Garage cleanout cost in Jacksonville

The short answer

Garage cleanouts price by volume. The ladder: $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. Minimum $75 per visit.

In Jacksonville the realistic bands are:

• A carport or single bay, partly usable: $241 to $338.
• A single-car garage you have not parked in for years: $338 to $431.
• A two-car garage, wall to wall, cannot open the side door: $587 to $732.

Carry-out and disposal are inside the number. There is no charge for the long driveway, which matters here because plenty of Westside and Ortega lots have very long driveways.

In Jacksonville, the garage is the basement

This is the structural reason garage cleanouts here are bigger than people expect. Florida houses do not have cellars. Whatever a family in Ohio would put under the house, a family in Jacksonville puts in the garage, the carport, the backyard shed or the attic - and the garage takes the heaviest share, because it is the only one you can drive up to.

The stock varies by neighborhood and so does the job:

• 1950s and 60s ranches through Arlington, Lakewood, Murray Hill and Southside often have a carport rather than a garage, or a converted garage that became a room and pushed the storage into a shed.
• 1920s Riverside, Avondale and Springfield houses tend to have a detached garage off the alley or the back of the lot - a separate building, usually unconditioned, usually the worst humidity in the property.
• Newer two-story stucco out in Bartram Park, Oakleaf, Argyle and toward Nocatee has a proper two-car garage, which people fill completely and then park on the driveway for eight years.

The hurricane-supply stratum

Dig into almost any long-occupied Jacksonville garage and you hit a layer that does not exist anywhere outside a hurricane state. Every June somebody restocks, and most years none of it gets used, so it accumulates:

• Plywood sheets cut for windows on a house they no longer own, warped from the humidity.
• Sandbags from three seasons ago, split and leaking.
• A generator that has not been started since it was bought, with stale fuel in it.
• Cases of water past date, tarps, battery lanterns with corroded terminals.
• Storm shutters for the wrong openings.

This is genuinely bulky and genuinely heavy, and it is a large part of why a Jacksonville garage fills a truck faster than the square footage suggests. Sandbags in particular: wet sand is enormously heavy and we will price the pile rather than pretend it is a few bags.

Cardboard, humidity and what lives in it

The second Jacksonville-specific layer is the boxes. Cardboard in an unconditioned Northeast Florida garage does not keep. Five years of dew points in the seventies and the boxes soften, sag, and the bottoms fail when you lift them. Anything paper inside is usually mottled and musty.

Cardboard is also habitat. Silverfish, palmetto bugs and sometimes a rodent nest come with long-stored boxes, and in a detached Riverside garage you can add termites in anything wooden touching the slab. None of that changes the price. It does change the advice: do not plan to sort boxes in the garage over a weekend. Move the ones you actually care about into the house and the air conditioning, and book the rest as volume.

Worked examples with the arithmetic

The fitness corner nobody uses. Treadmill $115, weight bench $69, weight set $93. $115 + $69 + $93 = $277. A quarter truck is $241 and that fits, so book the quarter.

Garage fridge and the metal cabinet. Refrigerator $164 plus storage cabinet $74 = $238. That sits just under the $241 quarter truck, so itemize this one.

The real single-bay clearout. Lawn mower $65, treadmill $115, weight bench $69, storage cabinet $74, bicycle $37, and ten bags of debris $132. $65 + $115 + $69 + $74 + $37 + $132 = $492. A half truck is $431, so book the half truck and put the rest of the shelf in it.

The pattern holds: past about four or five items, the volume tier is the cheaper booking.

Common garage items, priced

What we cannot take

Say this up front so nothing is a surprise on the day. Household hazardous waste does not go on the truck:

• Gas, diesel and the stale fuel in the generator can
• Propane cylinders, including the grill tank
• Paint, solvents, pool chemicals and pesticides - all extremely common in Jacksonville garages
• Car batteries and motor oil

Those go to a household hazardous waste drop-off. Duval runs collection facilities for exactly this; check the current locations and hours on the city's household hazardous waste page before you load the car. Empty and dried-out paint cans are usually fine as ordinary waste, but check the current guidance rather than assuming.

How to prep for the window

Three things that make the day go faster and cost you nothing:

• Pull the keepers out first. Anything staying should be in the house or clearly taped off. A crew that can take the whole west wall moves fast.
• Clear the driveway. The truck wants to back up to the door.
• Book a morning in summer. A closed Jacksonville garage in July is genuinely punishing by midday, and a morning window gets the job done before the afternoon storm arrives.

Send a couple of photos from the door and we will confirm the tier before you commit.

Frequently asked questions