftover pile disappear is different: it's fixed, it's available from photographs weeks in advance, and it does not care how busy the season gets. So set your sorting rules before you touch anything, photograph what you already know isn't travelling, get that number into the budget while the week is still calm, and let the shipment define the rest. The pile assembles itself late no matter what you do — but the price of dealing with it doesn't have to.
Photograph what isn't travelling — fixed price back, adjust later if it grows
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