GARAGE CLEANOUT & HAUL AWAY PUEBLO

There is a real difference between junk *hauling* and a garage *cleanout*, and a lot of quotes blur it. Hauling means you've already staged everything in the driveway and we load and leave. A cleanout means we walk into the garage, work off your keep/toss decisions, pull items off shelves and out of rafters, break down what needs breaking down, load it, and leave the slab swept.

Our cleanout price includes:

• Labor for a 2-person crew, typically 2–4 hours for a standard Pueblo West two-car (roughly 22' x 22', 484 sq ft) plus the usual side storage
• Loading and hauling in a 16-foot dump trailer that holds about 12 cubic yards — the equivalent of six full loads in a half-ton pickup
• All disposal and transfer station fees, including per-item surcharges we absorb into the quote
• A broom-swept slab at the end, and a walk-through before we pull out
• Donation drop-off of anything usable to the ReStore or Goodwill in Pueblo, at no extra charge — we do this on roughly 6 out of 10 jobs

What it does not include: organizing, shelving installation, pest treatment, epoxy floor prep, or hauling anything we're legally not allowed to touch. More on that below.

We price by how much of the trailer you fill, because that's what disposal actually costs us. Current Pueblo West rates:

• Quarter trailer (~3 cu yd): $265 — one stall's worth of boxes, a few pieces of furniture, general clutter
• Half trailer (~6 cu yd): $395 — the most common two-car job
• Three-quarter trailer (~9 cu yd): $525 — two-car plus a decade of accumulation, or a garage plus a shed's contents
• Full trailer (~12 cu yd): $650 — packed floor-to-rafters, or a garage that's been serving as household overflow storage
• Second trailer load: $475 on the same visit, since the crew and drive time are already covered

Add-ons that carry hard costs we can't absorb: appliances containing refrigerant run $35 each for certified evacuation (fridges, freezers, window A/C units — see [appliance removal](/services/appliance-removal-pueblo)), mattresses and box springs are $45 each, passenger tires are $8 each and truck tires $18, and CRT televisions are $25 because they're regulated e-waste in Colorado and the recycler charges by the pound.

Weight matters on dense material. A trailer of cardboard and plastic bins is easy. A quarter-trailer of broken concrete, brick, or dirt can hit 2,000 pounds and gets priced under [concrete and rock removal](/services/concrete-rock-removal-pueblo) instead, because that goes to a different facility at a different rate.

This isn't filler — it changes the job. Most Pueblo West lots run 1 acre or larger, and the neighborhood sits outside city limits under the Pueblo West Metropolitan District, which means no municipal curbside trash. Every household contracts its own hauler, and the standard residential can is 96 gallons with a strict "lid must close" rule. There is no city bulky-item pickup day to fall back on.

The result is predictable. Anything that doesn't fit in a 96-gallon can gets walked into the garage "for now." Add an acre of property generating yard debris, fencing, and irrigation parts, and add spring winds that regularly gust past 50 mph off the mesa, which means outdoor storage isn't really an option. Then add the fact that a closed Pueblo West garage in July sits over 110°F at 4,700 feet of elevation, which is exactly the condition that ruins the stored cardboard, latex paint, and adhesive-backed anything you were saving.

> The average Pueblo West garage we clear has about 40% of its volume in items the owner forgot they owned — and roughly a third of that is degraded past donation because it sat through six summers at 110 degrees.

That's the case for doing it sooner rather than later. It's also the case for being honest about what's actually worth keeping.

This is the section that costs us jobs, and it should. Do not hire us if any of these apply.

You can finish it in two pickup loads. The county transfer station charges roughly $25–$45 per pickup load depending on material, and the round trip from Pueblo West is about 45 minutes each way. Two loads is around $70 in fees, 3 hours of driving, and a Saturday morning. That beats $265 if your back is fine and you own a truck. We'd rather tell you that than take the money.

It's one big item. A single hot tub, one couch, one fridge — that's a flat-rate single-item pickup, not a cleanout, and you'll pay less by asking for it that way. Same for a [single mattress](/services/mattress-removal-pueblo).

You haven't made the keep/toss decisions yet. This is the number one reason jobs go sideways. If you need to open every box and evaluate it while we stand there, you're paying a 2-person crew to watch you think. We've had 2-hour jobs stretch to 5 hours for exactly this reason, and at that point we have to re-quote. Sort first, or at minimum tag the "definitely gone" pile with painter's tape before we arrive.

You expect us to resell your stuff and cut you in. We don't. Anything with real resale value — running tools, a good compressor, collectibles — you should sell yourself on Facebook Marketplace before we come. We'll haul it, but we're not appraising it, and once it's on the trailer that decision is final. Genuinely valuable items belong in your own hands, not ours.

You want organization, not removal. We haul. We don't install shelving, build storage systems, or label bins. A professional organizer is a different trade and charges roughly $60–$90/hour for it. Hiring us and hoping for that outcome will disappoint you.

You're a renter without written landlord sign-off. We've been called back on jobs where a tenant cleared a garage that contained the property owner's belongings. We now ask. If you can't produce permission, we won't load.

The material is hazardous. We cannot legally take: paint and stains, motor oil, gasoline, antifreeze, pesticides, propane tanks, pool chemicals, ammunition, asbestos-containing material, or medical sharps. Those go to Pueblo County household hazardous waste collection events, which run only a handful of dates per year. If your garage is half paint cans, we'll clear the other half and you'll still have a project.

You're on a tight budget and not on a deadline. Free and cheap options exist: donation pickups, curb-alerting on Marketplace, and scrap metal, which was paying around $0.08–$0.12 per pound for mixed steel locally. A garage's worth of old metal shelving and appliance shells might net you $40–$60 and cost you a trip. If money is tighter than time, take the trip.

• Volume quotes can shift. We quote what we see. If half the load is behind a wall of boxes we can't see past, the number can move a tier. Ask us to look behind the stack during the estimate — that's what the 20 minutes is for.
• Nobody's home means nothing gets decided. If you can't be on site, leave a written keep list and tape off the keep zone. Otherwise we default to leaving anything ambiguous, and you'll have a second job.
• Weather stops us. High-wind days make loading an open trailer genuinely unsafe. We reschedule rather than push through, usually with 24 hours' notice.
• Donation isn't guaranteed. ReStore and Goodwill both refuse items freely — stained upholstery, non-working electronics, cribs, most exercise equipment. When they decline, it goes to the landfill, and that's the honest outcome for maybe half of what we hope to donate.
• We're not a hoarding-response service by default. Heavy-accumulation situations involving biohazard, pest infestation, or structural concerns need a different scope and a different crew size — that's [hoarding cleanout](/services/hoarding-cleanout-pueblo), quoted separately after a walk-through.

Book midweek — Tuesday and Wednesday are our lightest days and we hold same-day slots then. Bundle jobs: if the garage cleanout is happening alongside [yard debris removal](/services/yard-debris-removal-pueblo) or a shed teardown, combining them into one trip typically saves $100–$150 versus two visits, because the drive and the disposal run are shared.

Pull the metal out and set it aside if you want to scrap it. Pre-sort the donation pile so we can load it last and drop it first. And be present for the first 10 minutes so we're clearing the right things.

Questions on scheduling, access, or what we take are answered on our [FAQ](/faq), and coverage across the county is listed under [service areas](/areas). If you want a number before you commit to anything, the estimate is free and there's no pressure attached to it — including if the honest answer turns out to be "rent a trailer and do it yourself."