Junk Removal & Dump Runs on San Juan Island

Nothing thrown away on San Juan Island stays on San Juan Island. There is no landfill in the county. Everything goes to the transfer station on Sutton Road, gets containerized, rides a truck onto the Anacortes ferry, transfers to rail, and travels hundreds of miles to a landfill on the mainland. That whole chain is why disposal here costs what it does — Ecology’s 2023 tipping-fee survey put San Juan Island near the top of the state per ton, several times what a Skagit County transfer station charges. It is not a markup. It is the ferry, the rail, and the distance.

The second problem is the gate. The San Juan Island station is not open when most people are free. It runs Friday through Sunday and a short Monday morning window, and it is closed Tuesday through Thursday. So the load in your driveway waits for the weekend, which is the same weekend you came over to actually enjoy the house, and the tarp blows off it on Wednesday. Pricing is by weight with a per-trip minimum, and there are separate per-item fees on top for the awkward things: appliances, refrigerators and freezers and anything else holding refrigerant, tires, propane tanks, e-waste. Half the frustration of a dump run here is not knowing which pile a thing belongs in before you get to the scale.

That is the whole service. I bring the truck, I do the loading, I go on a day the station is actually open, I know what gets separated for recycling and metal and clean untreated wood and what has to go as mixed waste, and I hand you the scale receipt. Disposal fees are billed through at cost, exactly as charged, plus my time. You are paying for labor and a truck and someone who has done this a hundred times, not a marked-up guess.

The jobs are consistent. Garages and sheds that have been accumulating since the house was bought. Estate and inherited-house clear-outs, which are the most common call and the one where having someone else carry it matters most. Old furniture, mattresses, and appliances left in a rental. Broken deck furniture and grills that rusted out in the salt air. Failed hot tub covers. Demolition and remodel debris. Yard and brush piles, which the station takes as clean woody debris on their own schedule of fees. Fencing, wire, scrap metal, and the pile of pressure-treated offcuts behind the shed that cannot go in with the clean wood. Cardboard mountains after a delivery-heavy month. And the classic island item: three generations of half-used paint in an outbuilding, which goes to the PaintCare drop with a limit on how much you can bring per trip, so it may take more than one run.

There are things I will not haul. Hazardous waste is a separate county program with its own collection events rather than a walk-up service, so solvents, pesticides, and similar go there and I will tell you the current arrangement rather than put it in my truck. Asbestos-containing material — old sheet flooring, some siding, pipe insulation in an older island house — is a licensed abatement job and it does not go in a pickup. Anything with a refrigerant circuit gets its own per-item fee and I will quote it separately so it is not a surprise on the invoice.

The outer islands are their own problem and I will be blunt about it. My boat is a 16-foot skiff. It carries tools and small materials, and 20-foot boards is the physical ceiling. It is not a garbage barge. I can take a modest load off Decatur, Crane, or Henry — a few contractor bags, a broken chair, some scrap — and run it to the station on San Juan. A garage full of an estate, an old appliance, a mattress, or a demolition pile cannot come off an outer island in my skiff, and pretending otherwise gets somebody hurt or gets a load in the water. That volume needs a barge or a chartered local hauler, and the honest version is: I organize it, the barge or hauler bills at cost on top of my time, and we do the whole island’s worth in one trip because mobilizing twice is what makes it expensive. Owners on the same outer island splitting one barge day is by far the cheapest way this ever happens.

Two practical notes. First, if you are already having me out for repairs, add the haul — the truck is there and the loading is the cheap part. Second, if the house sits empty, junk accumulates invisibly: tenants leave things, storms fill the yard, the shed silts up. A property care visit that hauls one load a season never lets it become a two-day clear-out.