What a garage cleanout costs in Baltimore

The short answer

Garages are volume jobs. The ladder:

If it is really just a handful of specific things, price them individually: lawn mower $65, charcoal grill $59, propane grill $71, storage cabinet $74, bicycle $37, large junk pile $208, contractor bag $41.

The visit minimum is $75, and disposal is included.

Baltimore has three kinds of garage

The job is completely different depending on which one you have, and the price is not.

The detached rowhouse garage off the alley. Common in Canton, Brewers Hill, Highlandtown, Hampden and parts of Locust Point. Usually a single bay, often built for a car that was narrower than a modern one. It opens onto an alley the truck may or may not fit down. No interior connection to the house, so everything in it went out the back door and across the yard at some point.

The parking pad with a shed. Also an alley feature, and technically not a garage, but it fills up the same way. Usually a shed's worth of mowers, grills, bikes and paint.

The suburban detached or attached garage. Towson, Catonsville, Pikesville, Hamilton, Lauraville, Perry Hall. Two bays, a driveway, and room to stage. The easy version, and often the biggest by volume because there has been room to accumulate.

What actually comes out of one

The reliable Baltimore garage inventory, priced:

• Lawn mower: $65
• Charcoal grill: $59. Propane grill: $71
• Storage cabinet: $74
• Bicycle: $37 each, and there are always more than you think
• Patio table: $89. Patio chair: $30 each
• Above-ground pool, frame and liner: $145
• Portable basketball hoop: $115
• Window AC unit: $87 small, $109 for 8k BTU and up
• Treadmill: $115. Weight bench: $69. Weight set: $93
• Mini fridge, the garage beer fridge: $115
• Chest freezer: $146
• Construction debris: $120

A common single-bay job: mower, charcoal grill, storage cabinet and a large junk pile. $65 + $59 + $74 + $208 = $406. At that total the half-truck tier at $431 is close enough that most people take the tier and throw in the rest of the shelves.

The alley question

This is the one thing that genuinely varies by block in Baltimore, and it is worth two minutes of your time before you book.

Rowhouse alleys in Canton, Highlandtown and Patterson Park are frequently one vehicle wide, with parking pads on both sides, utility poles set into the paving, and cans out on collection days. A cargo van clears most of them. A box truck clears some of them. Some of them are blocked entirely by a neighbor's car by five in the afternoon.

What helps:

• Tell us in the booking notes whether the alley is passable and how wide it feels.
• If it is tight, say whether the garage door also fronts a street or whether everything has to come through the house.
• Morning windows are usually easier in dense rowhouse blocks, because fewer cars are home.

If the alley genuinely will not take a truck, the crew carries to the nearest legal stopping point. That is a long-carry, and there is no long-carry fee.

What we cannot take

Every garage in this city has a shelf of things that need a different route, and it is always the same shelf: paint, solvents, motor oil, gasoline, pesticides, pool chemicals, and old car batteries. Those are household hazardous waste and they go through the region's household hazardous waste program, not in the back of a junk truck. Check your county or city's current hazardous waste drop-off information for dates and locations.

Propane tanks are the other one. The grill is fine at $71. The full tank is not, and most places that sell propane will take the old cylinder when you exchange it.

Everything else, including the stuff you assume is a problem, is usually fine. Ask when you book rather than guessing.

When to do it

Two sensible windows in Baltimore. Early spring, once the weather breaks and before the humidity makes a closed garage unbearable, which is roughly March into April. And October, after hurricane season has done whatever it is going to do to your gutters and before the cold sets in.

Avoid July and August in a west-facing alley garage if you have any choice. A tin-roofed single bay off an East Baltimore alley in August is genuinely brutal, and it is the reason a lot of these jobs get postponed three years running.

Item pricing or volume?

Count the identifiable big things. Four or fewer with little else, price them individually. More than that, or a garage where the floor has not been visible since the last decade, take the volume tier.

The ladder has seven rungs so you land near what you actually filled. A garage that came out at slightly over half is $513, not rounded to the full $732.

Booking it

Pick a tier or a list, see the total, pick a window. Say whether the alley is usable and whether the garage door opens. On a lot of Baltimore alley garages the door has not been raised in years and the hinge is the first problem of the day.

Frequently asked questions