The price tracks volume. The job tracks sorting. Those are different timelines, and most of what goes wrong in an estate clear comes from treating them as one. This page covers both — what the number is made of, and what has to happen before the number matters.
Quarter truck $325 · full truck $985 · each additional truck the same
Upload Photos & Get Quote →An estate clear contains two jobs that run at completely different speeds.
The removal is fast. Once decisions are made, loading a house is a matter of hours — a day at most for anything short of a full property.
The sorting is not. Going through a home that somebody lived in for decades takes as long as it takes, and it is the part that cannot be redone.
Almost every estate that goes badly went badly because the fast timeline was allowed to set the pace of the slow one. A date got fixed, and the going-through was compressed to fit it.
So the honest structure of this page: what drives the price, then what should happen before you care about the price.
Not square footage, not the number of rooms, and not how long the person lived there directly. Volume that leaves the property — that's it.
Four things multiply that volume, and they're worth knowing because they explain why two houses of the same size can quote very differently.
Storage the house had. A garage, a basement, a shed, an attic. Properties with somewhere to put things accumulate more than properties without. This is the single biggest variable.
Whether anyone has been through it already. A house where the family has taken what they want is a much smaller job than one that's untouched.
How long it was held. Not because old things are bulkier, but because forty years produces layers — things stored once and never revisited.
What's actually staying. Sometimes furniture goes with the sale, sometimes nothing does.
The most important section here, and the one worth being blunt about.
Documents, photographs, cash and small valuables turn up in estates more than in any other kind of clearing. Not in obvious places — taped inside drawers, tucked between book pages, in coat pockets, folded into linens, at the bottom of boxes nobody has opened in years.
A crew cannot know which battered tin matters. It looks like every other battered tin. What we can do is follow instructions precisely; what we cannot do is guess.
And removal is irreversible. Everything else in an estate can be revisited — a decision to sell, a decision about who takes what. Once something is on a truck, that's the end of it.
If you take one thing from this page: the sorting comes first, and the removal waits.
How to make "don't take that" actually reliable.
Put it in writing before the day — by room, by item, or both. A short list is enough.
Or mark things physically. Tape, a sticker, a note on the door of a room that isn't being touched. Physical marking is more reliable than any description, because it doesn't depend on anyone interpreting your words the way you meant them.
And the safest rule of all: anything uncertain stays. A second visit costs a fraction of a wrong decision, and we'd rather come back. How our estate work is scheduled.
A boundary worth stating plainly, because the temptation runs the other way.
We don't appraise, we don't buy, and we won't offer opinions on what your family's belongings are worth. That isn't our competence, and a hauling company volunteering valuations is a hauling company operating outside it — sometimes innocently, sometimes not.
If you think something might be worth money, have it looked at by someone whose actual business that is, before it goes anywhere. That's true whether or not you use us afterwards.
What we will do is tell you exactly what we're removing, and stop if you want to look again.
Not a price we charge, but the most expensive thing in this whole process.
Houses cleared before the family has finished deciding tend to produce lasting grievances — and usually not about anything financially significant. It's the ordinary object that turns out to have meant something to somebody who wasn't consulted.
That's worth weighing against whatever is creating the urgency. Sometimes the deadline is real and unavoidable. Often it's self-imposed, and a fortnight of patience costs very little by comparison.
If the family hasn't agreed yet, it's too early to book a removal — and we'd rather tell you that than take the booking.
Questions about who has authority to decide — the executor's powers, probate, what the estate is obliged to do — belong with an attorney. We're not able to advise on any of it and won't pretend otherwise.
The practical answer to two timelines running at different speeds.
Clear the obvious first, decide about the rest, then book again. The obvious pile is usually large — worn furniture, broken appliances, general accumulation nobody is going to want — and removing it makes the remaining sorting far easier, because what's left is only the things that need thought.
Each visit prices as its own job, so staging costs nothing extra beyond what the volume would have cost anyway. There's no surcharge for coming twice.
For most estates this is the right shape: one visit to clear the volume, a gap of however long you need, one visit to finish. Availability.
Common here, given how many families have moved through this region.
It can be done remotely, and the constraints are worth knowing before you book a flight. You'll need to arrange access, and you'll need to be specific in writing about what stays — because the usual safeguard of walking the house with the crew isn't available.
