JunkRabbit vs 1-800-GOT-JUNK: how the pricing differs in Portland

The short answer

Both outfits will take your stuff away. The model is what differs.

JunkRabbit publishes a flat price per item before you book. A sofa is $126. A queen mattress is $103. A standard refrigerator is $164. A quarter-truck load is $241. You select the items, you see the total, you accept it, and that is the number.

1-800-GOT-JUNK uses an on-site estimate. A crew comes out, looks at the pile, and quotes against how much of their truck it fills. That is a legitimate way to run a business and plenty of Portlanders use them. It just means the number arrives after two people are already standing in your entryway.

We are not going to invent their prices for you. Ask them, ask us, compare the two totals. The point is you can get ours before anyone drives to your house.

Why on-site estimating is awkward specifically in Portland

Two reasons, both geographic.

First, the streets. Inner-eastside blocks in Buckman, Richmond, Sellwood and Ladd's Addition are narrow, parked solid on both sides, and mostly have no alley. A truck that shows up to estimate has to find somewhere to sit while the estimate happens. On a weekday afternoon on SE Clinton or NE 15th that is not nothing, and it puts everybody under time pressure during the part of the conversation where you are deciding whether to spend money.

Second, the housing. When the pile is at the bottom of a steep basement stairwell in a 1915 bungalow, an on-site estimate is also an assessment of how hard the carry will be. With a flat per-item price, the carry is already in the number. The stairs in your Woodstock basement are our problem, not a variable in your quote.

What our published numbers look like

Oregon has no sales tax, so these are the amounts on the receipt. Nothing is added at the end for stairs, for a walk from the truck, or for a same-day slot.

Where the two models converge

Be fair about this. For a genuinely shapeless job — a Cully garage that has thirty years of miscellaneous in it, a Parkrose estate where nobody has opened the back room yet — volume pricing and truck-fill pricing end up describing the same thing. That is why we publish a truck-fill ladder too: quarter $241, three-eighths $338, half $431, five-eighths $513, three-quarters $587, seven-eighths $661, full $732.

The difference is still that you can look at that ladder on your phone in the garage, estimate your own fraction, and know roughly what the day costs before anyone is dispatched.

How to actually compare the two in your case

Do this, in this order:

• Count the named items first. If your job is a couch, a queen set, and a dresser, that is $126 + $143 + $126 = $395 on published flat pricing. Now you have a real number to hold a phone estimate against.
• Estimate your truck fraction second. Stand in the doorway of the room. Is it a quarter of a box truck or half? That gives you $241 or $431.
• Take the lower of the two. Item-by-item is usually cheaper for four or five defined pieces. Truck-fill is usually cheaper once the job is a whole basement or garage.
• Then call anyone else you want. With a real number in hand, an on-site quote is much easier to evaluate.

The things that are the same either way

Any serious junk removal outfit operating in this metro is taking loads to the regional transfer stations and diverting what can be diverted. Oregon has statewide programs for mattresses and for electronics, and reputable haulers route those items rather than burying them. Appliances with refrigerant get handled separately. None of that is a differentiator and we will not pretend it is.

What differs is the shape of the transaction. One version ends with you signing something in your own hallway. The other ends with you having approved a published number before the truck left the yard.

If you only remember one thing

Get a written number before a truck comes to your house. That is good advice whoever you hire. We happen to make it easy, because our prices are posted and the carry is already inside them — but the advice stands regardless of who you end up booking in Sellwood, Alberta, Beaverton or Gresham.

Frequently asked questions