Junk Removal in Tucson, AZ

Where the junk goes, and what it costs to put it there

Every hauler in Tucson is driving to the same gate: the Los Reales Sustainability Campus at 5300 E. Los Reales Road, south of I-10 at Craycroft. The city publishes the rates. A covered pickup load under 2,000 pounds is $18. Anything heavier is $38 a ton. An uncovered load pays $10 more, every load pays a $2 environmental fee, tires are $5 each and a refrigerator or freezer is $20 on top. Cards only, no cash, Monday to Saturday 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.

So a pickup truck of household junk costs about $20 to tip. What a hauler charges — $150 to $350 for a few items, $600 to $900 for a full truck by the published guides — is almost entirely the loading, the driving, the sorting and the second and third stops for donations and hazardous items. Knowing that is the whole trick to reading a quote. The cost guide works through it line by line.

The free option, and why it is not always enough

Inside the Tucson city limits, Environmental Services runs Brush and Bulky: twice a year, on a schedule by service area, a crew collects up to 10 cubic yards per household from the curb — furniture, appliances, up to five tires, brush cut to five feet, carpet, lumber. It costs nothing. If your pile fits, your dates line up and you can wait for them, it is the right answer and this site will tell you so.

It stops being the answer when the timing is a closing date or a lease end, when the pile is a whole house, when the material is construction debris, concrete, dirt, glass or a television — all refused, or when the address is in Oro Valley, Marana, Sahuarita, Vail, the Foothills or Green Valley, where the program does not run. That is the gap a hauler fills, and it is most of the calls this site gets. Brush and Bulky vs hiring a hauler draws the line properly.

What no truck should take

Paint, solvents, pesticides, pool chemicals, motor oil, propane cylinders, car batteries and most electronics are refused at the landfill, which means a hauler who tosses them in the load is either paying to have them pulled out or dumping them somewhere he should not. They belong at the city’s Household Hazardous Waste drop-off, on the same Los Reales campus, Thursday to Saturday 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. It is free for City of Tucson residents and $15 with proof of residency for everyone else in Pima County.

A good hauler separates those items out and tells you where they are going. What junk haulers cannot take in Tucson lists every category and where each one goes instead.

Who will pick up junk, furniture or used appliances from your house for free in Tucson, and who picks up the rest

Free pickup exists in Tucson, and it is narrower than the search results suggest. Inside the city limits, Brush and Bulky takes furniture, appliances, carpet, lumber and brush from the curb twice a year, up to 10 cubic yards per household, at no charge, but only on your service area’s scheduled week, and only from the curb. For anything still usable, four organizations send a truck for nothing: the HabiStore on W. Grant Road for furniture, appliances and building materials in resalable condition, St. Vincent de Paul by online form and a coordinator’s call, Gospel Rescue Mission on S. Palo Verde Road for larger items, and, south of town, the White Elephant from Green Valley to Amado. A used appliance that works is exactly what they want; one that does not is exactly what they refuse.

Nobody picks up broken junk from inside a house for free. That part is a hauler’s job, priced by the truck — $150 to $350 for a few items, $300 to $550 for a half load, $600 to $900 for a full one in the published ranges, and the honest sequence is the free trucks first, the paid one last, so you pay for the smallest possible pile. Where to donate in Tucson has each organization’s refusals; furniture and appliance removal covers the $20 refrigerant fee and the carry.

What a Tucson junk hauler takes, room by room

A Tucson hauler takes almost anything not hazardous and not attached to the house: furniture, mattresses, appliances, televisions, garage and yard contents, construction debris, hot tubs and sheds. What no truck takes is paint, solvents, pool chemicals, propane and car batteries, which go to the county's household hazardous waste program.

The honest answer to "what do you take" is almost everything that is not hazardous and not attached to the house, and the useful answer is what that looks like in each room, because the exceptions live in specific places.

• Living rooms and bedrooms. Sofas, sleeper sofas, recliners, mattresses and box springs, bed frames, dressers, bookshelves, rugs, lamps, televisions of any size. The televisions ride separately because the landfill handles them as electronics.
• Kitchen. Refrigerators, freezers, stoves, dishwashers, microwaves, tables and chairs. Refrigerant appliances carry the landfill's own fee of about $20 a unit and a hauler will say so up front.
• Garage. Workbenches, shelving, tires in small numbers, bicycles, lawn equipment with the fuel drained, boxes of anything. Not the paint, solvents, pool chemicals, propane or car batteries; those go to the county's household hazardous waste program and a hauler that says otherwise is planning to hide them in the load.
• Yard. Patio furniture, grills with the propane tank removed, hot tubs, sheds, playsets, trampolines, fencing, cut brush and storm debris, and the dirt, rock and concrete the city truck refuses.
• Whole house. Everything above at once, in a sequence that keeps the donation pieces out of the truck; the estate cleanout page covers the order.

What no truck should take is on this page under its own heading, and it is short: hazardous materials, and anything the landfill gate will refuse. Everything else is a question of volume, weight and where it goes, which is what the price is built from.

How junk removal pricing works in Tucson: by the item or by the truck

Two pricing models run side by side in Tucson and most companies use both. Knowing which one applies to your pile is the difference between a fair quote and a surprise.

By the item. A single couch, a mattress, a refrigerator, a television. Published Tucson curbside lists run $59 to $159 for a single item at the curb and $80 to $220 for one carried out of the house. The price is set by what the item is and where it sits, not by how much room it takes in the truck, and it is the right model when you have one or two things.

By the truck. Everything else. The crew looks at the pile and quotes a fraction of the truck: an eighth, a quarter, a half, three quarters, full. A few items to a quarter truck runs $150 to $350, half a truck $300 to $550, a full load $600 to $900 with more for heavy material. This is the model for a garage, a shed, a room, a cleanout.

