What a garage cleanout costs in Chicago

The short answer

Garage cleanouts are priced by how much of the truck the contents fill, because nobody can list a Chicago garage item by item and get it right.

Those endpoints are the published truck-fill steps: $241 for a quarter, $338 for three-eighths, $431 for a half, $513 for five-eighths, $587 for three-quarters, $661 for seven-eighths, $732 for a full truck. The minimum for any visit is $75.

Why Chicago garages fill the way they do

The detached garage off the alley is a Chicago institution and a Chicago storage problem. It is unheated, it is behind the house, and from November to April nobody voluntarily stands in it.

So things go in and nothing comes out. The screens come off in October and go up in the rafters. The patio set goes in behind the car. The old snow blower stays after the new one arrives because you are not carrying it anywhere in February. Two sets of tires accumulate because somebody kept the takeoffs. By the time the alley thaws in April, the car has been parked on the street for five months and the garage is a shed.

That November-to-April cycle is why the two busy windows for garage work in this city are late spring, when the owner finally opens the door and sees it, and September, when it becomes obvious the car is not going to fit before the first snow.

What is usually in there, and what each thing costs

If your garage is light enough to price by the item, the common ones:

Item pricing or truck pricing?

Use the item list while you can still name what is going. Once the rafters are involved, switch to the truck.

The tipping point in practice is about a dozen named items. A garage with a riding mower at $152, four tires at $87, and a workbench at $100 is $152 + $87 + $100 = $339 priced item by item, which is worse than nothing but better than the $431 half truck if that really is all of it. A garage where the answer to what is in there is everything is a truck-fill job, and the truck-fill price is the cheaper honest answer.

Either way, disposal and the carry are inside the number, and there is no fee for the fact that the garage is fifty feet behind the house.

The alley is the reason this goes fast

A detached garage opening onto an alley is the best access in this business. The truck backs down the alley, stops at the apron, and the carry is a few feet instead of a few hundred. A suburban attached garage in Skokie or Oak Park with a long driveway is usually a slower job for the same volume.

Two things to do before the crew arrives. Move the car out of the alley and onto the street, because there is rarely room for both. And if there is snow, clear the apron in front of the door. A garage door that is frozen into an ice ridge is the single most common reason a Chicago garage job starts twenty minutes late.

If your alley is genuinely impassable, which happens after a heavy week in January, the crew works from the street instead. The price does not change for it.

Things people ask about that are worth naming

Paint. Cans accumulate in garages faster than anything else. A 1-gallon can is $30 and a 5-gallon bucket is $52. If you have a shelf of them, it is worth counting before you book.

Tires. Single tires are $22 and a set of four is $87. Nearly every Chicago garage with a two-car household has a set of winter takeoffs nobody claims.

Propane tanks. $33 each. The grill tank that has been sitting since the last time anyone used the deck counts.

The old appliance. A lot of Chicago garages hold the previous refrigerator, running or not, as a beer fridge that stopped being a beer fridge. A standard refrigerator is $164, a mini fridge is $115, a chest freezer is $146.

Coach houses and second floors

Plenty of Chicago garages have a floor above them, either a coach house or a loft of rough storage reached by a pull-down ladder or an outside stair. That upper level is usually where the worst of it is, because getting anything down is annoying enough that it never happened.

There is no extra charge for it. No stair fee, no attic fee. What it does affect is time, so say it when you book: a garage with a loaded loft above it is a different afternoon than a garage with an empty one, and it is usually the difference between the $431 half and the $587 three-quarter step.

Three real garage totals

Portage Park bungalow, single-car garage, pre-snow clear. Riding mower at $152, four tires at $87, patio table at $89: $152 + $87 + $89 = $328.

Avondale two-flat, garage plus the loft above it. Priced as a volume, three-quarters of a truck at $587.

Jefferson Park, garage with the old beer fridge and a season of yard gear. Standard refrigerator at $164, lawn mower at $65, medium junk pile at $129: $164 + $65 + $129 = $358.

Book it before the first snow if you can. A garage you can park in on December 1 is worth more than the number on the invoice.

Frequently asked questions