Everyone in this industry says "we recycle whenever possible," which commits to nothing. So instead of a claim, here's an itinerary — a loaded truck, stop by stop, from the moment the sorting starts at your curb to the last thing that genuinely does go to a landfill.
Donation receipts available on request — easier at drop-off than reconstructed later
Upload Photos & Get Quote →The single most important sorting decision happens before the truck moves. As things come out of the house they're separated — donatable goods, metal, electronics, refrigerant units, clean organic material, and the genuine remainder — because separating at the point of loading is the only way it happens properly.
A truck loaded as one undifferentiated mass gets disposed of as one undifferentiated mass. That's the practical difference between a company that routes material and one that says it does.
This is also why loading is included in every price rather than being something you do first. Full Austin price list.
What goes here: furniture in sound condition, household goods, working small appliances, usable building materials. Austin has a genuinely good network for this — Goodwill Central Texas, Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and the Austin Furniture Bank ecosystem all take real volume.
The honest catch: condition standards are real and they're applied. Anything stained, structurally broken, water-damaged or missing parts will be declined, and a hauler who promises your worn sofa is "going to a family" without looking at it is telling you what you want to hear. Receipts are available on request — ask at booking.
The better version: if the item is genuinely good and you have two or three weeks, donating it directly beats paying us. Who collects free in Austin.
What goes here: appliance shells, metal bed frames, filing cabinets, metal shelving, mower decks and engines, grills, cast iron, wrought iron patio furniture, structural metal from demolition.
Why it works: metal is the one stream with a reliable market — it has value, so it moves regardless of goodwill. This is the least fragile part of the routing chain.
What it means for you: a rusted-through iron table is genuinely recyclable even when it's genuinely unusable. Condition matters for donation; for metal it doesn't. Which patio materials go where.
What goes here: televisions at $98 for a large one, monitors $58, desktop computers $62, printers, stereos and small electronics.
Why it's separate: electronics are restricted at disposal facilities for material reasons — leaded glass in tube displays, mercury lamps in older flat panels, and recoverable metals throughout. Certified processors are set up to separate those fractions.
The honest catch: we haul hardware and route it. We don't wipe drives and we don't operate a data-destruction chain of custody. Wipe devices or pull drives before pickup. Device by device.
What goes here: refrigerators at $164, chest freezers $146, window air conditioners $107 — anything with a sealed refrigerant system.
Why it's its own stop: refrigerant has to be recovered to EPA standard by a certified process before the shell can be scrapped. It's a real, non-optional step with a real cost.
This is the clearest case of routing driving price. A refrigerator costs more than a sofa — $164 against $126 — not because it's heavier or harder to carry, but because of a required processing step. When people ask why appliance pricing looks the way it does, this is the answer. The full fridge story · appliance removal.
What goes here: clean brush, branches, leaves, cleared vegetation and untreated wood — priced at $119 per cubic yard.
Why it's our cheapest material: composting costs less than landfill disposal, and that difference is passed through rather than pocketed. Clean brush is the least expensive thing we haul precisely because of where it goes.
The catch that changes the price: treated lumber, composite decking and fence panels with hardware can't be composted, so they price on the construction line at $162 per cubic yard instead. Same-looking pile, different destination, different number. Brush and yard waste.
What goes here: drywall, lumber, tile, flooring, cabinets and fixtures at $162 per cubic yard. Some of it separates — clean metal to scrap, sometimes clean wood — and the bulk goes to construction-waste disposal.
The honest part: mixed demolition debris is the hardest category to divert. Materials arrive bonded together — tile with mortar, drywall with paint and fasteners — and separating them after the fact usually isn't practical. Construction debris removal.
Here's the part most companies leave out of this page.
What genuinely goes to disposal: mattresses, upholstered furniture that's stained or broken, degraded plastics, most mixed debris, carpet and pad, anything soiled or water-damaged, and the general remainder of a household that nobody will take.
That's not a failure of effort — it's what those materials are. There is no meaningful reuse market for a fifteen-year-old stained sofa or a used mattress, and pretending otherwise would be the easiest false claim on this page to make.
The useful implication: the biggest environmental lever isn't which hauler you pick — it's whether the item leaves your house while it's still good. A sofa donated at year eight is furniture; the same sofa at year fifteen is disposal. That's the decision that actually moves the outcome. The keep, sell, donate framework.
Not everything that comes out of a house belongs on a truck, and this is the part crews are told to slow down for.
Documents, photographs, cash, jewellery, medication and mail get set aside and returned — not loaded, not sorted later, not kept. In estate and long-tenure cleanouts these turn up constantly: inside books, in coat pockets, taped behind drawers. A crew that isn't watching for them will throw away a deed.
If there are specific things that must not leave, say so before the crew starts and mark the room or the items. Estate work and what it leaves behind · hoarding cleanups, where this matters most.
