Tucson · Pima County

Junk removal and hauling in Tucson

A truck, two people and the landfill fee. That is what you are buying, and knowing the price of the third part tells you what the first two are worth.

How junk removal in Tucson is priced — hauled off, hauled away, or picked up at the curb

Whether you call it having junk hauled off, hauled away or picked up, the price is built the same way. Almost every hauler prices by volume: the share of the truck your load fills, quoted in quarters or eighths. The national franchises describe a full truck as about 400 cubic feet and roughly two tons; a local hauler with a trailer or a box truck will have his own measure, so ask what a full load means before you compare anyone’s number to anyone else’s. The published guides for 2025 and 2026 put a few items to a quarter truck at $150 to $350, a half truck at $300 to $550 and a full truck at $600 to $900. The Tucson curbside services that publish rates start around $59 for a single item left at the curb.

Weight matters on top of volume for the dense stuff. The Los Reales scale house charges $18 for a covered load under 2,000 pounds and $38 a ton above it, so a truck of broken tile is a different job from a truck of patio cushions even if they fill the same space. Stairs, a long carry from the back of the lot, a gate the truck cannot get through, and same-day timing all add labor, and labor is most of the bill.

How does junk removal work in Tucson? The sequence from the first call to the landfill scale

Junk removal works in six steps: you send photos, the hauler quotes a fraction of the truck, you pick an arrival window, the crew confirms the quote at the pile, they load and sweep, and the load goes to the landfill, a scrap yard or a donation dock. Most of it happens same day or next day.

You describe the pile and send photos. How many items, where they sit in the house, stairs or no stairs, and anything the crew should know about, like a refrigerator or a stack of paint cans.
The hauler quotes a fraction of the truck. Volume pricing, explained on the cost page: a quarter truck, a half, a full load. The quote should name the price and what it includes.
You pick a window. Most Tucson crews run two-hour arrival windows, and the earlier in the day you book, the likelier the crew arrives inside it.
The crew walks the pile with you. This is where the quote is confirmed, before anything is loaded. If the pile matches the photos, the price should too.
Loading, sorting, sweeping. The crew carries everything out, loads it, and sweeps the space. Metal and usable furniture usually get separated in the truck for scrap or donation.
The landfill or the donation dock. The load goes to Los Reales, a transfer station, a scrap yard or a donation drop, and you can ask for the receipt. The donation guide covers what is worth diverting first.

From photos to an empty garage is often a same-day or next-day affair for a normal load. Whole-house cleanouts are scheduled, sometimes across two visits. What separates a good hauler from a bad one is not the truck. It is whether the price confirmed on your driveway matches the one quoted from your photos, and whether they can tell you where the load went.

Talk to a local junk removal company serving Tucson — findings and price in writing, no obligation.

Same-day and emergency requests: what can actually happen today in Tucson, and what cannot.

Call (520) 462-1120

Box truck junk removal: what a 16-foot box actually holds, and why the truck sets the price

Most Tucson junk crews run a box truck, typically a 14- to 16-foot box that holds somewhere around 15 to 18 cubic yards of loose junk, roughly the contents of a two-car garage that has been filling for a decade. A pickup holds two or three cubic yards. A dump trailer sits in between. When a hauler quotes "a quarter truck" they mean a quarter of that box, which is why a quote from a pickup-and-trailer operation and a quote from a box-truck company for the same fraction are not the same amount of junk.

Ask which truck is coming. For a small pile it does not matter. For a whole garage or a cleanout it decides whether the job is one trip or three, and the second and third trips are where the price grows: each is another run to Los Reales and back. A box truck that clears the garage in one load is usually the cheaper quote even when its fraction price looks higher.

The other thing the box decides is weight. A box truck loaded with furniture is fine; the same box loaded with tile and dirt is over its legal weight long before it is full, which is the reason heavy material is quoted separately and loaded in shallow layers. The construction debris page covers that case.

What the landfill charges: the part of your quote you can check

The City of Tucson publishes the rates at the Los Reales Sustainability Campus, 5300 E. Los Reales Road, reached by turning south on Craycroft off I-10. Covered load under 2,000 pounds, $18. Heavier, $38 per ton. Uncovered, $10 more. Tires, $5 each, limit ten. Appliances that use refrigerant, $20 each. A $2 environmental fee on every load. Open Monday through Saturday, 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Sundays and on New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Cards only.

