Three-car garage cleanouts in Waxhaw and the new-build belt

The short answer

Cleared-out garages price on the truck ladder: quarter $241, three-eighths $338, half $431, five-eighths $513, three-quarters $587, seven-eighths $661, full $732.

Out in the new-build belt — Waxhaw, Weddington, Marvin, Indian Trail, Wesley Chapel, the newer Ballantyne and Fort Mill subdivisions — a three-car garage taken back to the slab is a full truck at $732 more often than not. Clearing just the third bay is usually a half truck at $431.

A few named items instead of the whole thing? We itemize and quote the lower number. Minimum per visit is $75.

Why the third bay never survives

These houses have one storage space and it is the garage. That is not an accident of habit, it is how they were built.

• No basement. The Piedmont's red clay pushed this whole region to slab and crawlspace construction. Nothing goes down.
• No usable attic. This is the part people from elsewhere miss. Modern roof trusses fill the attic volume with webbing, so unlike a 1920s Dilworth bungalow with a walk-up attic, a 2015 Waxhaw house has nowhere above the ceiling to put anything. A few sheets of decking over the pull-down, at best.
• A bonus room that is a room. The space over the garage is finished, carpeted and in use. It is not storage.

So the third bay absorbs everything, and it does it quickly. The pattern we see is consistent: within about two years of move-in the wire shelving is up, within four the car has stopped fitting, and nobody revisits the contents until the house goes on the market.

What is always in one

The garage gym is the signature of this housing stock. A home gym at $241, a weight bench at $69, a weight set at $93 and a treadmill at $115 is $241 + $69 + $93 + $115 = $518 on its own — which is already past the half truck at $431, so the truck price would be the quote.

The kid-equipment cycle

These subdivisions were built for families and the garage tracks the children's ages exactly. Strollers and playpens at $33 a piece of baby gear, then the portable basketball hoop at $115, then bikes at $37 each, then the sports bags, then nothing — because the kids are at Marvin Ridge or Cuthbertson and have stopped using any of it.

The moment people finally clear it is when the eldest leaves for school and the garage suddenly reads as ten years of stuff for people who are gone.

A typical version: two bicycles, a basketball hoop, a weight bench and two pieces of baby gear. $37 + $37 + $115 + $69 + $33 + $33 = $324.

Builder-grade shelving and bins

Wire shelving on drywall anchors, plastic bins, and the cardboard the house was moved in with. The cardboard rarely survives — a garage in Union County goes through Carolina summers with the door shut, and boxes stored against a slab draw moisture. Most of what comes off the bottom shelf goes on the truck regardless of what is written on it.

Loose material prices as piles where that is simpler: small junk pile $82, medium $129, large $208. Bagged, it is 10 bags $132, 20 bags $259, 30 bags $385.

The HOA angle

Almost every one of these neighborhoods is covenanted, and the covenants are usually specific about two things that touch this job: how long anything may be visible from the street, and whether vehicles may be parked permanently in the driveway. Both point the same direction — if the cars are outside because the garage is full, that is often a covenant issue rather than just an inconvenience.

Check your covenants before setting anything out for a curbside collection, and note that the city's curbside bulky program does not cover every address in this belt. Several of these subdivisions sit outside Charlotte's city limits in Union County entirely, with different collection arrangements. Check what applies to your address rather than assuming the Charlotte rules do.

Do it before the listing photos

If you are selling, the garage goes before the photographer. Buyers in this part of the metro inspect garages carefully, because everyone who has lived in a Charlotte-area house knows there is no basement and no attic and the garage is the entire storage capacity of the home.

A third bay full of bins photographs as a house with no storage. An empty third bay photographs as a third bay.

How it runs on the day

Easiest kind of job we do. The garage opens onto a wide driveway, the truck backs up to it, and nothing has to be carried around a corner or down a stair. Two people, a couple of hours for a full bay, sweep the slab afterwards.

What we cannot take: paint, solvents, pesticides, pool chemicals and fuel. Those are household hazardous waste and need a dedicated drop-off — check the current county guidance for your address, since Union and Mecklenburg run their own arrangements. Everything else in the garage goes.

Price is quoted before the truck is sent and does not change on arrival.

Frequently asked questions