Seven job shapes that recur in this city, each priced both ways — item by item and by volume — with the cheaper one quoted. Four come out itemised and three come out by the truck, and the pattern across them tells you which way your own job will go.
You don't have to work out which method applies — that's our job
Upload Photos & Get Quote →Plainly, because pages like this usually cheat.
These are job shapes, not customers. They're the combinations of items that genuinely recur here — a pack-out remainder, a garage after a storm, a rental turnover — priced against our real published rates.
There are no names, no quotes and no addresses on this page, because we'd have to invent them. A row of testimonials would tell you far less about your own job than the arithmetic does.
And every figure is calculated, not estimated. Volume tiers are assigned by what physically fits — a quarter truck is 4 cubic yards, a half is 8, a full load is 16 — rather than by whichever tier happens to make us look better.
A recliner and a mid-size television.
Itemised: $132 + $91 = $223. By volume it's under 2 cubic yards, which would still price at the quarter-truck rate of $325.
Itemised wins by $102, and the reason is the floor: small loads can't use a fraction of a tier. What drove the price: too small for volume pricing to help.
Worth noting the honest limit — below about this size, our $75 minimum makes us poor value against a free route. The genuinely free options.
A single hot tub, dismantled and removed.
It occupies about 3 cubic yards, which would technically fit a quarter truck. We don't price it that way, and it's worth explaining why — because the cheaper-looking number would be the dishonest one.
A hot tub has to be taken apart. It's dense, awkward and shell-panelled, and the work is in the handling rather than the space. So it's priced as an item at $434 regardless of the truck fraction it fills. The same logic applies to anything heavy and awkward.
What drove the price: handling, not volume. Hot tub removal.
Sofa, mattress and box spring set, dresser. The most common turnover shape there is.
Itemised: $170 + $192 + $169 = $531. By volume that's about 7.5 cubic yards — a half truck at $580.
Itemised wins by $49. This one matters because the instinct runs the other way: people assume a whole room must be a truck job. With three large pieces and nothing else, it isn't.
What drove the price: a few large identifiable pieces. Move-out clears · why the set rate matters.
Sofa, bed set, dresser, large television and six boxes — what's left when the movers have taken what ships.
Itemised: $170 + $192 + $169 + $98 + six boxes at $42 = $881. By volume it's about 9.2 cubic yards — a five-eighths truck at $690.
Volume wins by $191, and the boxes are why. Six of them add $252 itemised but barely over a cubic yard of space.
What drove the price: boxes. The moment loose packed goods enter a job, volume pricing usually takes over. The PCS guide · military move-out.
A large loose pile, a bookcase, a desk, a treadmill and four boxes.
Itemised: $280 + $97 + $112 + $155 + four boxes at $42 = $812. By volume about 9.8 cubic yards — again a five-eighths truck at $690.
Volume wins by $122. Same mechanism as the pack-out: the loose pile and the boxes are cheap in space and expensive to count.
What drove the price: unnameable bulk. When a lot of what's going can't easily be listed, volume is nearly always the better method. Basement clears.
Patio table, propane grill, lawn mower, a large pile of damaged contents and a trampoline.
Itemised: $120 + $95 + $88 + $280 + $156 = $739. By volume about 11.3 cubic yards — a three-quarter truck at $790.
Itemised wins by $51, narrowly — and it's a good illustration of a genuine coin-flip. There's a large pile pushing toward volume, but four big nameable items pulling the other way.
What drove the price: a mix, resolved by arithmetic rather than instinct. Storm-debris clears · garage clears.
Three-piece sectional, large dining table, dresser, bookcase, bed set, desk, armchair and a medium pile.
Itemised: $249 + $220 + $169 + $97 + $192 + $112 + $104 + $174 = $1,317. By volume about 17.5 cubic yards — which is more than one truck.
So it prices as a full 16-cubic-yard load at $985 plus a partial second at $325 = $1,310. Essentially a tie, seven dollars apart.
What drove the price: exceeding one load. That's the number worth planning around at this size — a whole home is a two-load job, and finding that out in advance is the whole point of quoting from photographs. Estate and downsizing costs.