So the tip fee inside a $300 quote for a half truck of household junk is $20 to $40. The rest is the crew, the truck, the fuel, the insurance and the stops on the way. That is a fair trade for a morning you do not spend lifting, but it means a hauler who says the landfill made him raise the price is not telling you the whole story. The cost guide lays the published ranges beside the fee sheet.

What the gate refuses, so the hauler should too

Los Reales will not take hazardous waste, waste oil, lead-acid batteries, bulk liquids, explosives or ammunition. Brush and Bulky, the free city pickup, adds its own refusals: gas cylinders, concrete, construction material, dirt and rock, glass and mirrors, and televisions or monitors. A hauler who loads paint cans and a propane tank with the furniture is planning to pull them out at the gate, pay a special-handling fee, or lose them somewhere on the way.

The right place for those items is the Household Hazardous Waste drop-off on the same campus, open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and closed on the second Saturday of most months. It is free for City of Tucson residents and $15 with a driver’s license or utility bill for Marana, Oro Valley, Sahuarita and unincorporated Pima County. It takes paint up to 25 gallons, automotive fluids up to 10 gallons, propane cylinders, auto and rechargeable batteries, fluorescent tubes, pesticides, pool chemicals and most electronics. What haulers cannot take in Tucson goes item by item.

When the free city pickup is the better answer

If you live inside the city limits, your address is in one of 26 residential service areas that each get a Brush and Bulky collection twice a year. Up to 10 cubic yards per household: the city says one cubic yard is about the size of a washing machine — set out by 6 a.m. on the Monday of your collection week, no more than two weeks early, at least three feet from the bins and the meters. Furniture, appliances, carpet, lumber and brush cut to five feet all go. No fee.

A hauler earns his money when the calendar does not cooperate, when the pile is bigger than ten cubic yards, when the material is on the refused list, or when the address is outside the city. This site will tell you which case you are in before anyone books a truck; Brush and Bulky vs hiring a hauler is the long version.

How the day goes

The quote. From photos for a garage or a curb pile; from a walk-through for a house. In writing, with the volume it assumes and the overage rate.
The sort. Anything usable is set aside for a donation center — where to donate in Tucson names six that take furniture and appliances. Hazardous items are separated for the city drop-off.
The load. Heavy items first and low, light items on top, tarp over everything — an uncovered load costs the hauler $10 more at the gate and costs you a citation if it blows off on I-10.
The receipt. Ask for it. It shows the weight and the fee and it is the only proof of where the load went.

The meaning of junk removal: residential, commercial, and the words in Spanish

Junk removal means someone else’s truck, crew and landfill run for things you have already decided to get rid of: the furniture, boxes, appliances, yard debris and remodel leftovers that a trash can will not take and a mover will not load. It is not organizing, and it is not cleaning: the hauler carries out what you point at and takes it to Los Reales, a donation center or the hazardous-waste drop-off; the deciding is yours. Residential junk removal is a house, a garage, a yard, a storage unit or an estate. Commercial junk removal is an office, a shop or a rental turnover, priced the same way — by the truck, with two differences: the city’s Household Hazardous Waste drop-off is a household program and refuses commercial waste, so a business’s paint and chemicals need a licensed hazardous-waste contractor instead, and a commercial load is more often heavy enough to cross the landfill’s 2,000-pound line into $38-a-ton pricing.

In Spanish the same work is searched as recolección de basura, retiro de escombros for debris, or limpieza de casas y garajes for a cleanout — same hauler, same gate, same published rates. This site does not promise a Spanish-speaking crew; ask when you call.

Rubbish removal, haul away, trash hauling, junk pickup: the same call by six names

Half the people who need this service in Tucson never type "junk removal". They search for haul away, rubbish removal, trash hauling, junk pickup, debris removal or garbage removal, depending on where they grew up and what the pile looks like to them. A Midwesterner's rubbish is a New Yorker's garbage and a contractor's debris, and the truck that comes is the same truck.

The words do change one thing: what the hauler expects to find. "Haul away" usually means a few large items and a quick pickup at the curb. "Rubbish" and "garbage removal" tend to mean bagged loose material, the trash-removal case covered on its own page. "Debris" means a job site, priced by weight. "Junk pickup" is the everyday call, a room or a garage. Say whichever word comes naturally and describe the pile; the hauler translates. The price is built from the volume, the weight and the carry, not from the noun, and the cost page is the same whichever one you searched for.

