A junk removal pricing sheet is a short ladder of truckload fractions: a minimum charge, then quarter, half, three-quarter and full load, plus a labor-only rate and a list of surcharges. Work is priced by the truck space a load fills, not by the hour and not by weight. Build the sheet from your own truck and your own costs, because every tier has to cover disposal fees, crew labor, fuel, the truck payment, insurance and overhead before anything is left for the owner.
How do junk removal companies set their prices?
By volume. The category standard is a fraction-of-truckload ladder, where the customer pays for the share of the truck bed their pile fills once it is loaded. Hourly pricing punishes an efficient crew and rewards a slow one. Weight pricing matches how the transfer station bills you, but almost no customer can estimate the weight of a garage, so it kills quotes on the phone.
Volume pricing wins because both sides can see it. The customer looks at a truck diagram, points at the line their pile reaches, and knows the number before the first box moves. It is one of the first real decisions in starting a junk removal business, and the one most new operators postpone until a job has already gone sideways.
What has to be built into a junk removal price?
Every tier on your ladder has to absorb nine cost lines before it produces a dollar of profit. Miss one and you find out at the end of the quarter rather than at the end of the job.
| Cost line | Why it moves your price |
|---|---|
| Disposal and tipping fees | The most volatile line. Rates change by county and by material, and construction debris bills differently than household junk. |
| Crew labor | Load-out time varies far more than volume does. A third-floor walkup and a tight garage fill the same space at very different labor cost. |
| Fuel and mileage | Rural routes and long transfer-station runs quietly erase the margin on a small load. |
| Truck payment and maintenance | A fixed monthly number recovered across the jobs you actually book. |
| Insurance | General liability, commercial auto and workers compensation rise with crew and vehicle count. New operators underbuy here. |
| Licensing and permits | Mostly fixed, though a required hauler permit is a real annual cost in some jurisdictions. |
| Customer acquisition | The cost to make the phone ring belongs inside the job price, not in a separate mental bucket. |
| Administration and overhead | Scheduling, software, accounting and yard rent grow faster than revenue early on. |
| Owner margin | A line item you set on purpose, not a leftover. Worth comparing against what franchisees actually earn in a calibrated system. |
How do you build a junk removal pricing sheet?
Start from your truck, not from a competitor’s website. Measure the usable cubic capacity of your bed, divide it into the tiers you intend to sell, then price each tier backwards from your cost per truck-hour plus the disposal cost that tier typically produces. Copying a national brand’s published prices without their disposal contracts or their booking volume is how a new operator ends up busy and broke.
A working junk removal pricing sheet has six lines and nothing more. Extra tiers slow down quoting and confuse customers.
| Tier | What it covers | What decides your number |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum charge | A single item or a small pile, curbside | Must cover a truck roll, two crew members and the disposal ticket, or every small job loses money. |
| Quarter load | A closet clean-out or a few pieces of furniture | Priced so two small jobs in one run beat one half load. Route density is where a small operator wins. |
| Half load | A garage, a bedroom set, a modest cleanout | Your most common ticket. Calibrate this tier first and let the others sit around it. |
| Three-quarter load | A large garage or a multi-room clear-out | Exists mainly to stop customers rounding down. Keep the gap to full load small. |
| Full load | An estate, a foreclosure, a full property cleanout | Price the disposal ticket carefully. A full truck of construction debris and one of furniture cost very different amounts to dump. |
| Labor-only rate | Moving items within a property, no haul-away | Charged by crew hour with a minimum, since no truck space is consumed and no disposal cost lands. |
Write the sheet down, put it in every crew member’s hands, and stop letting quotes get invented in a driveway. The ladder is the revenue assumption everything else rests on, which is why it belongs in the financial section of any plan before a junk removal business takes on debt.
When should a job cost more than the ladder says?
When the load costs you more to move or more to dispose of than its volume suggests. Volume is the base, and these are the honest add-ons the whole category uses.
