illustration of hand taking a photo on a phone Text Us

Junk King Fairfax

4.5/5 stars

Read Reviews

The #1 Rated Junk Removal Service. We provide superior value, service and effort

More About Us arrow

  • Call Us

    Let us know what you need disposed or recycled. We take just about everything!

    illustration of a cell phone
    1-888-888 (JUNK)

  • Text Us

    Send us an image of the junk you got and we got the rest covered.

    illustration of a hand holding a cell phone
    1-737-888-5865
  • gold star

    Save
    $20

Author Archives: Alex Powers

Junk and Debris Haulers: Half are First Rate; Half are Risky

Property managers, businesses, and homeowners can quickly discern which junk or debris removal companies are first rate and which ones are risky.

The Washington Metro Area has no fewer than 30 junk hauling companies comprising at least 160 trucks ranging from 20,000 GVW trucks to pick-up trucks. You have a lot of choices; however, junk hauling companies fall into two basic categories: First Rate and Risky. Our rough estimate is that about half the trucks represent First Rate companies and half represent Risky haulers.

When selecting a hauler, you first need to decide whether you want to work with a First Rate or if you are willing to absorb Risk.  I’ll tell you up front that you pay a little more or a First Rate hauler—but less of a difference than you’d think. Here is how you distinguish Frist Rate and Risky haulers.

Employees

First Rate haulers, like Junk King, have W-2 employees: vetted and trained. (Junk King Fairfax is veteran-owned and we recruit veterans.) Risky haulers use 1099 labor (independent contractors). Some use day laborers. This practice saves labor expense and shifts the risk of accident away from the hauler and onto the laborer or even the customer.

Insurance and Licenses

First Rate haulers carry all the required insurance. For example, Junk King carries the following insurance:

  • Workers Compensation Insurance (each accident $100,000, disease $100,000)
  • Auto Insurance (each accident $1,000,000)
  • General Liability Insurance (each occurrence $1,000,000, damage to rented premises $100,000, medical expenses per person $10,000, personal injury $1,000,000)
  • General aggregate $ 2,000,000
  • Products $2,000,000
  • Cargo Carrier insurance (each vehicle $50,000)
  • For Hire Tags
  • DOT Registration and Inspection

Risky haulers who use 1099 independent contractors or day laborer avoid the legal requirement to pay worker’s compensation or unemployment insurance. Risky haulers often skip or are light on General liability. Most are not registered with the Department of Transportation. If something goes seriously wrong, the customer has little recourse but to sue a company with a net worth that amounts to a used truck. Or worse, an uninsured laborer injured on your property may go after your assets.

Capacity

First Rate haulers typically have at least three trucks and crews capable of loading and hauling up to 200 cubic yards per day. You may not need that much capacity, but size does indicate the company’s serious commitment to a long-term business. Junk King has three trucks with a fourth truck arriving in March 2014.

Specialization

The best haulers stick to their specialty— hauling and disposal. Some branch into the business of moving household goods, which is pretty close. Risky haulers will do anything from washing windows to snow removal to landscaping. If the hauler advertises too many services, they are probably not expert at any of them.

Physical Address

First Rate haulers have a real business address. Junk King has a 2,500 square foot warehouse in Lorton where we sort donatables and recyclable debris before disposing the burnable debris at the Covanta plant in Lorton. Because we have a place to store recyclables, we can take many items that other haulers do not take such as propane tanks, tires, cement, and such. Here is a picture of our 2500 square-foot warehouse.

JUnk KIng's 2500 sqft warehouse for sorting

JUnk KIng’s 2500 sqft warehouse for sorting

Risky haulers typically do not have a separate business address—certainly not a warehouse. Typically, they use personal or phony addresses in their websites and listings. For example, we found a typical one-truck hauler posting two addresses in Yelp and the Better Business Bureau. Here are pictures of both addresses—neither is a place to keep a junk hauling truck. Beware of companies that use multiple or phony addresses.

Yelp and BBB addresses for a one-truck hauler--really?

Yelp and BBB addresses for a one-truck hauler–really?

In addition, this same one-truck hauler posts a Burke, VA address and a Wilson Blvd, Arlington address on other websites.

Responsible Disposal

First Rate haulers can achieve a 60% recycling rate just by using the Covanta plant. To meet the Covanta rules, the hauler needs to sort the debris. A warehouse or large outdoor bins are necessary to effectively sort debris. If the hauler fails to sort the debris, Covanta bans them and they must resort to the landfill. Risky haulers who lack the resources to sort debris need the convenience of the landfill. Junk King has the resources and is 100% landfill free. We find sources to take cement, drywall, and other non-burnable debris plus eco-friendly ways to dispose e-waste, tires, metals and such.