The strong recommendation is that somebody goes through it in person first, even if that means one trip before the clearing rather than during it. Remote clearing works well for the volume; it works badly for the discrimination between what matters and what doesn't.
Photographs of the emptied rooms come back to you when it's done. Related: remote coordination on PCS moves.
| 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 |
| Seven-eighths truck | $890 |
| Full 16-cu-yd truck | $985 |
| Each additional truck | Same flat rate |
| Stairs, long carry, no lift | No charge |
| Staged second visit | Priced as its own job |
Quoted from photographs before anyone travels; no sales tax on the service in Colorado. Full price list · downsizing work.
A cleared two-bedroom apartment. Sofa, a bed set, a dresser, a dining table, a bookcase and a television. Priced piece by piece that's $170 + $192 + $169 + $220 + $97 + $98 = $946. By volume it's around a three-quarter truck at $790 — so the volume tier wins by $156, and that's what we'd quote.
A long-held house with a garage. Realistically more than one load. A full truck is $985 and each additional truck is the same flat rate, so a two-load property is $1,970 — quoted in advance from photographs rather than discovered partway through.
The pattern: on anything approaching a whole property, volume pricing wins comfortably. Itemised pricing is for the estates where only a few things remain after the family has taken what it wants.
Three ways estates cost more than they should, none of them about the rate.
Paying to remove things somebody wanted. The most expensive mistake available, and it isn't recoverable at any price.
Paying twice because the sorting wasn't finished. Staging deliberately is efficient. Booking a full clear, then stopping halfway because decisions weren't made, is not.
Not separating the metal. Old appliances, bed frames, tools, filing cabinets — clean metal has a genuine recovery route, and a long-held house often holds a lot of it. Set it aside rather than burying it in a mixed load. How metal is routed.
Five questions, and they matter more on an estate than on any other kind of job — because the mistakes are permanent.
"Will you set aside anything I mark, and what happens if you're unsure?" The answer you want is that uncertain items stay in the house. Anything else puts the judgement in the wrong hands.
"Can you stop partway if I change my mind?" Sometimes a room turns out to need more thought once it's half-empty. A crew that can pause is worth more than a slightly cheaper one that can't.
"Do you buy or value anything?" A company that offers to take valuables off your hands as part of a clearing has a conflict of interest, whatever its intentions. The honest answer to this question is no.
"Is the price fixed before you arrive?" On a large job, learning the number once a crew is in the driveway is the worst possible moment.
"Will I get an itemised invoice?" Estates frequently need records — for the family, for an accountant, or for whoever is administering things. More on comparing providers.
Two situations that look similar from the outside and need something different.
A house with a genuine hoarding situation is a different kind of work at a different pace, and it should not be handled as a fast estate clear. It may also involve conditions we're not equipped for — anything requiring biohazard remediation is a licensed specialist's job, not a hauling company's. How that work differs.
And a property being cleared while its owner is still living — a downsizing move rather than an estate — belongs on that person's timeline rather than the family's. The instinct to be efficient on someone's behalf is well-meant and often unwelcome. Downsizing work.
In both cases the removal mechanics are the same. What changes is the pace, and the pace is the whole thing.
Too early to book. That's a real answer, not a delay.
Not a same-day job. Sorting first, always.
Now it's a straightforward volume job. Quarter truck $325 upward.
Often three-quarter truck, $790. Apartment clears.
Budget more than one load. Garage · basement.
Book sets together — $192 rather than the pieces separately. Why.
Refrigerant needs certified recovery. Appliance removal.
Get it looked at first. Not by us.
Try donation before disposal. What gets accepted.
These are the reason you go through it first.
Send someone in person once, then clear remotely.
Their pace, not the calendar's. Downsizing.
Let the slow timeline set the pace. The removal is the easy part of an estate and the part with a price on it — a day of work, quoted in advance, done. The going-through is the hard part, it has no price, and it is the only part that cannot be redone. Every estate we have seen go wrong went wrong the same way: a date was fixed for the truck, and the sorting was squeezed to fit it. If the family hasn't finished deciding, the answer is to book later or to book in stages, and either is fine by us. Clear the obvious volume whenever you're ready, take as long as you need with the rest, and put anything uncertain back in the house until you're sure. We would much rather come twice.
Photographs in, a fixed number back — staged visits at no extra cost
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