How to pick a junk hauler in Washington DC

The short answer

Ask for the price before the visit. Ask whether the carry from your actual floor is included. Ask whether they can produce a certificate of insurance naming your building. Ask where the material goes.

If any of those four gets a vague answer, keep looking. Everything else -- reviews, truck size, how quickly they answer -- is secondary to those four in this market.

For reference: our sofa is $126, queen mattress $103, standard refrigerator $164, half truck $431, full truck $732, minimum visit $75. All published before anyone is dispatched.

1. Will you give me a price before you arrive?

In a city where jobs run on windows, this is the most important question.

A permit-parked block in Mount Pleasant gives a truck a limited stretch before it is in someone's way. A high-rise freight elevator in Ballston has a hard end time. A property manager gave you a walkthrough date. If the price is decided when the crew is on your stoop, you are negotiating against your own clock with nothing to negotiate with.

A hauler who can price a sofa and a mattress over the phone or from photos is a hauler with a price list. One who insists on seeing it first is running a sales call.

2. Is the carry included from where the item actually is?

Say the specific words. Second floor of a rowhouse with a stair that turns. English basement under the stoop. Fourth-floor walk-up in Adams Morgan. Rear kitchen at the back of a narrow house on Capitol Hill.

If the price changes when you say them, you have found the surcharge before the truck arrives, which is the whole point of asking. There is no stair charge, walk-up charge or below-grade charge here -- a sofa out of a third-floor Mount Pleasant bedroom is the same $126 as one at a front door.

3. Can you produce a COI naming my building?

If you live in Navy Yard, NoMa, the Wharf, Crystal City, Rosslyn, Ballston, Bethesda, Silver Spring or Tysons, this is not optional. The management office will not release the freight elevator without a certificate of insurance naming the association and the management company as additional insured, with the correct legal entity names, delivered days in advance.

A hauler who has never heard the phrase does not work in this market. Ours is produced at no charge -- get the wording from the office in writing and send it over when you book.

4. Where does the material go?

A real answer describes sorting and a facility. A shrug means the material's route is unknown to the person taking it, and dumped material gets traced back to its source in this region. Household paperwork inside a load has a name on it, and that name is yours, not theirs.

Disposal should be inside the price rather than added afterwards. If a quote excludes tipping, it is not a quote.

5. Do you understand my block?

This is the question that separates a metro hauler from a regional one. Things a DC crew should already know without being told:

• Residential blocks are permit-parked, and the arterials -- Connecticut, 16th, Wisconsin, Rhode Island -- restrict standing during rush.
• Service alleys behind rowhouse blocks in Petworth, Brookland and Hill East usually take a box truck; Georgetown and Sheridan-Kalorama alleys usually do not.
• Old Town Alexandria has one-way colonial-width streets and brick sidewalks.
• Some Arlington and Bethesda garages have clearance bars a box truck will not pass.
• Rowhouse front doors are narrow and the stair turns at the landing, so oversize sofas come apart.

If you have to explain all of that, they are learning on your job.

6. What is the minimum, and what happens if I add something?

A visit minimum is normal and it should be stated. Ours is $75. What should not happen is a mystery figure that only appears once the crew has your furniture on the truck.

Adding items at the door is common -- people find something in the cellar. It should price at the published rate, visible to you, before it goes on. A coffee table added on the day is $67, an end table $52, a large area rug $68.

7. Are you actually a business?

Registered, traceable, and there tomorrow. The DC metro has a lot of transient labor by the nature of the region, and a truck with a phone number is not the same thing as a company.

Simple tests: a real quote in writing, a certificate on request, a published price list, a booking that exists somewhere other than in a text thread, and a card payment rather than cash only.

8. Can you hit my date?

Most DC junk removal is deadline-driven -- a lease end, a walkthrough, a closing, a rotation, a listing photographer. Ask directly whether the window is confirmed rather than aspirational.

And build the metro's rhythms into your own timing. Mid-May through early June empties the university corridor around Georgetown, GW, Howard, American, Catholic and UMD College Park. Summer carries the embassy and international-organization rotations. January after an election turns over Hill housing in volume. Those are the weeks to book early, not to call on the day.

What good looks like

You send photos or a list. You get a total: $126 for the sofa, $143 for the mattress and box spring set, $126 for the dresser -- $126 + $143 + $126 = $395, or a half truck at $431 if there is more than you listed. You pick a window that works for your block. If it is a building, the certificate goes to the office and you reserve the elevator. The crew carries from wherever the items are, and the number at the end is the number from the start.

That is the standard. Anything less specific than that, in this metro, is a risk you are taking on your own deadline.

Frequently asked questions