Where the two meet. Three single items are usually cheaper as a quarter truck than as three item prices, and a hauler should say so. Heavy material breaks the truck model, because a quarter truck of concrete weighs more than a full truck of furniture and the landfill charges by weight; expect it priced separately. And access changes both: stairs, a long carry, a gate the truck cannot get through.

The way to get the right model applied is photos before anyone drives out. A hauler who quotes from photos and confirms on arrival has committed to a number; one who only quotes in the driveway has committed to nothing. The cost page takes every range above apart.

Where it goes after the truck: Los Reales, the scrap yard, the donation dock, and what actually gets recycled

Every junk removal company in Tucson says it recycles. Here is what that can honestly mean, and what it usually does.

The landfill. Most of what a truck carries ends at the City of Tucson's Los Reales landfill on the south side, priced by weight at the gate: about $20 for a covered pickup load under a ton, $10 more uncovered, and by the ton above that. Furniture, mattresses, carpet, treated lumber, drywall, broken plastic, the ruined contents of a flooded shed. This is not a failure; it is where those things go.

The scrap yard. Metal has value and haulers know it. Appliances with the refrigerant removed, bed frames, bicycles, water heaters, grills, filing cabinets, the frame of a trampoline, the copper in a hot tub's wiring. A crew that separates metal on the truck is offsetting its tipping fee, and it is fair to ask whether that shows up in your price.

The donation dock. Working appliances, solid furniture, clothing, books, housewares. The catch is that donation centers refuse more than people expect, and a crew on a schedule does not wait in a donation line. The realistic version is that the hauler drops what the dock will take on the way to the landfill, and the donation guide explains why doing that yourself the week before gets more of it out of the landfill.

Electronics and hazardous material. Televisions and computers are handled as e-waste at the landfill. Paint, chemicals, batteries and propane are not a hauler's to take at all; they go to the county program on its schedule.

The honest measure of a hauler's recycling is not the word on the website. It is whether they will tell you, by name, where your load went, and whether the receipt matches.

Hauler, dumpster or the city truck: three ways to clear a pile in Tucson, and when each one wins

A pile of junk in Tucson has three ways out, and the cheapest one is different for every pile.

The city truck, free. Inside city limits, Brush and Bulky collects up to a set volume per household from the curb on a schedule set by the city. It takes furniture, appliances and stacked brush. It does not take dirt, rock, concrete, quantities of tires, or hazardous material, and it comes when it comes. It wins when the pile is ordinary, you are inside the city, and the next date is close enough to wait for. The Brush and Bulky guide has the rules.

A dumpster, rented. A roll-off for a week runs $390 to $700 in the published ranges, and you do all the loading. It wins for a long project with debris that arrives over days, a remodel, a big yard job, or a family that wants to clear a house at its own pace. It loses when the pile is already sitting there, because a hauler loads it in an hour for a similar price, and it loses on driveways an HOA polices.

A hauler. A crew and a truck, priced by volume, gone in an afternoon. It wins when the pile is ready now, when it includes things the city refuses, when nobody in the house should be lifting, when the deadline is a closing or a lease end, and outside the city limits where the other two do not exist. It costs more per cubic yard than the city truck, which is free, and about the same as a dumpster for a one-time pile with the labor included.

The honest sequence for a big job is often all three: the free truck for what it takes on the next date, a dumpster for the slow part of the project, and a hauler for the day the house has to be empty. A referral through this site is the third of those, and this page says so rather than pretending the other two do not exist.

Where the referred haulers actually go: the Foothills, Marana, Oro Valley, Sahuarita, Vail and Green Valley

Junk removal in Tucson is a metro-wide trade, but the metro is forty miles across and the landfill sits on the south side, so where you are changes the day more than most people expect. The haulers referred through this site work the whole valley; here is how each part of it tends to go.

• Central Tucson and the south side. Closest to Los Reales, shortest trips, the easiest same-day bookings, and the only part of the metro where the city's free Brush and Bulky service is an option worth waiting for.
• The Catalina Foothills. Long driveways, gated communities, HOA rules about what can sit at the curb and for how long, and houses on slopes where the pile is a flight of stairs from the truck. The carry is the cost.
• Oro Valley and Marana. North of the city and a real drive from the landfill; a crew plans these as a route rather than a stop. Outside Tucson city limits there is no Brush and Bulky, so the hauler is the only option for most piles.
• Sahuarita and Green Valley. South along the interstate, retirement-heavy, and the source of most of the downsizing and estate work on this site. Crews that work Green Valley regularly know the park rules and the donation options that take a whole household.
• Vail and the far east side. Newer subdivisions on large lots, no city pickup, long trips, and storm debris from washes that run once a year. Same-day is a maybe out here; next-morning is the honest answer.

Every area page says what the town's own rules are, what the drive does to the price, and what people in that part of the county mostly call about. The referral is the same everywhere: one hauler, named before they come, and a price confirmed from your photos before the truck moves.

How the referral works

1. Call or send the form. Say what the pile is, where it is — curb, garage, second floor, and whether anything in it is heavy, refrigerated or hazardous.
2. One local hauler calls you back. This site works with a single Tucson hauler, and you get his name before anyone comes out. He quotes on site or from photos, by the space the load takes in the truck.
3. You get a number in writing, then decide. Donations go first where something is still usable, hazardous items are set aside for the city drop-off, and the rest goes to Los Reales. Ask for the landfill receipt if you want proof of where it went.

This is a referral service, not a hauling company; about explains how it is paid, and how to choose a junk hauler covers the questions worth asking anyone, including the one you are matched with.

Frequently asked questions from Tucson homeowners