Price

Although Risky haulers cut corners on labor, insurance, service, and proper disposal, they don’t give the customer much of a price break. Depending on the size of the job, the cost of using a First Rate hauler like Junk King is typically 2% to 5% more than using the Risky hauler.

Two minutes of research can prevent months of headaches.

You can quickly determine if a hauler is First Rate or Risky with two simple questions:

  1. Will the crew members who come to my site be W-2 employees?
  2. What is the business address? (Then search on Google Map.)

If the crews are not W-2 employees, you can be fairly certain the hauler is not paying workers compensation, and you may suspect that other insurance coverage is also missing. If the business address looks suspicious, you should be suspicious.

If you are a realtor, property manager, or other business, you might ask if the hauler will add you as a “co-insured.” This small paper drill costs the First Rate hauler little or nothing and adds protection for the customer.

Conclusion

Prudent business owners and homeowners do their due diligence before bringing a service company onto their property. You have plenty of high quality, service-oriented junk removal services to choose from. Junk King Fairfax is striving to be the best of the best.

Costs of Storage vs Decluttering

You have extra stuff in the house: files, books, clothing, old furniture, the kids’ old toys . . . Do you store it for later? There is a cost of storing stuff.

Storage_Basement_JK

1. Renting Space is Expensive
About 9% of Americans rent storage units. In the DC area, renters typically pay $75 per month or $900 per year for a 5X5X8 unit that can hold about 16 cubic yards.

Storing items needs to be a temporary solution and you need to have an exit strategy. If not, you are most likely wasting money.

2. Filling your Garage or Basement is Expensive
When you fill your garage or other living space with stuff, you are using an expensive asset. Depending on your neighborhood, your existing space is worth $80 to $150 per square foot. Additions can cost $125 to $250 per square foot.

This month, we decluttered a finished basement in a nice neighborhood in Fairfax. We effectively reclaimed 600 square feet of space for the owner. That space was worth at least $72,000. (If you live in Arlington, you can double that figure.) Consider the costs of owning that asset. The principle, interest, taxes, and insurance on a $72,000 real estate asset would run at least $330 per month – almost $4,000 per year.

Clutter in the home also adds to the costs of maintenance because clutter collects damaging moisture and attracts pests.

3. Decluttering is the least expensive alternative.

As a rule-of-thumb, the cost of disposing of unwanted items is equal to about 6 months rent to store them as a self-storage unit.  You need to ask yourself, “Is this stuff is really worth the cost of storage?  And how long?” Should I just rent a dumpster and be done with it all?

As a rule-of-thumb, the cost of disposing unwanted items is equal to about 2 months of the value of the asset used to store the items.  A storage facility actually makes better economic sense than using your expensive real estate as a storage unit.

Decluttering is the most economical way to acquire more living space. The 600 square feet we cleared involved 60 cubic yards of unwanted debris. The total cost (labor, trucks, and disposal) was about $1,500 the cost to build 600 square feet of finished basement would run around $72,000 or $330 per month for 30 years.

If you are having a hard time deciding what stuff is really unnecessary, a professional organizer can help. We can refer excellent organizers.

When you are ready to reclaim your space, call Junk King Fairfax (703) 455-3861. We will work with you to get the best outcome.

Full House Cleanout Services

Most full house cleanouts are part of the process of the house. Click here for a two-minute video on a typical house cleanout.

For this particular job in Fairfax, we worked the executor who needed to prepare the house to put on the market. We worked with the executor’s schedule to distribute or sell the valuables in the house. Then we removed about 80 cubic yards of papers, books, clothing, trash, unwanted furniture, mattresses, old tube TVs, e-waste . . .

Nothing went to a landfill. We separated and recycled everything. (A local theater group took a vintage 1960’s kitchen table and chairs as theater props. We love to see old things find new homes.)

I personally know that being an executor is a tough job at a stressful time. In this case, our job is to make the executor’s job easier and make her look good to all the beneficiaries.

