The DIY dump run has a number most people learn at the gate: TDS Creedmoor bills roughly $60/ton with a two-ton minimum per trip — so your half-ton pickup load pays the two-ton price. Here's the whole self-haul spreadsheet against flat pickup, with the honest case where the dump run wins.
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Upload a Photo & Get Quote →| Line item | DIY dump run | JunkRabbit |
|---|---|---|
| Gate fee | ~$60/ton, two-ton minimum — the floor is ~$120/trip (verify current TDS rates) | Flat, all-in: single items $75–$250 ¼ truck $241 full truck $732 Crew loads; every stream routed |
| Truck | Yours, or a rental + per-mile | |
| Fuel | The Creedmoor round trip, loaded | |
| Labor | You + a helper, in Texas heat | |
| Time | Half a Saturday minimum | |
| The excluded items | Fridge, electronics, tires, hazmat = separate stops |
The two-ton minimum is the quiet killer: a couch-and-boxes load weighs a fraction of it and bills all of it. Totaled honestly, most household runs land at or above the flat-pickup price — the same money, plus you did the lifting, the driving, and the sweating.
Fair's fair: dense, heavy, landfill-legal loads from a truck-owning household — roofing tear-off, tile demo, dirt-adjacent renovation debris where the tonnage actually approaches the minimum. That's contractor math, and contractors run it correctly every day. The household shedding furniture almost never gets there; the minimum doesn't care how light your load is.
The landfill gate is only for the landfill-legal: refrigerant appliances need coolant recovery (fridge $164 with us, EPA-handled), electronics belong in e-waste streams, tires and household hazardous waste have their own programs — Austin's Recycle & Reuse Drop-Off Center covers the hazmat side (check austintexas.gov for current rules). A mixed household load self-hauled honestly is three stops; on one flat-priced truck it's zero, with each stream routed for you.
Free, no signup — our flat number next to your gate-fee math
Upload a Photo & Get Quote →The landfill most Austin self-haulers use — Texas Disposal Systems' Creedmoor facility south of town — has published gate pricing of roughly $60 per ton with a two-ton minimum per trip (verify current rates with TDS before driving out; gate schedules change). The minimum is the trap: a light pickup-truck load weighing a few hundred pounds still bills as two tons, so the realistic floor for one trip is in the $120 range before the truck, fuel and the drive down Highway 183.
Itemize both honestly. Self-haul: the ~two-ton-minimum gate bill, truck access (rental if you don't own one), fuel for the Creedmoor round trip, loading labor, and the sorting problem — refrigerant appliances and electronics have separate rules, so one trip is rarely one trip. Flat pickup: single items $75–$250 (sofa $126, fridge $164 EPA-handled), quarter truck $241 with the crew loading. For anything under a truck-owning household's single light sorted load, the flat pickup usually wins on real cost — and always on Saturdays.
You own the truck, the load is one trip of landfill-legal material heavy enough to justify the minimum (roofing tear-off, dense renovation debris), and your time is off the books. Contractors clearing dense debris hit that math constantly; a household shedding a couch and some boxes almost never does — the two-ton minimum bills the same either way.
The usual regulated streams have their own routes: refrigerant appliances need coolant recovery, electronics belong in e-waste recycling, tires and hazardous materials have separate programs (Austin's Recycle & Reuse Drop-Off Center handles household hazardous waste — check austintexas.gov for current rules). Budget extra stops, or send the mixed load on one flat-priced truck where each stream is routed for you.