Same-day junk, waste or rubbish removal in Tucson, and the honest answer to ‘open now’ and ‘24 hour’ when a load is needed fast

Same-day is often possible for a small load when the schedule has room, and it is the first thing to say when you call: what the pile is, where it is, and what day it has to be gone. Two clocks limit it. Los Reales closes at 5 p.m., Monday to Saturday, and is closed Sundays, so a truck loaded late in the afternoon tips the next morning. The Household Hazardous Waste drop-off opens only Thursday to Saturday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., so a load with paint or a propane tank in it cannot finish the same day on a Tuesday, however fast the hauler is. Whether you call it junk, waste or rubbish removal, the same two clocks apply.

“Open now” and “24 hour” deserve a plain answer: this site is not open 24 hours, and neither is the landfill. Calls after hours go to voicemail and are returned first thing. What a fast hauler can do is quote from photos the same evening and load first thing in the morning — which, for a lease end or a closing, is usually what “now” actually needs. If the date is fixed, say so, and ask whether the morning is open.

Junk removal for landlords and property managers in Tucson: turnovers, abandoned units and the paperwork

A meaningful share of the junk removal in Tucson is not a homeowner's garage. It is a rental unit between tenants, and the job runs differently in three ways.

The legal clock. When a tenant leaves belongings behind, Arizona's abandoned-property rules give the landlord a process and a waiting period before anything can be disposed of. A hauler cannot shorten it, and a property manager who calls before the clock has run is asking for a liability. The hauler needs to know the unit was abandoned rather than vacated, and the manager should have the dates in the file.

The photographs. Before and after, every room, with the date visible. They protect the manager in a deposit dispute and the hauler in a claim that something valuable went on the truck. A good crew takes them without being asked; a manager should ask anyway.

The set-asides. Documents, keys, anything that looks like identification, medication, and anything the manager flags as belonging to the owner of the building rather than the tenant. The crew stages them in one place and hands them over rather than loading them.

Pricing for turnovers is by volume like everything else, with two honest differences: a unit full of bagged trash and a dead refrigerator is a light load with a refrigerant fee, and a unit that has been lived in badly is a slow load, because everything has to be carried and nothing is stacked. Managers who turn units regularly usually arrange a standing rate with one hauler, and the referral through this site is a fair place to start that conversation. The trash removal page covers the after-a-tenant case in detail.

Commercial junk removal in Tucson: offices, storefronts and the fixture cleanout

Commercial jobs are the same truck and a different rhythm. An office moving out, a storefront changing hands, a restaurant closing, a warehouse clearing a mezzanine: the pile is bigger, the access is worse, and the schedule belongs to a landlord or a lease.

What is different. Loading docks or their absence, elevators that have to be booked, hours restricted to before or after the building opens, and a lease that says the space is returned empty by a date. Office furniture is heavy and awkward, cubicle systems come apart into a hundred pieces, and commercial refrigeration carries the same refrigerant fee as a home unit but weighs three times as much.

What is the same. Volume pricing, the landfill by weight, metal to the scrap yard, and usable furniture worth a call to a donation center or a used-office-furniture dealer before the truck. A conference table and a dozen matching chairs have takers in Tucson; a cubicle system almost never does.

The fixture cleanout. A storefront handed back to a landlord usually has to lose its shelving, counters, signage and sometimes flooring. That is demolition-adjacent, and the line between what a junk crew removes and what a contractor removes is whether it is attached to the building. Bolted shelving comes out with a junk crew; a built-in counter tied into plumbing does not, and a hauler who says otherwise is about to cause a problem with the landlord.

Ask for a written scope with the date the space is empty, whether after-hours work is included, and how the load is split between landfill, scrap and donation. Commercial customers who ask those three questions get the crews that answer them.

Heavy items: pianos, safes, gym equipment and the two-person surcharge

A handful of items are priced differently because they are dangerous to move badly, and a hauler that quotes them like a couch is a hauler that has not moved one.

Pianos. An upright weighs as much as a refrigerator and a half and is top-heavy; a baby grand comes apart into pieces that need a dolly and a board. Moving one down a step is a two-person job at minimum and a three-person job on stairs. The landfill takes them; a working piano is also the item most likely to be wanted by someone else, so it is worth a week of trying before the truck.

