The prices, plainly
Junk removal in Glasgow is priced by the space your waste takes up in the lorry, not by the hour. That matters more than it sounds: an hourly rate transfers the risk of a slow day onto you and gives nobody any reason to hurry.
The four load sizes above cover almost everything domestic. A quarter load is roughly a single sofa, a couple of appliances, or eight to ten bin bags. A half load is about the contents of a one-bedroom flat. Three quarters covers a two or three-bedroom house, and a full load is a fully furnished family home or a substantial garden clearance.
Heavy inert (the heavy stuff — rubble, concrete, brick and soil) material is charged differently, by weight, at £149 per tonne. That covers rubble, brick, concrete, hardcore and soil. As a rule of thumb 25 rubble sacks is about a tonne. For a bathroom or kitchen strip-out, weight pricing is almost always cheaper than paying for the same material by volume — so it is worth telling us what is in the load rather than leaving us to guess.
- Quarter load — £160 + VAT
- Half load — £290 + VAT
- Three-quarter load — £390 + VAT
- Full load — £550 + VAT
- Rubble, soil, concrete — £149 per tonne
- Heavy mixed load — £250 supplement
What actually moves the price
Volume first, weight second. Everything else is smaller. Access matters less than people expect in Glasgow, because tenement stairs are ordinary work here — a second-floor flat with no lift is a normal job and we do not add an access charge for it on the day.
Dismantling can move a price where something has to come apart before it comes out: a fitted wardrobe, a shed, a hot tub, a wardrobe wider than the door. That is labour rather than volume, and we will say so at the quoting stage rather than after.
Fridges, freezers and mattresses have their own recycling routes under separate rules, but they are not charged as extras — they are priced as part of the load like everything else. The one genuine supplement is on a heavy mixed load, at £250, and it exists because a lorry hits its legal weight limit long before it looks full.
- Volume — the main driver
- Weight, for rubble and soil
- Access: stairs, distance to the van
- Whether it needs dismantling
- Fridges and mattresses: own recycling routes
- Time-critical bookings
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One wide photo and we'll price it before we come — fixed, and it doesn't move when the crew arrives.
Versus a skip in Glasgow
A skip is the obvious comparison and it wins in one specific situation: a long job, on your own driveway, producing a steady trickle of rubble over weeks. In that case nothing beats having a container sitting there.
Everywhere else the numbers work differently. A skip in Glasgow typically runs £200–£400 for a week, and if it has to sit on the road you need a council permit on top. Then you load it yourself, in your own time, and you live with it outside your house until collection day. In a tenement street it will also collect other people's rubbish overnight, which you pay to dispose of.
A man-and-van service inverts all of that: we bring the crew, do the loading, and you pay only for the space your waste actually fills — usually same day, no permit, no lifting. For most household jobs a half load at £290 replaces a £300 skip that you also had to fill yourself. The full comparison with worked numbers is in is rubbish removal cheaper than a skip.
Versus the council uplift and the tip
Glasgow City Council runs a chargeable bulky uplift, and for one or two items presented at the kerb it is the cheapest route there is. The limits are timing and carrying: it is booked in advance rather than same-day, and the items have to be at the agreed collection point, which means somebody still has to get the sofa down the stair.
The city's four recycling centres — Dawsholm, Polmadie, Easter Queenslie and Shieldhall — are free for residents with proof of address, and for a car boot of clutter they are unbeatable. They stop working when you do not have a car that fits the item, when you would need a resident van permit and a time window, or when your nearest site is the one that will not take vans. Details are in our Glasgow recycling centres guide.
The honest summary: one item, no rush, and you can carry it — use the council. A car boot of small stuff — use the tip. Anything bulky, anything up a stair, or anything more than a car holds — a collection is usually both cheaper in real terms and finished today.
Six ways to pay less
The biggest single saving is separating heavy inert material from the general waste, even roughly, into a corner. Rubble priced by weight at £149 a tonne is far cheaper than the same rubble taking up half a lorry priced by volume, and it avoids the heavy mixed load supplement entirely.
The second biggest is consolidating. Two quarter loads a fortnight apart cost £320; one half load costs £290 and takes one visit. If you know more is coming, it is worth waiting a week.
After that it is small margins: flatten boxes and break down flat-pack so it stacks rather than sprawls; offer good furniture to a charity or a local group before it becomes waste; and send photos rather than describing it, so the quote is right the first time and there is no renegotiation with a crew standing in your hall.
- Separate rubble from general waste
- Flatten and break down what you can
- Clear one full load, not two part ones
- Offer usable furniture for reuse first
- Book off-peak rather than a fixed hour
- Send photos so the price is right first time
Getting an exact number
Every quote we give is fixed and confirmed before we start. It is priced on the space the load fills, with heavy waste by weight, and it does not change when the crew arrives unless what is there is materially different from the photos.
The fastest route is a couple of photos on WhatsApp — one wide shot of everything, one of anything unusual, and a note of which floor if it is up a stair. Most quotes come back inside the hour, seven days a week.
For a whole property rather than a load, we will do a free visit instead and price the clearance as one job. The typical numbers for that are in how much a house clearance costs in Scotland, and the Edinburgh equivalent of this page is how much junk removal costs in Edinburgh.