If you need to get a house ready to put on the market, part of the process will likely be removing and disposing some clutter. That’s real life. Junk King’s mission is to make the complicated task of sorting debris, loading trucks, and proper disposal painless for you.
2014-01-21 20:01:05

Salted Roads Not as Safe as you Think

How safe are the roads treated with salt? Not as safe as you might think. Do not assume that a salted road is safe for driving. It depends on the amount of salt applied and the temperature.  We expect up to 10 inches of snow over 12 hours and temperatures down to 4F.  We can expect the application of the salt to be heavy is some places and light in others. Ice forms when the­ temperature of water reaches 32 degrees Fahrenheit. When you add salt, the freezing temperature drops: A 10% salt solution freezes at 20F. A 20% solution freezes at 2F. Typically, a salted road solution rarely exceeds 10% to 20%. Theoretically, the County could dump about 300mgs per 1kg of water to achieve a 30% solution, but that’s a lot of salt to wash into our streams and ponds.  An acre of road surface expecting 10 inches of snow would need about 10 tons of salt to achieve a 10% solution.  Don’t count on your roads having a higher than 10% salt solution. Therefore, you need to consider that patches of salted roads will freeze at temperatures below 20F (most of the next two days) and most of the roads will be problematic when the night temperatures fall to 4F. Be careful out there!  We at Junk King wish you a safe and warm 2014. saltRoads2

Bulk Item Pick-ups – The Trash Company or Junk King?

Trash Services and Junk King have different operation models

Trash Services and Junk King have different operation models

The weekly trash service and Junk King have different operating models – each with its own niche expertise. One big difference is that regular weekly trash service cannot, for insurance reasons, go onto your private property. That’s why you always need to take your unwanted items to the curb.

When you need to get rid of items that do not fit into your trash can, you can call your regular trash service, and they typically will take the items for an additional fee. Again, you still need to take the item to the curb.

In Fairfax County, a typical homeowner gets two pick-ups per week for about $65 to $100 per quarter. (Arlington and Alexandria rates are typically higher.) Those pick-ups comprise about seven cubic yards of debris. Fourteen pick-ups and 7 yards of debris for $65 is a great bargain!

These weekly trash services are super-efficient at the routine weekly trash pick-ups. Many have trucks with robotic arms that grab and empty cans. These services work with predictable schedules, predictable routes, with predictable containers, generating predictable loads. In that manner, they can keep their costs way down.

Because bulk items are not predictable and do not fit the trash service’s operating model, the regular trash service charges what might seem to be a fairly hefty fee for picking up the couch, stove, or old fridge.

On the other hand, the Junk King model is optimized to deal with the labor-intensive bulk items. Our fleet and crews are nimble enough to conform to your schedule. We carry the insurance to allow us to work on your property. so we can to all the work. We have the skills to disassemble items that cannot fit through doorways. (Oh, we’ve seen giant freezers where they installed the freezer then built the walls!)

Consequently, Junk King can give you more value (and a better price) for hauling bulk items. For example, in Fairfax, the typical trash service charges $110 to take a double-wall stove. You still need to disconnect the stove and manhandle it down to the curb – usually a two-man job. (A homeowner is thinking, “Wow! $110! I get six months trash service for $110!” To be fair, remember that subscription trash removal and bulk item removal are significantly different.)

Junk King will remove the same double-wall stove, perform all the labor from kitchen to recycler—for $118. In addition, if you do drag that beast down to the curb, we’ll take it for $89—20% less than the trash service.

The same math works for refrigerators. The regular trash company charges $75 for the smaller fridges and $110 (or more) for the big side-by-side models. Plus, you need to certify that the freon is drained. (That service can cost up to $150.) Plus, you need to drag the item to the curb. Again, we’ll take the old fridge for $118 and handle all the recycling duties. And, if you still want to drag the old fridge to the curb, we take the fridge and perform the recycling duties for only $89. By the way, Junk King Fairfax is 100% landfill free–the most eco-friendly junk removal service.

The weekly trash service is an expert at the service they provide: weekly pick-ups. Junk King is the expert for bulk item pick-ups.  It’s all about picking the right service for the job.

Old couch? Recliner? Mattress? Washer-Dryer? Grill? Hot tub? Yard debris? Stove? Refrigerator? Shed?  Any bulk item . . .  Junk King will provide you better service and a better price because bulk item removal is our niche specialty. Call us at 1-888-888-JUNK.

Office Cleanouts

Junk King Office Cleanout  <– How to make your next office cleanout painless, efficient, safe, and within budget.

Junk King is your solution for the office or warehouse cleanout. We take the extra precautions to protect your business and your property. We have the capacity for large jobs, and we can assure you that all the office materials are property donated, recycled, or re-purposed.

 

Holiday Clutter

Don’t let the holidays stress you out!