Safes. Small gun safes and document safes are heavy for their size and go on a dolly. Large safes can exceed what a two-person crew and a pickup can handle safely, and the honest answer is a crew with a stair-climbing dolly or a lift gate, which some haulers have and most do not. Ask before booking, and say the weight if the manual gives it.

Gym equipment. Treadmills and ellipticals are awkward rather than heavy, and they come apart. Weight benches and plates are the reverse: dense, small, and charged by weight at the landfill, though most of it goes to the scrap yard instead. Plates in particular are worth a call to a used-equipment shop.

Hot water heaters, cast iron tubs, sleeper sofas. The everyday heavy items. Each is a two-person carry, each is mostly metal that the scrap yard wants, and each is quoted as a single item with the carry priced in.

The surcharge for any of these is honest when it reflects a second person or a second trip, and it should be stated as its own line. What is not honest is a "heavy item" line on a quote that had no heavy item in the photos.

Junk removal for seniors and downsizing in Tucson: pacing the job, the family on the phone, and the estate-sale question

A large share of Tucson's junk removal is a household getting smaller: a move from a house to a smaller place, a parent moving in with a child, a park model being cleared for the next season. The work is the same truck and a different pace, and a hauler who has done it knows the difference.

Pacing. A downsizing is rarely one visit. The first trip takes the obvious things, the garage, the shed, the furniture that is not coming. The second, days or weeks later, takes what was decided in between. Booking two smaller loads costs about the same as one large one and spares the household a day of deciding under pressure, which is where the things people regret losing go on the truck.

The family on the phone. Often the person booking is a son or daughter in another city and the person at the house is the parent. A good hauler is comfortable with both: confirming the quote with the one who is paying, walking the pile with the one who is there, and not loading anything the person in the house hesitates over. Say on the call who decides, so the crew knows whom to ask.

The estate-sale question. If the household has furniture, tools, china or collections with value, an estate-sale company comes before the hauler, not after, and needs a week or two. A hauler who arrives to a house that has not had that conversation should say so rather than load it. The estate cleanout page covers the sequence, and the donation guide covers what Green Valley and Tucson charities will collect from a whole household.

What to tell the hauler up front: that it is a downsizing, whether a sale or donation pickup is planned first, who is deciding, and whether the person at the house needs the crew to slow down. Those four things change the quote less than they change the day.

Junk car removal in Tucson is a different trade: the landfill refuses intact automobiles

A junk hauler will not take a car, and Los Reales will not accept one — intact automobiles are on the landfill’s refused list, alongside waste oil and lead-acid batteries. Vehicle removal is the business of tow operators, salvage yards and scrap recyclers, who need the title or the paperwork the Arizona Department of Transportation requires before a vehicle changes hands, and who, for a car with scrap value, may pay rather than charge. What a junk hauler can take is what is around the car: the tires, at $5 each at the gate and limited to ten; the parts, as scrap metal; the shelf of oil and coolant, to the hazardous-waste drop-off, not the truck. If the search was really for the car itself, this is the wrong trade, and the hauler you are matched with will say so.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a full truck?

It depends on the truck. The big franchises run boxes of roughly 400 cubic feet that hold about two tons; a local hauler may run a dump trailer or a stake bed with a different capacity. Ask for the cubic yards or the dimensions before you compare a full-load price from one company with another. Ten cubic yards: the Brush and Bulky limit — is about ten washing machines stacked together.

Can the hauler take everything in one trip?

Usually for a garage or a room; rarely for a whole house. A second trip is priced as a second load, so ask whether the quote is for the job or for the truck. If it is for the truck, ask how many trucks the hauler thinks the job is, and get that number in writing.

Is same-day junk removal available in Tucson?

Often, for small loads, when the schedule has room. Los Reales closes at 5 p.m. and the hazardous-waste drop-off closes at 2 p.m. on the days it opens, so a late-afternoon call for a load with paint in it will not finish the same day. Say when you call if the date is fixed by a closing or a lease.

Does the hauler take mattresses?

Yes. Los Reales lists mattresses among the materials it accepts, and Brush and Bulky takes them at the curb inside the city. Donation centers are the problem: most in Tucson will not take a used mattress, so budget for it to go to the landfill.

What if I only have one item?

The curbside services that publish Tucson prices start around $59 to $159 for a single item left outside, which is usually the cheapest way to move one couch. A full-service pickup from inside the house runs $80 to $220 in the published ranges. If the item is light enough for a pickup and you own one, Los Reales will take it for about $20.