The home of UNC — student move-out every May, faculty homes that need estate cleanouts, and artsy, walkable Carrboro next door. Flat photo-quoted pricing from $75, mattresses $111 to $154, truck-fill $295 to $895, same-day during move-out, donation-routed, and no NC sales tax on the service.
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Upload a Photo & Get Quote →Chapel Hill runs on the UNC calendar. Every May, students clear out of dorms and the apartment blocks around campus and Carrboro, and we run same-day mattress and furniture hauls straight through move-out week. The other half of the work is the faculty and longtime-resident homes — established houses that need downsizing and estate cleanouts, attic to crawl space. Everything is photo-quoted flat, usable items donated to Habitat ReStore and Goodwill, and there's no NC sales tax on the service.
The scale is what makes May unusual here. Roughly 21,000 undergraduates live in and around a town of a few tens of thousands inside Orange County's ~150,000 residents, and most of them change address in the same two weeks. Franklin Street, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and the complexes off Estes and Airport Road all empty at once, dumpsters fill by mid-morning, and the mattress that won't fit in a Civic ends up in a stairwell. Then the town goes quiet and the work shifts entirely — to Gimghoul, Coker Hills, Glen Lennox and the faculty houses whose owners are downsizing or whose families are settling an estate.
The mattress against the wall, the pile in the living room, the whole house. Roommates can send one photo between them and split the number.
Itemized for a mattress and a futon, truck-fill for the whole apartment — $295 a quarter to $895 full. Set before anyone is dispatched.
Third floor, no elevator, lease ends tomorrow — that's the normal case in May. The crew does the stairs. Nothing goes to the curb.
Single items price flat; a whole apartment or house prices by how much of the 16-yard truck it fills.
| Item / Volume | Price |
|---|---|
| Twin mattress | $111 |
| Full mattress | $126 |
| Queen mattress | $139 |
| King mattress | $154 |
| Box spring | $124 |
| Futon | $139 |
| Sofa / couch | $170 |
| Loveseat | $128 |
| Dresser | $169 |
| Desk | $112 |
| Mini fridge | $155 |
| Truck-fill — 1/4 | $295 |
| Truck-fill — 1/2 | $525 |
| Truck-fill — 3/4 | $720 |
| Truck-fill — full | $895 |
$75 minimum. Disposal included. No NC sales tax on the service. Intermediate tiers exist too — 3/8 $415, 5/8 $625, 7/8 $810 — so a shared apartment that runs a little past half doesn't get rounded up a full quarter truck.
Third-party price context: Junk Doctors publishes a Triangle rate card at junkdrs.com/pricing with a $135 minimum and $298–$738 truck tiers, plus a "same-day or it's free" promise and a $100 price-beat; McJunk publishes a $175 minimum and $305–$695 tiers with a $10–$50 trip charge, $40 per mattress, $10 per tire and $10 per CRT TV. In a town this mattress-heavy that $40-a-mattress line adds up fast — ours is $0. See the full Triangle cost comparison.
Search "NC bulky item pickup" from a Chapel Hill address and you'll land on the City of Raleigh's program: a scheduled Bulky Load pickup for about $35, a special appliance pickup around $70, and free electronics collection of up to four items a week (never tires). It's a good program. It is also completely unavailable to you.
Chapel Hill and Carrboro sit in Orange County, about 25 miles down 15-501 from Raleigh, in a different county with a different solid-waste authority. Raleigh's bulky service is for City of Raleigh collection customers in Wake County only. Orange County and the Town of Chapel Hill run their own separate solid waste services, with their own schedules, item limits and fee schedules — worth checking directly before you plan around anything, because the terms are not Raleigh's.
Then there's the part no municipal program solves: students and renters mostly aren't on curbside service at all. Apartment complexes use private commercial dumpsters sized for household trash, and management will bill you for a mattress left beside one. Dorm move-out is governed by the university's own schedule. And every curbside program everywhere shares the same flaw — it takes what's already at the street, which means someone has to get a queen mattress down three flights first. That someone is us, and the number was fixed from a photo before we left.
UNC and the surrounding complexes run move-out donation collections each spring to keep usable goods out of the waste stream, and they're genuinely good programs. Our position is simple: if it's clean and usable and the drive is still collecting, donate it there. We're not trying to haul away a working mini fridge that a student could use next fall.
