When this job was submitted, the property manager called it a Level 3 — Heavy. And honestly? It looked that way. Furniture left behind, a mattress and box spring, a refrigerator sitting in the wrong room, debris spread across every floor surface. Walking in, your gut says this is bad.

Here's the thing nobody tells property managers: a room reads as "full" long before it actually is. Scattered debris across an open floor plan looks catastrophic and measures like nothing. Neatly stacked boxes in one closet look manageable and measure like a mountain. Eyes are terrible at volume.

So we don't price by gut. We measure. When we pulled 680 cubic feet out of a 930 square foot unit, the debris-to-square-foot ratio came back at 0.73 — squarely a Level 2.

This cuts the other way too, and we'll tell you that honestly: sometimes a unit that looks manageable measures heavier than expected — dense, stacked material in a small footprint. Our own job data shows clients under-predict volume far more often than they over-predict it. Either way, the measurement is the number, and you see it before we start.

Here's this unit measured against what each load level would have produced at the same 930 square feet. The gap between "looks like a 3" and "measures like a 2" is the whole point.

For scale: 680 cubic feet is 25.2 cubic yards — the equivalent of two full 12-yard dumpsters. Except no container ever sat in the parking lot, no permit conversation happened, and nobody on the maintenance team carried a mattress down a stairwell.

This is the actual invoice structure. No hidden fees, no "we found more than expected" call halfway through the job. Surcharge items are published in advance and quoted before we start.

That works out to roughly $1.51 per square foot of unit — a useful benchmark when you're budgeting a moderate 2-bedroom turn. Compare that to what it costs you in staff hours, truck trips, disposal fees, and days of lost rent to do it in-house.

Every load runs through our four-color sorting system on site. It's the reason a trash out with IREP is a circular economy event rather than a one-way trip to the landfill — and it's why a two-time Texas State Sustainability Award sits on the wall.

Across a typical apartment turnover we divert 60% to 85% of material away from the landfill — though a severe hoarder or biohazard unit can fall well below that, and we say so up front. Every client gets their own job's real diversion figures in writing — the kind of documentation that supports corporate ESG reporting and City of Austin waste-diversion goals. On this job, a mattress that would normally be landfilled went through proper mattress-recycling channels instead.

This unit is a good example of how we operate. The job was flagged heavier than it was — a less careful vendor would have simply billed for a Level 3 and nobody would have known the difference. We measured, priced it right, and were gone in 90 minutes.

Every number on this page came off a real job record. None of them is a promise. No two trash outs are the same — and the whole point of measuring is that we don't pretend otherwise.

Our commitment isn't a percentage. It's a practice: divert everything that can be diverted on your specific job, document what actually happened, report the real figure even when it's disappointing. A vendor quoting the same diversion rate on a furnished estate and a hoarder unit isn't sorting anything — they're reciting a marketing number.

Prefer email? [email protected] — or text photos of the unit straight to 512-587-2186 and we'll level it for you free.