What mattress recycling actually costs in Colorado Springs

The short answer

Mattress removal in Colorado Springs is priced by size, flat, with the disposal included. A twin is $82, a full is $94, a queen is $103, a king or Cal King is $114. A box spring on its own is $92. A mattress and box spring together is $143.

That is the whole number. Not a pickup fee with a recycling charge bolted on afterwards. The reason people ask about a separate recycling cost is that the industry has trained them to expect one, and in this city the honest answer is that it is already in the price you were quoted.

Why a mattress costs more to handle than a sofa its own size

Volume, not weight. A queen mattress weighs less than a loveseat and takes up roughly twice the airspace in a truck bed. Truck space is the real unit of cost in this business, which is why a $103 queen and a $119 loveseat land near each other despite the loveseat being much heavier.

The second factor is what happens at the far end. Mattresses are a genuinely difficult material stream — steel coils, polyurethane foam, quilted ticking and a wooden or composite frame, all bonded together in a way that resists separation. Facilities handle them on separate terms from general household waste for exactly that reason. Whatever a given facility charges to take one, that cost is inside our flat number rather than added to it.

The self-haul comparison, honestly

Plenty of Springs households own a truck, and the instinct is to run it out yourself. Sometimes that is the right call. Do the arithmetic properly before you commit.

• The gate charge. Call the facility and ask today's number and whether they are taking mattresses from private vehicles at all. Do not trust a figure from a blog, including ours — we deliberately do not print one, because it moves.
• Loading it alone. A queen is unwieldy rather than heavy. Getting one down a finished walkout basement stair on your own, around the landing turn, is where most people give up.
• The drive. Depending on whether you are in Monument, Falcon, Fountain or the Westside, this is a real chunk of a Saturday, plus fuel.
• The wind. This is not a joke on the Front Range. A mattress that is not properly strapped becomes a sail somewhere on the open stretch of Powers or I-25, and that is a much more expensive day.

If you are clearing one mattress, self-haul can pencil out. If you are clearing a bedroom, it usually doesn't. Two twins and a queen out of a Stetson Hills house is $82 + $82 + $103 = $267 done in one visit without you touching any of it.

What the Springs climate does to a mattress before you get to this decision

We pick up a lot of mattresses that failed early, and the pattern here is specific. Dry air, thin atmosphere at just over six thousand feet, and a daily temperature swing that can run thirty degrees in shoulder season. Anything living in a detached garage in Old Colorado City, an unconditioned walkout basement on a Rockrimmon slope, or a shed on a Black Forest lot cycles through that constantly.

What shows up: foam that has gone brittle and crumbles at the cut edge, ticking that has dried out and split along the seams, adhesive joints in box spring frames that have simply let go. Then hail season adds the other half — a storm through a garage window or a shed panel, and foam takes on water that will sit in it for a very long time.

The people most affected by this are the ones storing a mattress "for the next place". In this climate a mattress in an unheated space is not in storage. It is aging out on a clock you are not watching.

The full bedroom, priced out

Most mattress calls are not really about one mattress. Here is what tends to go at the same time.

A guest room going out whole — set, upholstered queen frame, dresser, one nightstand — is $143 + $126 + $126 + $57 = $452. You see that total before anyone drives out, not after they have loaded the truck.

When a truck-load price is the better number

If you are emptying a house rather than a bedroom, item pricing stops being the cheapest route and volume pricing takes over. The truck ladder runs $241 for a quarter load, $338 for three-eighths, $431 for a half, $513 for five-eighths, $587 for three-quarters, $661 for seven-eighths and $732 for a full truck.

This matters most on the two Springs jobs that always overflow: a summer PCS clear-out where four bedrooms are emptying at once, and an inherited house in Broadmoor or Cheyenne Cañon where three generations of bedding have accumulated. We quote you whichever of the two routes is lower. That is not a discount we are inventing — it is just picking the correct price on the same published list.

What we actually do on the day

We carry it. Out of a finished basement, down from an upstairs bedroom, through the narrow side gate of a sloping lot — the listed price does not change based on where the mattress starts. No stair charge, no walk-up fee, no same-day surcharge, and disposal is in the number.

You get the quote in writing, per item, before we come. If you have a garage full of other things going at the same time, put them on the same quote and see whether the truck-load number comes out lower. Either way you know before we arrive, which is the entire point.

Frequently asked questions