Who picks up old appliances in Charlotte

The short answer

Four groups will take an old appliance off your hands in Charlotte, and they suit different situations.

• The delivery crew bringing the new one. Cheapest option if it is offered and if the old unit is disconnected and accessible. Ask when you buy — many haul-away offers apply only to a direct swap, and none of them will go get the second fridge out of your garage.
• Scrap collectors. Will sometimes take metal appliances for free, but they will not come inside, they will not disconnect anything, and they will not take a unit still holding refrigerant.
• The city curbside program. Charlotte does run bulky pickup for single-family addresses on its own schedule and qualifying list. Check the current rules on the city's page — and note it does not cover apartment or condo buildings on private hauling contracts.
• A paid pickup. A fixed price, a scheduled window, the unit carried out from wherever it stands.

What we charge

A washer and dryer pair together is $133 + $128 = $261. A kitchen going out ahead of a renovation — refrigerator, electric range and dishwasher — is $164 + $134 + $109 = $407.

The Charlotte garage fridge

Almost every older house in this city has a second refrigerator or a chest freezer in the garage or the carport, and it is there for a structural reason: there is no basement to put it in. The Piedmont's red clay means slab and crawlspace foundations, so overflow storage went sideways into the garage instead of down.

Those units are the most common appliance call we get in Cotswold, Sedgefield, Starmount, Hickory Grove and the Albemarle Road ranches. They are usually twenty years old, still running, and costing more in electricity through a Charlotte summer than the family realizes.

A garage refrigerator is $164. A chest freezer beside it is $146. Both in one visit is $164 + $146 = $310.

Refrigerant and why free pickups refuse fridges

Anything with a sealed cooling system — refrigerators, freezers, window and portable AC units, dehumidifiers, outdoor heat pump condensers — has refrigerant in it, and refrigerant has to be recovered by a certified technician before the metal can be scrapped. That is federal, not local, and it is why a scrap collector who happily takes a dryer will wave off a fridge.

Our price covers routing the unit into that stream. You do not arrange it, and it is not a line item on top.

Heat pumps, window units and Charlotte summers

Charlotte is heat-pump country. When a system gets replaced, the old outdoor condenser often sits on its pad beside the house for months because the HVAC contractor's quote did not include taking it away. That unit is $115.

Window units are the other seasonal one. In the older Plaza Midwood, Elizabeth and Wilmore houses where central air went in later, there is usually a stack of retired window units in the crawlspace or the carport: $87 for a small one under 8,000 BTU, $109 for a large one. Portable units are $85.

And because of the humidity, half the crawlspaces in this city contain a failed dehumidifier. That is $77.

Disconnection: what we do and do not do

We are a removal crew, not licensed plumbers or electricians. So:

• We will unplug a cord, pull a unit out from its slot, take doors off if that is what it takes to get through a 1920s bungalow doorway, and carry it out from a garage, a laundry closet, a second floor or a crawlspace.
• We will not cut a gas line to a range, break a water heater's plumbing connections, or disconnect hardwired circuits.

Have gas ranges and tank water heaters disconnected before the pickup. That matters in the older neighborhoods inside and near the I-277 loop where gas service is common, and for the water heaters that sit in Charlotte crawlspaces and garage closets rather than in a basement.

Access problems specific to here

Crawlspace water heaters. Getting a tank out of a red-clay crawlspace is a low, awkward drag. It is still $131 — there is no crawlspace surcharge.

Second-floor laundry. Standard in the newer Waxhaw, Indian Trail and Highland Creek builds. A stacked washer/dryer coming down a turned stair is $189, same as one in a ground-floor laundry room.

Apartment and condo units. In South End and Uptown towers the appliance is the easy part and the building is the job — reserved freight elevator, pads, and a certificate of insurance on file. We handle the COI and the reservation; the price does not change.

Booking it

Tell us the appliance and where it sits. The full price shows on screen before you commit and does not change on the day. We cover Charlotte and the surrounding towns — Matthews, Mint Hill, Pineville, Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson, Waxhaw, Indian Trail and across into Fort Mill.

The minimum per visit is $75. Every appliance above except a countertop microwave prices past it on its own.

Frequently asked questions