You are paying for two things: the space your junk takes up in the trailer, and the time it takes to get it there. Anything that reduces either one reduces your bill. Here is what genuinely helps, and — just as usefully — what does not, so you can skip it.
The three that matter most
1. Put it all in one place
By a distance the highest-value thing you can do. A crew walking between a basement, a garage and a back shed spends most of the job walking. The same items stacked in one spot near where we can park is a fundamentally shorter job.
The garage is usually the right answer. The driveway works too if the weather is cooperating. It does not need to be tidy — it needs to be together.
2. Break down what breaks down easily
Volume is what you are buying, and a lot of furniture is mostly air. A flat-packed bookshelf takes a fraction of the space it does assembled. So does a bed frame, a table with removable legs, or a cardboard box that has been collapsed rather than left as a cube.
Do not injure yourself doing this and do not spend three hours on it. Ten minutes with a screwdriver on the two or three biggest hollow items is where the actual saving is.
3. Clear the route
We need to get from the pile to the trailer repeatedly, carrying awkward things, without turning sideways. Move the cars. Prop the gate. Take the bikes out of the side passage. In winter, shovel the path — that one is worth real money between December and March.
Pull out anything we cannot legally take
Not a money-saver so much as a morning-saver, but it belongs at the top of any prep list. We cannot take wet paint, solvents, chemicals, pesticides, asbestos or suspected asbestos, propane tanks, fuel, oil, explosives, medical or biohazard waste, or ammunition.
If those are mixed through the pile we have to stop and separate them, and one leaking container can contaminate material that would otherwise have been recycled. Set that corner aside before we arrive and call us anyway — we will tell you who in the city does handle it.
Check the pockets, drawers and boxes
Once it is on the trailer it is gone. Every crew in this industry has a story about a wallet in a coat, an envelope taped under a drawer, or a ring in a kitchen jar. Two minutes of checking beats a phone call to the transfer station.
Separate the heavy material
If your load has concrete, brick, patio stone, asphalt, dirt, plaster or shingles in it, keep that in its own pile rather than mixed through the furniture.
Two reasons, both financial. It gets weighed and priced properly rather than guessed at, and clean rubble can sometimes go somewhere other than landfill — which stops being possible the moment there is drywall and plastic through it. The full explanation is here.
Things people do that make no difference
Genuinely, skip these. They are effort with no return:
- Cleaning things you are throwing away. Washing a couch that is going to landfill changes nothing. The exception is anything you hope will be donated, where clean and dry is the difference between reuse and disposal.
- Bagging loose junk. Bags take up more space than the contents did, and we open them anyway to sort. Loose is fine.
- Sorting into recycling categories. We do that at the shop, properly, with somewhere for each stream to go. Your version will be re-sorted regardless.
- Carrying heavy items outside yourself. Please do not. It is the part you are paying for, we have the equipment and the technique, and a hurt back costs more than the whole job.
- Stacking it beautifully. We restack everything into the trailer to load it densely. A neat pile and a heap load identically.
Be there for the first five minutes
Not for the whole job — most people carry on with their day once we start. But be present at the beginning so you can point at what goes and what stays, and so you get the fixed price before anything is touched.
That is the moment to mention anything unusual: the item in the corner that is staying, the neighbour's fence we should be careful of, the fact that the fridge still has food in it.
The prep that saves the most money of all
Text a photo before booking. An accurate quote comes from an accurate picture of the pile, and a job we correctly sized in advance is a job with the right crew and the right equipment on the first visit. Guessing small and discovering otherwise on the day is what turns one trip into two.
Ready when you are — get a free quote or just send the photo. Pricing is laid out in full on the pricing page, including exactly what is already included.
Want a price for your own pile?
Text a photo and we will quote it, or call and talk to one of the people who will actually be doing the work.