A junk removal load almost never goes to one place. Knowing how it gets split up explains a lot about how the job is priced — and about why a couple of things get pulled out and handled on their own.
| Where | What goes there |
|---|---|
| Donation | Furniture, appliances and household goods with life left in them. Memphis has a deep network of charity resale, and a sofa in decent shape is worth more to somebody else than it is to a landfill. |
| Scrap | Appliances, metal furniture, cast iron, wire and anything with recoverable metal in it. Scrap has value, which is part of why a heavy metal item is often cheaper to move than its weight suggests. |
| Recycling | Cardboard, clean wood, concrete and yard waste, which are processed rather than buried. |
| Transfer station | Everything else. Charged by weight, which is why dirt, plaster and roofing price differently from a truck full of boxes. |
A few items don't ride in a general load. They go to a specific facility instead, usually because of how they have to be processed:
| Item | Where it needs to go |
|---|---|
| Paint, stain, solvents, pool chemicals | Shelby County household hazardous waste collection. Latex paint that has been dried out solid is ordinary trash; oil-based is not. |
| Motor oil, fuel, antifreeze | Auto parts stores take used oil at no charge. Fuel goes through household hazardous waste. |
| Tires | Tire retailers, for a per-tire fee. Hauling waste tires commercially is separately registered in Tennessee, so they travel on their own. |
| Propane tanks | The exchange cages at hardware stores and filling stations. |
| Older building materials | Anything from a pre-1980 house that may contain asbestos or lead — popcorn ceiling, old floor tile, pipe wrap — is worth testing before it is disturbed at all. |
| Sharps and medical waste | Pharmacies take sharps containers. Anything beyond that needs specialist handling. |
| Ammunition and flares | Local law enforcement. Never anything that gets compacted. |
Anything with a sealed cooling system has its refrigerant recovered by a certified technician before the unit is scrapped — that is federal law, and it happens at the recycling facility rather than at your house. It is a reasonable thing to ask about, and a straight answer is easy to give.
You do not need to work any of this out in advance. If your garage has a shelf of old paint and a couple of tires on it, that is completely normal and it is a lot easier to point them out than to sort them yourself. Describe the pile, including the awkward parts, and the routing gets handled as part of scoping the job.
Send the details and we'll get back to you. If you're working against a closing date or a dumpster deadline, calling is faster — but this reaches us either way, day or night.
Fastest is a call: (901) 000-0000
Tell us what needs to go, or just text a photo of the pile. Load size is the whole basis of the quote, so a picture usually settles it in one message.
(901) 000-0000 Request pickup