★★★★★
“Communication was excellent, the haulers were so fast and efficient and work so hard. Very grateful for the help today!!”
MK
Megumi K.
Google review
Mattress Removal in Durham
Mattress Removal in Durham
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 $82, queen $103, set $143. No per-stair arithmetic, no $40 mattress surcharge.
Insured, vetted haulers
Same-day availability
Flat photo-quoted pricing
No hidden charges
COI support
Donation and recycling
Español on request
Insured, vetted Triangle haulers
Flat price by size
Walk-ups included — no stair fee
Bagged in the bedroom
Lease-end & same-day windows
No NC sales tax
How mattress removal works in Durham
1 · Tell us the size
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.
2 · Book against the walkthrough
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.
3 · Bagged, carried, gone
The mattress is bagged where it sleeps, strapped, and walked down — three flights or one. Nothing bare touches your hallway or the stairwell.
How much does mattress removal cost in Durham?
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 | $82 |
| Box spring (any size) | $92 |
| Full / double mattress | $94 |
| Queen mattress | $103 |
| King / Cal king mattress | $114 |
| Mattress + box spring set | $143 |
| Bed frame | $68 |
| Headboard | $57 |
$75 minimum on very small jobs. Bagging, stairs and disposal included. A mattress and its box spring together price as a $143 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.
5 ways to get rid of a mattress in Durham
| 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 $82 · queen $103 flat | Same day, most days | None — one size-based number, walk-ups included, bagged before it moves |
Does the city pick up mattresses in Durham?
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.
What we take
- Mattresses, every size — twin and twin XL (the dorm and student-apartment standard), full, queen, king and Cal king.
- Box springs & foundations — alone, or with the mattress as a $143 set.
- Bed frames & headboards — including the metal loft frames students build over a desk, disassembled as needed.
- Futons & sleeper sofas — the other thing every graduating tenant leaves behind.
- The whole apartment — bed, desk, bookshelf, TV and the shelving from the closet, priced together in one quote.
What happens to your mattress after pickup
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.
Durham stairs: walk-ups, lofts and Victorians
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.
When Durham calls us for a mattress
- Lease-end pickups — gone before the deposit walkthrough, which is the single most common Durham call we get.
- The May move-out wall — roughly 17,000 Duke students finishing in the same fortnight, plus NCCU turnover, concentrated around Ninth Street and Trinity Park. Book a day ahead that week if you can.
- August move-in — the smaller echo, when the mattress the last tenant left has to go before the new one arrives.
- Grad-program wrap-ups — five years of furniture leaving in one trip.
- Landlord and property-manager turnovers — several units at once, each piece priced flat, quoted in a single number.
- Guest-room retirements and upgrades — Hope Valley and Woodcroft homeowners going queen-to-king, or clearing the set nobody has slept on since 2019.
Why Durham chooses JunkRabbit for mattresses
- Walk-ups are free — a third-floor loft costs exactly what a ground-floor apartment costs.
- Bagged before it moves — standard on every job, which is why landlords keep our number.
- No mattress surcharge — the $40 line on a franchise card doesn't exist here.
- Lease-deadline scheduling — tell us the walkthrough time, not just the day.
- Straight about the alternatives — Durham's own recycling center and free metal drop-off are named above because they're real.
- Insured, vetted local haulers — and no NC sales tax on the service, so the quote is the total.
Customer Reviews
What Durham mattress customers say
★★★★★ 4.95 · 232 Google reviews
★★★★★
“Prompt and professional. I will definitely use again.”
KS
Kenneth S.
Google review
★★★★★
“Fast, considerate, and thorough”
IH
Ian H.
Google review
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is mattress removal in Durham?
Flat by size: twin $82, full $94, queen $103, king $114, box spring $92, and a mattress plus box spring together as a set $143. Bed frames are $68 and headboards $57. The $75 minimum applies to very small jobs. Bagging, the stairs of a third-floor walk-up and disposal are all included, and there is no NC sales tax on the service.
Does the City of Raleigh Bulky Load program cover Durham?
No. Durham is its own city in its own county, so City of Raleigh Solid Waste Services and its $35 scheduled Bulky Load collection do not apply to a Durham address. Durham runs its own solid waste collection, and the local disposal site is the Durham Waste Disposal and Recycling Center, where transfer-station municipal solid waste is billed at about $65 per ton, appliances and scrap metal are free, and up to five certified tires are free. Confirm current rules and any mattress handling requirements with the City of Durham before planning around them.
Can you pick up 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. Book the slot before your walkthrough and the bedroom is empty on time, which is usually the difference between getting the deposit back and paying someone else to remove it.
Do you charge extra for a third-floor walk-up?
No. Durham's converted downtown lofts and the big apartment blocks near Ninth Street routinely mean three flights and no elevator, and the historic Trinity Park houses have narrow staircases with tight turns. All of it is inside the flat size-based price. There is no per-stair arithmetic and no access fee.
Do you bag the mattress before carrying it out?
Yes — every mattress is bagged in the bedroom before it moves, so nothing it picked up over the years tours your hallway, the stairwell or the elevator on the way out. Landlords and property managers ask for this specifically, and it is standard on every job, not an upgrade.
Do you charge a mattress surcharge like the franchises?
No. McJunk's published Triangle rate card adds a $40 mattress surcharge on top of its truck-fill tiers, and its minimum is $175. We quote one flat number by size from your photo and that is the number you pay.
Can you handle several units or a whole student house?
Yes. A four-bedroom house off Ninth Street at the end of May, a landlord turning over several units at once, or a graduating student with five years of furniture — each piece is priced flat and quoted together so you see the whole number before we arrive.
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