We all love the holiday season. Family we haven’t seen in a while, the decorations we put up with care, the delicious foods, it’s both joyful and triumphant. We cook and bake ourselves into a wonderful holiday frenzy. Days are spent shopping and thinking of our loved ones. Evenings are spent watching our favorite movies, attending parties and sipping eggnog and champagne.  It’s fun but exhausting and stressful.

images (2)

When the dust settles and the seemingly endless parade of holiday visitors leave, we find ourselves in a post apocalyptic size mess. Empty bank accounts, refrigerators, and pantries now replaced with, full credit card statements, mounds of trash.

k-bigpic

Well, not this year. Here are some great tips to keep you sane:

1. Stick to a Budget – It’s really not the amount you spend on someone, it’s the thought. Don’t overextend yourself and regret it later.

moneymanagement_2

2. Toss the Junk: Holiday decorating often involves rearranging the house. Make sure you organize and store items properly or you will get claustrophobic. Clean every day. A little tedious but with busy schedules it’s so much easier to pick up every morning before you leave for work, rather than waiting until the house is a chaotic mess. Get rid of the junk! Nothing will make you grumpier than going into every room of the house and seeing clutter. If you don’t need it, toss it.

Doghoarder

3. Organize the Kitchen: Cleaning your fridge and pantry before the Holidays will help you stock up on real food, not just snacks and processed foods.

shutterstock_99385886

4. Get Some Sun: Some people suffer from depression due to a lack of sunlight. It may be cold outside but on sunny days go for a walk, or do an outside activity. It will help take a minute to breathe and de-stress, while getting some much needed Vitamin D.

1274258-bigthumbnail

5. Post holiday-pocalypse clean up: If you are just too tired to deal with it let Junk King help get the bulk of it out of the way by removing your christmas tree, and clutter. 

truckprofile2

Have a safe and Happy Holidays. Remember if you drink, don’t drive.

From your friends at Junk King in Fairfax

Time to Clean out the Garage!

Your car is on the street exposed to the snow, sleet, and frost. Why? It’s because your garage is full of stuff you don’t really want or need.

The space in your garage is worth on average $60 per square foot – a typical 2-car garage is about 500 square feet or worth $30,000. You’re using a $30,000 space to store stuff you’ll never use.

Give yourself (or your spouse) the gift of a garage, where she can park her car and unload groceries in dry comfort.  But don’t let this chore become your next big headache.

Call Junk King 888-888-JUNK (5865) and let us make this vision reality with our rental dumpsters. The heaviest thing you’ll lift is the phone. We do all the work. We donate, recycle, and purpose everything we haul. Because your items are already in the garage, we’ll give you a nice discount. We haul almost anything—including all the items that your subscription trash company will not take.

Take your garage back!

Sea Ice—increasing or shrinking?

ArticIce

The average temperature of all ocean water is about 38.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Salt water freezes at 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit or less than 10 degrees colder than the average. That’s a pretty tight range when you think about it.

At least 15% of the ocean is covered by sea ice some part of the year—about 10 million square miles. Sea ice was shrinking rapidly in 2009.  However, data from September 2013 indicate that sea ice coverage hit a 35-year high this year. Other data indicate the ice, although broader, is still thinner.

Geologists claim that 200,000 years ago, the Ice Age presented a different habitat, wiping out many species. Sea levels were 400 feet lower—the English Isles were then part of the continent, for example. Most of North America was buried under ice – over a mile thick in places like Seattle.

Are we in a temporary lull in trend toward less ice or is the trend going back to more ice. Will the sea levels rise of fall? Is there anything we humans can do to affect the rate of change? Sixty years ago, scientists said the long-term trend was cooling. Then global warming was the prevalent theory. One thing is certain: most things change.

However, we at Junk King won’t change our strong commitment to being 100% landfill free: donating, recycling, and re-using materials. Whether the global trend is warming or cooling, we should not foul our own nest. In our own small way, we strive to the best of our ability to leave our living space in better shape than we found it.

By the way, a colder planet means more fresh water—sort of. Sea ice contains hardly any little salt. You can melt the ice and use it for drinking water. Of all the Earth’s fresh water, 69%is stored in the ice caps and glaciers and 90% of that “fresh water” is in Antarctica. Another 30% of the Earth’s fresh water is underground. Only 0.03% of fresh water is what we see in rivers and lakes.

Getting Rid of Old Appliances — Refrigerators

You have options how to get rid of your old refrigerator.

Option 1: Call Junk King and pay a flat price – typically $89 to $118 – that includes all the labor, truck, and recycling fees. You get same-day service – completely hassle-free. If demo is involved, we provide a free estimate. Our job is to make you happy and earn your repeat business.

Option 2. Call your trash hauler. They typically charge $75, but you need to get the regerator to the curb, and you need to have a technician drain the freon and tag the compressor. The typical cost for that service is $200.

