Durham mattresses move on the academic calendar: leases end, programs finish, and suddenly a queen set has to be out of a third-floor walk-up by Saturday. We bag it in the bedroom, carry it down however many flights Duke-adjacent housing demands, and the price is flat by size — from $111, queen $139, set $192. No per-stair arithmetic, no $40 mattress surcharge.
Tell us the size — flat price instantly
Get Your Quote →Twin, full, queen, king — the size is the price. Add a photo if there's a box spring, a frame or a whole apartment going and we quote it all together in seconds.
Tell us the deadline, not just the date. Lease-end weeks are our busiest stretch in Durham and we hold windows for them; same-day is often open.
The mattress is bagged where it sleeps, strapped, and walked down — three flights or one. Nothing bare touches your hallway or the stairwell.
The size is the price, and the number is settled from your photo before anyone drives over. Bagging, the stair carry and the disposal are already inside it — there is no access fee, no fuel line, and no separate mattress charge.
| Item | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Twin mattress | $111 |
| Box spring (any size) | $124 |
| Full / double mattress | $126 |
| Queen mattress | $139 |
| King / Cal king mattress | $154 |
| Mattress + box spring set | $192 |
| Bed frame | $92 |
| Headboard | $77 |
$75 minimum on very small jobs. Bagging, stairs and disposal included. A mattress and its box spring together price as a $192 set rather than separately, and a graduating tenant clearing the bed, the desk, the futon and the bookshelf gets one quote for the lot. No NC sales tax on the service.
Third-party context: McJunk publishes a Triangle rate card of a $175 minimum, quarter truck $305, half $435, three-quarter $565 and full $695, plus a $40 mattress surcharge on top of the tier. Junk Doctors publishes a $135 minimum rising to $738 for a full truck (junkdrs.com/pricing). Those are truck-volume prices confirmed once a crew has climbed your stairs. Ours is a size price confirmed before we leave.
| Option | Cost | Speed | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of Raleigh Bulky Load | $35 | — | Not available to you. Durham is a different city in a different county; Raleigh's program serves Raleigh addresses only |
| City of Durham curbside collection | Per the City's current rules (durhamnc.gov) | Scheduled collection day | Curbside only, and it assumes you have a curb — most Durham renters are in apartment blocks and lofts where that means a dumpster corral the property manager doesn't want a mattress in |
| Self-haul to the Durham Waste Disposal & Recycling Center | Transfer MSW billed around $65/ton, plus your truck | An afternoon | You supply the truck, the straps, a second person and the trip — after you've already carried it down three flights, which was the hard part |
| Traditional truck-fill hauler | $135–$175 minimum, up to $695–$738 full truck (published Junk Doctors / McJunk rates), +$40 mattress surcharge at McJunk | 1–3 days | Priced by how much of the truck you fill, often confirmed only on site — and stairs are exactly where an on-site quote grows |
| JunkRabbit | From $111 · queen $139 flat | Same day, most days | None — one size-based number, walk-ups included, bagged before it moves |
Municipal, disposal-facility and competitor figures above are third-party published rates, not ours. Our numbers are the flat item prices in the table above.
First, the correction that saves people a wasted morning: the City of Raleigh's $35 Bulky Load has nothing to do with Durham. Search "does the city pick up mattresses" anywhere in the Triangle and Raleigh Solid Waste Services dominates the results, but Durham is a separate city in a separate county with its own solid waste department. Raleigh's Bulky Load, its $70 special-item pickup and its free weekly e-waste allowance stop at the Wake County line. If you live off Ninth Street or in Trinity Park, none of those numbers are yours.
Durham runs its own scheduled curbside collection — check the current bulky-item rules on durhamnc.gov, because they do change — and the local disposal end of the system is the Durham Waste Disposal & Recycling Center, where transfer-station municipal solid waste is billed at roughly $65 a ton, appliances and scrap metal are accepted free, and up to five certified tires come in free as well. That's a genuinely good public facility and we'll happily point you at it.
The problem is that curbside programs are designed for houses, and about 44% of Durham households rent — a much higher share than Wake County, driven by the constant turnover around Duke and North Carolina Central. A renter in a converted American Tobacco-district loft or a Ninth Street apartment block doesn't have a curb in any useful sense; they have a shared dumpster corral, a property manager with opinions about mattresses, and a lease clause about leaving items behind. "Put it at the curb and wait" is advice for a homeowner in Hope Valley, not for the person this actually happens to.
