JunkBossPro Blog — Running a Junk Removal Business

Dump Fees Eating Your Margin: Tracking Them Per Job in a Junk Removal Business

At the end of the month, plenty of junk removal owners add up the dump receipts and wince. The total is higher than expected, and there is no way to tell which jobs caused it. Was it the basement full of wet carpet? The roofing tear-off? The estate cleanout with the old filing cabinets full of paper? If dump fees are tracked by the month, you will never know. Tracked by the job, they tell you exactly where the margin went.

The Cost Behind Every Price

Pricing Single Items in a Junk Removal Business: Mattresses, Appliances, Hot Tubs and Pianos looked at what goes into a single-item price. Disposal is part of every one of those prices, and part of every load price too. It is also the part that changes the most from job to job.

Why Dump Fees Move So Much

Most of your costs are steady. A crew's hourly cost does not change much between jobs. Fuel goes up and down slowly. Dump fees are different, because most dumps and transfer stations charge by weight, and weight depends on what is in the load.

Two half loads can look the same in the truck and weigh very different amounts. A half load of cushions and cardboard is light. A half load of tile, plaster or wet yard waste is heavy. If both were priced as a half load with no weight limit, the heavy one may have made little or nothing.

Track Every Ticket on the Job

The fix is simple: every dump ticket belongs to a job. When the crew drops a load, they record the tons on the ticket against the job it came from. If one dump run covers two small jobs, split it as fairly as you can and write down how.

In JunkBossPro, each job has a place for the dump ticket's tons, the tons included in the price and your per-ton rate. Enter those, and the overage is added to the invoice automatically, like “Dump fee overage (0.28 tons @ $70.00) = $19.60.” Even when no overage applies, the tons stay on the job, so you can see later what each job actually weighed.

Have the crew snap a photo of the paper ticket too. It settles questions from customers and helps when you check your dump account at month end.

Find the Jobs That Lose Money

After a month or two of per-job tickets, look back at your jobs. Sort them by type and look at the weights. Patterns tend to jump out:

• Certain kinds of cleanouts run heavy every time.
• Construction debris and yard waste weigh more than you priced for.
• Some neighborhoods mean older houses with plaster walls and heavy furniture.
• One crew loads heavier than another, or makes more dump runs per day.

Each pattern points to a fix: raise a price, add an included weight, quote certain materials separately, or change how a crew plans dump runs.

Include a Weight, Charge for the Rest

Many junk removal businesses include a set weight in each load price and charge per ton over it. Customers with light loads pay the load price. Customers with heavy loads pay a little more, which matches what the dump charges you.

For example, a half truck load might include one ton, with “$70 a ton over the included weight” as an example of your own pricing. Your numbers depend on your local dump rates. The next guide, on charging a dump fee overage, covers how to explain this so the customer is not surprised.

Not Everything Has to Go to the Dump

Every load that does not go to the dump is a ticket you do not pay. Usable furniture can go to a donation center. Metal can go to a recycler. Each JunkBossPro job has a haul-to destination — dump, transfer station, donation center or metal recycler — and the crew gets a Go button to navigate there.

The guide on Donating and Recycling to Cut Dump Trips in a Junk Removal Business goes into how to sort as you load.

Do not forget the trips themselves. Every extra run to the dump costs time and fuel on top of the gate fee. A truck that dumps twice in a day because jobs were scattered spends a lot of the afternoon in line instead of loading. Planning dump runs around where the truck will fill up is part of the same margin problem, and the haul-to destination on each job makes it easier to see where every load is headed before the day starts.

Margin You Can See

Dump fees are the cost most likely to quietly eat a junk removal business's margin. Tie every ticket to a job, include a weight in your prices, charge for the rest, and send what you can elsewhere. Then the month-end total stops being a surprise. For every topic in this series, visit the running a junk removal business page.