Option 3. Do It Yourself. You can rent a truck for approx $69 (or borrow a friend’s truck for a six-pack of beer), load and drive the refrigerator to the County dump or to a metal recycler. Fairfax County charges by the weight and adds a $2 charge for the freon purge (residents only).  Some metal recyclers are more flexible than others regarding the freon purge: they may charge a fee or they may not. The best case scenario is that you get free use of a truck and you spend about three hours loading, driving, and disposing the refrigerator and pay a disposal fee of $20-$30.  Rule of thumb: if your time is worth more than $12/hour, DIY hauling hardly ever makes sense.

If you have an old appliance that you need hauled away, call us and we’ll give you a free estimate and work with you to ensure that you get the best value.

Junk King Fairfax
7361 Lockport Place Suite M
Lorton, VA 22079
Hours: M-F: 8A-6P, Sa: 8A-4P

Providing junk removal services to the Fairfax area, including:

Alexandria
Arlington
Ashburn
Bethesda
Centreville
Chantilly
Fairfax
Falls Church
Herndon
Leesburg
Manassas
Reston
Silver Spring
Springfield
Sterling
Vienna
Washington
Woodbridge
and these nearby zip codes:
20001, 20002, 20003, 20004, 20005, 20006, 20007, 20008, 20009, 20010, 20011, 20012, 20013, 20015, 20016, 20017, 20018, 20019, 20020, 20022, 20023, 20024, 20026, 20027, 20029, 20030, 20032, 20033, 20035, 20036, 20037, 20038, 20039, 20040, 20041, 20042, 20043, 20044, 20045, 20046, 20047, 20049, 20050, 20051, 20052, 20053, 20055, 20056, 20057, 20058, 20059, 20060, 20061, 20062, 20063, 20064, 20065, 20066, 20067, 20068, 20069, 20070, 20071, 20073, 20074, 20075, 20076, 20077, 20078, 20080, 20081, 20082, 20088, 20090, 20091, 20097, 20098, 20108, 20109, 20110, 20111, 20112, 20113, 20120, 20121, 20122, 20146, 20147, 20148, 20151, 20152, 20153, 20163, 20164, 20165, 20166, 20167, 20170, 20171, 20172, 20175, 20176, 20177, 20178, 20190, 20191, 20192, 20194, 20195, 20201, 20202, 20203, 20204, 20206, 20207, 20208, 20210, 20211, 20212, 20213, 20214, 20215, 20216, 20217, 20218, 20219, 20220, 20221, 20222, 20223, 20224, 20226, 20227, 20228, 20229, 20230, 20232, 20233, 20235, 20237, 20238, 20239, 20240, 20241, 20242, 20244, 20245, 20250, 20251, 20254, 20260, 20261, 20262, 20265, 20266, 20268, 20277, 20289, 20299, 20301, 20303, 20306, 20307, 20310, 20314, 20317, 20318, 20319, 20340, 20350, 20355, 20370, 20372, 20374, 20375, 20380, 20388, 20389, 20390, 20391, 20392, 20393, 20394, 20395, 20398, 20401, 20402, 20403, 20404, 20405, 20406, 20407, 20408, 20409, 20410, 20411, 20412, 20413, 20414, 20415, 20416, 20417, 20418, 20419, 20420, 20421, 20422, 20423, 20424, 20425, 20426, 20427, 20428, 20429, 20431, 20433, 20434, 20435, 20436, 20437, 20439, 20440, 20441, 20442, 20444, 20447, 20451, 20453, 20456, 20506, 20510, 20515, 20520, 20535, 20536, 20540, 20542, 20546, 20551, 20553, 20560, 20565, 20566, 20571, 20593, 20813, 20814, 20816, 20817, 20824, 20827, 20889, 20892, 20894, 20901, 20903, 20907, 20910, 20911, 20918, 22030, 22031, 22032, 22033, 22034, 22035, 22036, 22037, 22038, 22041, 22042, 22043, 22044, 22046, 22150, 22151, 22152, 22153, 22160, 22180, 22181, 22182, 22183, 22185, 22191, 22192, 22193, 22194, 22195, 22201, 22202, 22203, 22204, 22205, 22206, 22207, 22209, 22210, 22211, 22212, 22213, 22214, 22215, 22216, 22217, 22219, 22222, 22223, 22225, 22226, 22227, 22229, 22230, 22234, 22240, 22241, 22242, 22243, 22244, 22245, 22246, 22301, 22302, 22303, 22304, 22305, 22306, 22307, 22308, 22309, 22310, 22311, 22312, 22314, 22315, 22320, 22332