And the timing never lines up. Durham's mattress volume arrives in a wall in early-to-mid May, when roughly 17,000 Duke students finish at once and every lease near East Campus turns over in the same seven days, with a smaller echo when everyone moves back in during August. A scheduled municipal pickup and a Saturday-morning walkthrough are not compatible plans. We're the version that comes to the bedroom on the day you name, bags the mattress there, and carries it down.
If a mattress is genuinely clean, unstained and structurally sound, it goes toward donation — and student-turnover season is the one time of year when a real share of them qualify, because a lot of Durham mattresses are two years old rather than twelve. Charities are strict about used bedding, and they should be; when a set doesn't meet that bar we don't pretend otherwise.
Everything else is hauled and processed for proper disposal, with steel innersprings pulled for scrap where the load allows — worth doing here, since the Durham Waste Disposal & Recycling Center takes metal free. What never happens is the thing Durham landlords have seen far too much of in May: a mattress abandoned beside a dumpster, leaned against someone else's fence, or left in a stairwell for the next tenant to inherit. It gets bagged, loaded and taken.
Access is the whole story in Durham, and it comes in three flavours. The revitalized downtown lofts around the American Tobacco Campus and the Warehouse blocks are beautiful conversions with brick, timber and — very often — a stairwell instead of a service elevator. A queen set coming down three flights of an old tobacco warehouse staircase is a two-person job with straps and a plan for the landing turn.
The historic Trinity Park Victorians and Craftsman houses near Duke's East Campus are the opposite problem: gorgeous narrow staircases with a hard turn at the top, original plaster you don't want to scuff, and on-street loading on a leafy block where the truck parks where it fits. We bring corner protection and take it slowly.
Then the apartment density around Ninth Street — third-floor walk-ups, shared stairwells, a loading window the property manager wants you to respect, and occasionally a certificate of insurance on file. We handle the COI when a building asks for it. And in all three cases the answer to "is there a stair charge?" is no: the flat size price already includes the flights.
"Third-floor walk-up, queen set, lease ended Saturday. Booked Wednesday night, gone Thursday afternoon, bagged before it left the bedroom. Deposit came back whole."
"Manage six units near Ninth Street and every summer someone leaves a mattress. One text with photos now, flat price each, gone before the next showing."
"Upgraded to a king and the old queen plus box spring had nowhere to go. Twenty-minute pickup, they even took the frame for a few bucks more. Painless."
How much does it cost in Durham?
Twin $111, full $126, queen $139, king $154, box spring $124, mattress + box spring set $192. Frames $92, headboards $77. The $75 minimum applies to very small jobs; bagging, stairs and disposal are included, and there's no NC sales tax on the service.
Does Raleigh's $35 Bulky Load cover Durham?
No — different city, different county. Durham runs its own curbside collection, and the local facility is the Durham Waste Disposal & Recycling Center: transfer MSW around $65/ton, appliances and metal free, up to five certified tires free.
Can you come before my lease ends this week?
Yes. Lease-end weeks are our busiest in Durham and we hold windows for them; same-day is often available. Tell us the walkthrough time and we'll be ahead of it.
Is there a charge for a third-floor walk-up?
No. American Tobacco-area lofts, Ninth Street apartment blocks and Trinity Park staircases are the normal job here, and the flights are inside the flat price.
Do you bag it first?
Always, in the bedroom, before it moves — nothing bare crosses your hallway or the shared stairwell. Property managers ask for this specifically.
Do you charge a mattress surcharge?
No. McJunk's published card adds $40 per mattress on top of its truck-fill tiers and starts at a $175 minimum. Ours is one number by size.
Several units, or a whole student house?
Yes — a four-bedroom off Ninth Street in late May, or a landlord's turnover stack. Each piece priced flat, all quoted together before we arrive.
What happens to it afterward?
Clean, usable sets go toward donation — genuinely more of them in student season. The rest is hauled and disposed of properly, innersprings pulled for scrap where practical. Nothing gets left beside a dumpster.