Call us for what those drives can't take. Stained or torn mattresses. A futon frame with a snapped weld. Particle-board furniture that won't survive being moved again. The pile that appears after the collection bins close for the season. And anything nobody can carry down — a donation drive still requires you to get the item to the drop point, which is the actual obstacle on the third floor of a walk-up on the last day of a lease. Whatever is still good in our load gets routed to Habitat for Humanity ReStore or Goodwill of Eastern North Carolina anyway, so the outcome for a usable couch is the same either way.
Usable furniture, books and household goods go to donation first: Habitat for Humanity ReStore runs ten Triangle stores and Goodwill of Eastern North Carolina is a Raleigh-headquartered network, both of which take the kind of furniture a faculty downsizing produces. North Carolina bans appliances, televisions and computers from landfills, so white goods and scrap metal go to metal recycling and electronics to an e-waste recycler — in Durham, the county's transfer facility recycles appliances and metal free and takes up to five certified tires free.
What's genuinely finished gets disposed, and here's the number behind our pricing: mattresses and box springs tip at about $15 each at South Wake Landfill, where household waste runs roughly $37 a ton. Disposal that cheap is exactly why a twin can be $111 flat with nothing added — and why a published $40-per-mattress surcharge elsewhere is a pricing choice rather than a cost being passed through.
Access in this town comes in two flavors. Student housing means third-floor walk-ups, tight stair turns and parking that's theoretically 100 feet from the door, on a week when every other unit in the complex is moving at the same time. We schedule tight windows in May for exactly that reason, and there's no stair fee attached to any of it.
The residential side is older Chapel Hill: mid-century ranches and split-levels on wooded lots, long gravel or steeply pitched drives, crawl spaces instead of basements, and floored attics reached by a pull-down ladder that has held forty years of boxes. Carrboro adds a third case — walkable bungalows on narrow streets near Weaver Street where a truck can't linger long, which is why small, precise, scheduled loads are the norm there rather than an all-day dumpster.
"UNC move-out, last minute. Mattress and a couch out of a student apartment same day. Flat price from a photo, no sales tax. Saved us during finals."
"Cleared my parents' faculty home before the sale. Discreet, donation-routed, broom-clean. Fair flat quote for a big job."
"Carrboro rental turnover — old furniture and a mattress. Quoted from a photo, gone next day. Easy."
How much is junk removal in Chapel Hill?
Twin mattress $111, full $126, queen $139, king $154, box spring $124, futon $139, sofa $170, loveseat $128, dresser $169, desk $112, mini fridge $155. Truck-fill: 1/4 $295, 1/2 $525, 3/4 $720, full $895. $75 minimum, disposal included, no NC sales tax.
Does Raleigh's $35 Bulky Load pickup apply here?
No. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are in Orange County; Raleigh's ~$35 Bulky Load, ~$70 appliance pickup and free weekly e-waste collection serve City of Raleigh collection customers in Wake County only. Orange County and the Town of Chapel Hill run their own separate services.
Do you do UNC move-out?
Yes — it's our busiest week of the year. Same-day mattress and furniture hauls from dorms and student apartments, flat-priced from a photo. A shared apartment is usually a quarter to a half truck, $295–$525, split as many ways as you like.
Should I use the campus donation drive instead?
If it's clean, usable, and the drive is still open — yes, donate it. Call us for what they can't take, for what's left after the bins close, and for anything nobody can carry down three flights.
Do you serve Carrboro?
Yes, fully — same pricing, same-day availability. Carrboro loads skew small, which is what the $75 minimum is for.
Can you do a faculty-home estate cleanout?
Yes, and it's half our work here. Whole house including attic and crawl space, books and furniture routed to ReStore and Goodwill, typically three-quarters to a full truck ($720–$895), quoted from photos beforehand.
Are you cheaper than Junk Doctors or McJunk?
Cheaper minimum ($75 vs their published $135 and $175) and no add-ons; their published half and full truck rates are lower than ours. McJunk's card lists $40 per mattress — in this town, that's the line that matters.
What happens to the mattresses?
Usable ones are donated. The rest are disposed — mattresses and box springs tip at about $15 each at South Wake Landfill, which is why we don't need a mattress surcharge.