- Stairs, long carries and no elevator access, which can double load-out time on the same volume
- Heavy single items such as safes, pianos, hot tubs, treadmills and riding mowers
- Appliances containing refrigerant, which many facilities charge a separate fee to accept
- Mattresses and box springs, which carry a per-piece recycling fee in a growing number of states
- Tires, which most landfills will not take with household waste
- Construction and renovation debris, which is billed by weight and can swamp a volume-based quote
- Same-day and after-hours service, which reorders a route you already sold
Paint, solvents, fuel and other household hazardous waste usually cannot be accepted at all. Say so during the quote rather than at the truck, and point the customer to their county drop-off program.
What are the most common junk removal pricing mistakes?
The pattern is consistent, and none of these show up until the third or fourth month.
- Pricing by the hour, which caps your upside on the exact jobs your crew handles fastest
- Setting a minimum charge that does not cover a truck roll plus a disposal ticket
- Forgetting the dump fee and treating gross revenue as though it were margin
- Holding prices flat while tipping fees rise, which is a slow-motion pay cut
- Competing on price against a brand whose calls are already booked
- Confirming nothing in writing, so a disputed quote becomes a discount
How do you quote a job you have not seen?
Give a written range from photos or a short video, then confirm the exact tier on site before anything is loaded. Ask the customer to get the whole pile in frame, and ask directly about stairs, access and the categories that carry surcharges. A range plus a confirm-before-load rule protects both sides and rarely loses the job. Track your close rate on quotes priced to cover your cost lines: that one figure teaches you more than any competitor’s website will.
How does pricing work inside a franchise system?
The price book is already built, tested across a national footprint and updated centrally, and the calls arrive already booked at that price. With College Hunks Hauling Junk®, the national Sales and Loyalty Center books and dispatches thousands of jobs a week, so owners lead crews instead of negotiating in driveways. Because the brand runs junk removal and College Hunks Moving® under one fee and one technology stack, the same truck and the same crew serve two demand curves rather than one.
The trade is disclosed rather than hidden. Ongoing fees run a 7% royalty on gross sales, a 2% brand development fee and a 1% technology fee, plus an appointment fee of 6% on junk and 5% on moving for jobs the Sales and Loyalty Center books for you, with no fee on sales you generate yourself or that arrive through online booking. Local advertising is the greater of 8% of gross sales or $1,500 per zone for moving and $1,100 per zone for junk, each month. Across all 144 reporting franchised locations in 2025, average gross revenue was $1,554,610 (2026 FDD Item 19). Read the two-in-one model, the training and support owners get, and the full investment breakdown beside your own numbers.
Should you set your own prices or run a proven price book?
If you enjoy building the system and you have the runway to spend two years calibrating tiers against your own disposal contracts, build it. Plenty of strong independent operators have. If the part you are tired of is fighting for visibility and rebuilding a quote from scratch every week, the pricing question is really a question about which parts of the business you want to own. Operators in that position often look at converting an independent junk removal business rather than starting over, and the wider case sits in our look at buying a franchise versus starting from scratch.
Talk the numbers through with the team
If you are weighing whether a College Hunks Hauling Junk® franchise fits your goals, talk to our Franchise Development team and see if your market is still open. Bring your own price sheet and your own dump tickets, and we will walk through how the system’s numbers compare. We read every inquiry and there is no pressure, just answers.
Disclosures
Financial information shared in this content is drawn from Item 19 of the 2026 CHHJ Franchising, L.L.C. Franchise Disclosure Document (Issuance Date: April 30, 2026). See Item 19 for material assumptions, the underlying data set, and full required disclosures. Past performance does not guarantee future results. New franchisees may earn less.
This information is not an offer to sell or solicitation to buy a franchise. A franchise offering can only be made through the delivery of a Franchise Disclosure Document. Certain states regulate the offer and sale of franchises; if you are a resident of one of these states, we will not offer you a franchise unless we have complied with applicable pre-sale registration and disclosure requirements in your state.
College Hunks Hauling Junk®, College Hunks Moving®, and the H.U.N.K.S logo are registered trademarks of CHHJ Franchising, L.L.C. © 2026 CHHJ Franchising, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
Related reading
- Is a junk removal business profitable?, where the margin actually comes from and what quietly eats it.
- How to write a junk removal business plan, the version a lender will actually read.
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