Household hazardous waste — paint, solvents, pesticides, pool chemicals, full propane tanks — routes through the city's HHW program instead.
Loose lithium batteries, which are a genuine fire risk in a load that gets compacted. Battery drop-offs exist for exactly this.
Asbestos-containing material, which requires licensed abatement, and biohazard conditions, which require a remediation contractor.
A hauler who says yes to all of these is either uninsured for them or planning to renegotiate on your driveway. The full refusal list.
You'll see competitors advertise one. We don't, and the reason is straightforward: a meaningful diversion figure requires weighing every load by stream and auditing the result, which is a measurement system we don't currently operate.
We could publish an estimate. It would be unverifiable, it would be flattering, and it would be worth less to you than the itinerary above — which describes what actually happens to each type of item and admits which ones end up in a landfill.
If a company quotes you a precise diversion rate, the useful follow-up is simply how is that measured? A good answer exists. A vague one tells you what the number is worth. The ten questions worth asking any hauler.
Donation. $170 to haul, but donate it directly if you have the time — that's the better outcome and it's cheaper.
Disposal. No reuse market. This is the honest answer.
Disposal — $103 for a queen. Used mattresses are refused almost universally by donation and resale channels.
Refrigerant recovery, then scrap. Fridge $164, chest freezer $146, window AC $79.
Scrap metal recovery. Washer $133, dryer $128 — mostly steel, and one of the better-recovered items.
Certified e-waste. TV $73, monitor $58, desktop $62. Wipe your data first.
Composting at $119 per cubic yard — the cheapest thing we haul, because of where it goes.
Construction disposal at $162 per cubic yard. Can't be composted.
Donation if usable — bagged at $47, boxes of books $47. This is the highest-diversion category in an average house.
Scrap and specialty streams. Water heater $131, tire set $87 — tires have their own handling requirement.
Not our truck. Household hazardous waste and battery drop-offs. No exceptions.
Once you've seen the itinerary, the price list stops looking arbitrary.
Brush is cheapest at $88 a cubic yard because composting costs less than disposal. Construction debris is more at $120 because disposal costs more and diverts less. Refrigerators cost more than sofas — $164 against $126 — because of a mandatory recovery step. Electronics carry their own number because certified processing isn't free.
Every one of those differences is a destination cost passed through. That's a more useful thing to understand than any slogan, and it's why this page exists. Seven itemised real Austin jobs.
The greenest decision happens years before the truck arrives. Every item in a house has a window during which it's still furniture, still an appliance, still worth something to someone — and after that window it's disposal no matter who hauls it or what they claim on their website. If you want the best outcome for the sofa in your garage, the answer isn't a better hauler; it's dealing with it this year instead of in five. For what's already past that point, at least now you know exactly where it goes.
Free photo quote — donation receipts on request, sorting included
Upload Photos & Get Quote →Both, depending on the item. Sound furniture and household goods route to donation, metal goes to scrap recovery, electronics go to certified e-waste processing, refrigerant-containing appliances get recovery to EPA standard, and clean brush goes to composting. What's left — broken furniture, mattresses, mixed debris, anything soiled or degraded — goes to disposal. Any company claiming everything is diverted is describing a marketing position rather than a truck.
We don't publish a number, and we'd rather explain why than invent one. A meaningful diversion figure requires weighing every load by stream and auditing it, which is a measurement system we don't currently operate. Publishing a percentage we can't substantiate would be worth less than telling you what actually happens item by item — which is what this page does. If a company quotes you a precise diversion rate, it's reasonable to ask how it's measured.
Yes, on request, for goods that route to donation. Ask when you book rather than after the truck leaves, because receipts are far easier to produce at the point of drop-off than reconstructed later. This matters most for estate work, where the paperwork goes into the estate file, and for landlords documenting a turnover.
It gets set aside and given back, not loaded. Crews are told to stop for anything that looks like documents, photographs, cash, jewellery, medication or mail. Those turn up constantly in estate and cleanout work — inside books, in coat pockets, taped behind drawers — and a crew that isn't watching for them will throw away a deed. Nothing is kept or resold by the crew.
Because of where it has to go. A refrigerator is $164 rather than a sofa's $126 largely because refrigerant has to be recovered to EPA standard by a certified process — a step with a real cost that can't be skipped. The same logic runs through the whole price list: electronics carry certified processing costs, clean brush is our cheapest material at $88 per cubic yard because composting costs less than landfill. Pricing follows routing.
Household hazardous waste — paint, solvents, pesticides, pool chemicals, full propane tanks — which routes through the city's HHW program. Loose lithium batteries, which are a fire risk in a compacting load. Asbestos-containing material, which needs licensed abatement. And biohazard conditions, which need a remediation contractor rather than a hauling crew. We'd rather tell you on the phone than discover it in your driveway.