Free Junk Removal Estimate Calculator

Add up your true direct costs — labor including burden, materials with markup, and job extras like equipment or disposal. Add a contingency for surprises if the job has any. That's your break-even, the floor you never quote below. Then add your profit on top: price = break-even × (1 + profit%). This calculator runs exactly that math as you type, and shows the result both ways — what you added on to your costs, and what share of the final price that leaves you — because the two numbers are easy to confuse and quoting on the wrong one is how a job loses money.

Burden is everything an hour of labor costs beyond the paycheck: payroll taxes (typically 8–10% of wages), workers' compensation (a few percent for low-risk trades, well over 15% for high-risk ones like roofing or concrete), liability insurance, and paid time off. All-in burden commonly lands between 15% and 40% on top of base pay — and forgetting it is one of the most common ways a profitable-looking job loses money. If you're solo and paying yourself, you can leave it at 0%.

Markup is a percentage added on top of your cost; margin is your share of the final price. Adding 100% on top — charging double your costs — is the same thing as a 50% margin. Quoting a markup when you mean a margin is one of the most common ways contractors underprice a job, so this calculator keeps it simple: you enter what you add on top — no cap — and it always shows what share of the final price that leaves you.

Work backward from your own numbers instead of copying competitors: add up what you want to earn in a year plus every cost of being in business, then divide by your realistic billable hours — most junk removal crews bill far fewer hours than they work. That result is your floor. Local demand, licensing, and skill decide how far above it you can go.

Somewhere between 15% and 50% is common practice across the trades, and it isn't padding: the markup pays for sourcing time, supply runs, returns, warranty callbacks, and the money you float between buying materials and getting paid. If the customer supplies materials, price the labor accordingly — you still carry the workmanship risk.

What you were shown is the top layer. The photo was the front of the garage and there is a second row behind it, or the basement pile stops being furniture halfway down and turns into forty years of boxes that have to be opened because the customer wants the paperwork pulled out.

Weight ends a day early in the wrong way. Dirt, concrete, wet carpet, plaster and tear-off shingles reach the truck's rated weight at a third of its volume, so the one-load job you priced becomes three. Then the transfer station: a Saturday queue at the scale house, or a closing time that strands the last load until morning.

Stairs and no truck access will double a carry. Winter freezes a yard waste pile into one solid piece. And a customer who is still deciding what stays will stop you every ten minutes to look at something — which is not a complaint about them, it is a fact about cleanouts that belongs in the estimate, because the deciding takes longer than the lifting.

This is labour, fuel and disposal. You buy almost nothing you resell, so there is no waste factor and no supply house to wait on.

What it carries is consumables that go faster than anyone allows for: contractor bags by the case, shrink wrap and sealed mattress bags for soiled furniture, straps, moving blankets, floor runners, doorway protection, and gloves and suits for hoarding work. Reciprocating saw blades are the real one. Cutting a cast iron tub, a hot tub shell or nail-embedded framing burns a pack in a day. Nobody delivers it to a job site, so it comes off your own shelf and never gets counted against the job it died on.

The cost that actually moves is the tip fee. Many facilities weigh you and charge by the ton against a minimum, others take a flat load, and the same full truck lands differently at each gate. Scrap metal and clean wood go somewhere else again, which is why knowing your own gates — hours, minimums and what each one refuses — is worth more on this trade's margin than anything you could buy.

Free and unlimited, no account needed. The math runs in your browser and your pricing setup saves only on your own device — we never see your numbers. Printing or sending the estimate it makes counts as a document: your first 2 are free, with no account.