Apartment cleanout cost in Jacksonville

The short answer

Price an apartment cleanout two ways and take the lower one.

By volume: $241 for a quarter truck, $338 for 3/8, $431 for a half, $513 for 5/8, $587 for 3/4, $661 for 7/8, $732 for a full truck.

By item: sofa $126, loveseat $119, queen mattress and box spring together $143, dresser $126, coffee table $67, dining table for 2-4 $103, dining chair $45, TV 42 to 65 inch $68, bookshelf $72, desk $83, office chair $61, small junk pile $82, medium junk pile $129, large junk pile $208. Minimum $75 per visit.

Every number includes the carry-out and the disposal. Second-floor garden apartment off Baymeadows with an exterior staircase and a long breezeway walk to the parking bay - same price as a ground-floor unit with the door ten feet from the truck.

Three worked examples

Studio in Riverside. Sofa $126, queen set $143, TV under 42 inch $62, small junk pile $82. That is $126 + $143 + $62 + $82 = $413. A half truck is $431, so the item list wins here - book the items.

One-bedroom in Baymeadows. Sofa $126, queen set $143, dresser $126, coffee table $67, TV 42-65 inch $68, bookshelf $72. Itemized that is $126 + $143 + $126 + $67 + $68 + $72 = $602. A 5/8 truck is $513 and that load fits, so book the $513.

Two-bedroom off Mayport Road. Two bedrooms of furniture plus a living room plus whatever is on the patio usually runs three-quarters of a truck or more: $587 to $732.

The rule of thumb: as soon as your item total crosses the next truck tier, switch to the truck tier. It is cheaper and it gives you room for the things you forgot were in the hall closet.

Garden apartments: the Southside and Baymeadows problem

A huge share of Jacksonville's rental stock is 1980s and 1990s garden apartments - two and three story blocks along Baymeadows, Southside Boulevard, the Tinseltown area, out toward Argyle and up Mayport Road. These share a specific set of physical facts:

• No elevator. Every upstairs unit is an exterior staircase, usually with a half-landing turn that a sleeper sofa does not love.
• Breezeway carries. The door is not near the curb. It is near a covered walkway that leads to a courtyard that leads to a lot.
• Assigned parking. There is often nowhere legitimate to put a box truck close to the building.

None of that changes your price. It does change our planning, so tell us the building and floor when you book and, if you can, which lot entrance actually gets us closest. On a big complex that saves twenty minutes of circling.

Mid-rise and downtown buildings

The newer blocks in Brooklyn, along Riverside Avenue, and the condo towers on the Southbank work completely differently. Expect at least some of the following, and sort them before the booking window rather than during it:

• A service elevator that has to be reserved, often only on weekdays and often in a fixed two-hour slot.
• A loading dock with its own access code or a call to the front desk.
• A certificate of insurance required by building management before anyone is allowed up. Ask us early and we will get it over.
• Height and time restrictions on the dock, which matter for a box truck.

The building will tell you all of this if you ask the property manager, and it is much easier to ask on a Tuesday than to discover it on a Saturday.

The complex dumpster is not your cleanout plan

The single most common Jacksonville rental mistake: putting a mattress and a sofa beside the compactor at 11pm on move-out night.

Complex waste contracts here are volume-based, and bulky items beside the enclosure generate an overage charge that management then bills to the unit that did it. Cameras on the enclosures are now standard at the larger Southside and Westside properties. If you are trying to get a deposit back, this is precisely the wrong way to spend move-out night.

Also, and this is the Jacksonville part: anything left outside overnight in summer is rained on. You will not be moving a dry mattress in the morning, you will be moving a wet one.

When apartments turn over in Jacksonville

Four clusters, and they are predictable:

• Late spring. UNF and Jacksonville University students clear out, and the complexes around them go at once.
• Summer. PCS season. Navy families rotating through Mayport and NAS Jax turn over rentals in Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Orange Park and along Mayport Road in a tight window.
• End of month, every month. Standard lease-end. The last three days of any month are the busiest.
• After a storm. Units with water intrusion get emptied fast, and everything soft goes.

If your date falls in one of those, book the window a week or more out. The last-Saturday-of-the-month slots in Jacksonville go early.

What is included

The quoted number covers two people, the truck, the carry-out from the unit, and disposal. No stair fee for the second-floor walk-up. No carry-distance fee for the long breezeway. No same-day surcharge. No separate landfill charge afterwards.

What is not included: cleaning, patching walls, or anything that is a renovation rather than a removal. We take the stuff out. Send photos of anything oversized or awkward and we will confirm the number before you commit to a window.

Frequently asked questions