Line them up and a rule falls out that you can apply to your own job before contacting anybody.
Itemised wins when the job is a short list of large, nameable things. Two items, a hot tub, a three-piece turnover, a garage of identifiable equipment. Four of the seven.
Volume wins the moment loose bulk appears. Boxes, bags, general accumulation, a pile nobody can itemise. Three of the seven, and both the clearest wins.
The tipping point is boxes. They're the cheapest thing per cubic yard and the most expensive thing to count — six of them added $252 to the pack-out itemised and about one cubic yard by volume.
The practical shortcut: if you can list everything going in under ten items, expect itemised. If your list has the phrase "and a bunch of boxes" in it, expect volume.
The most actionable thing on this page, and it falls straight out of job four.
That pack-out remainder came to 9.2 cubic yards — just over the 8-cubic-yard half-truck line, which is why it priced at the five-eighths tier of $690.
Take the six boxes in your own car and the same job is exactly 8 cubic yards — a half truck at $580. That's $110 for moving six boxes yourself, which is one car journey and about twenty minutes.
The general principle: volume pricing moves in steps, so a job sitting just above a boundary is paying for a whole tier it barely uses. If you're close to a line, the cheapest thing you own is a car boot.
How to find out whether you're near one: ask. When we quote from photographs we can see which tier a job lands in and how much headroom is left — and if you're a few boxes over a boundary we'll say so, because telling you is worth more than the $110.
This works in the other direction too. If you're comfortably inside a tier with room to spare, adding a few more items costs nothing at all — so that's the moment to include the things you were unsure about rather than booking again later. Garage clears are where this comes up most.
Worth stating because they're the usual surcharges elsewhere.
Stairs, long carries and no lift. Never charged. The volume is the volume.
Where in the property it is. A basement, a back garden, an upstairs room — loading is the service, and the item doesn't need to be at the kerb.
The day of the week. No weekend premium, no busy-season rate. The full price list.
And no sales tax on the service in Colorado, which is worth a line because it's a real difference from several states we operate in.
Honest caveats, since the whole page is arithmetic.
Photographs that don't show the depth. A pile with more behind it changes the volume, and therefore the tier. We'd say so before loading and you could decline.
Items nobody mentioned. The garage that turns out to also contain a freezer.
Things needing special routing. Refrigerant appliances and electronics travel specific channels that cost more than general load. Appliance routing · e-waste.
| Scope | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Minimum | $75 |
| Quarter truck (4 cu yd) | $325 |
| Three-eighths truck | $455 |
| Half truck (8 cu yd) | $580 |
| Five-eighths truck | $690 |
| Three-quarter truck | $790 |
| Seven-eighths truck | $890 |
| Full truck (16 cu yd) | $985 |
| Sofa / sectional 3pc / recliner | $170 / $249 / $132 |
| Mattress and box spring set | $192 |
| Dresser / bookcase / desk | $169 / $97 / $112 |
| Refrigerator / washer / dryer | $221 / $179 / $172 |
| Hot tub | $434 |
| Treadmill / trampoline | $155 / $156 |
| Boxes | $42 each |
| Stairs, carries, weekends | No charge |
Itemised. Below the tier floor.
Itemised, always. Handling, not volume.
Usually itemised. The turnover case, $531.
Volume. Boxes flip it.
Volume. Unnameable bulk. Basement.
Genuinely close. We'll run both.
Volume, by the cubic yard. Defensible space.
More than one load. Plan for two. Estate costs.
Try free first. Donation.
Don't call us. The $75 minimum is bad value.
Count your boxes. That single question decides which pricing method wins more reliably than anything else about your job. A short list of large, nameable things prices better item by item, and four of the seven shapes above did exactly that — including a full one-bedroom turnover, which almost everybody assumes must be a truck job. But the moment loose packed goods enter the picture, the arithmetic flips hard: six boxes cost $252 to itemise and about one cubic yard to carry. You don't have to work any of this out yourself — we calculate both and quote the lower — but it's worth knowing that a page like this coming out four-to-three is what an honest calculation looks like. If the truck rate won every time, somebody would be choosing the examples.
Photographs in, a fixed price back — before anyone travels
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