Mattresses, tires and appliances
Mattress disposal fee: what the dump adds for each mattress
Pick the public dump nearest you and the number of mattresses or box springs. The tool shows what you pay in all and what the mattresses add. Where the site’s price list gives no mattress price, it says so.
Independent site, not a waste hauler or a landfill operator.
Mattresses and box springs at the dump
Example: Salt Lake City, Utah. Pick your own dump.
You pay, load and 2 mattresses or box springs
$53
| Load: Flat fee for this vehicle, whatever the weight | $17 |
| 2 mattresses or box springs | $36 |
Salt Lake County (public), price list current schedule, no effective date printed, checked on November 7, 2026.
A mattress disposal fee is the extra charge a landfill or transfer station adds for each mattress or box spring, on top of the fee for the rest of the load. Mattresses are bulky, springs tangle in compaction equipment, and several counties send them to a recycler, so many public schedules list them as a separate item. On the schedules we read on November 7, 2026, the fee runs from $15 at South Wake Landfill to $40 at Larimer County Landfill, where mattresses are recycled. The two Sacramento County sites take household mattresses at no charge. Riverside County does not price the mattress itself: a load with one pays a higher flat rate. Orange County in California adds $15 to a light pickup load carrying an item longer than six feet, such as a mattress. Many other price lists give no mattress price at all: ask the site whether it takes mattresses and what it charges before you go.
Fee schedules read and sums checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How the fees are read and priced
Mattress fees on public price lists
For each site whose price list has a mattress rule: the rule, what one mattress adds to a 300 lb pickup load of trash, and the total for that load.
| Site | Area | Rule | One mattress adds | Load with it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kiefer Landfill | Sacramento | Household mattresses free | $0 | $35 |
| North Area Recovery Station | Sacramento | Household mattresses free | $0 | $40 |
| Badlands, Blythe, Lamb Canyon and El Sobrante landfills | Riverside–San Bernardino | Load moved to the hard-to-handle flat rate | $5.40 | $21.10 |
| Olinda Alpha and Prima Deshecha landfills | Orange County, south of LA | $15 hard-to-handle fee on a flat load | $15 | $45 |
| South Wake Landfill | Raleigh | $15 each | $15 | $20.55 |
| I-66 Transfer Station and I-95 Landfill Complex | Fairfax (DC area) | $17 each | $17 | $66 |
| Salt Lake Valley Landfill | Salt Lake City | $18 each | $18 | $35 |
| Alcoa/Maryville/Blount County Sanitary Landfill | Knoxville | $25 each | $25 | $40 |
| Larimer County Landfill | Fort Collins | $40 each | $40 | $77 |
Not in the table: Seminole Road Landfill (Atlanta), Miramar Landfill (San Diego), North and South transfer stations (Seattle), King County transfer stations (Seattle), 27th Avenue and North Gateway transfer stations (Phoenix), Orange County Landfill, Porter and McLeod Road transfer stations (Orlando), Franklin County Sanitary Landfill (Columbus), McCommas Bluff Landfill (Dallas), County landfills and transfer stations (Riverside–San Bernardino), North Dade and South Dade landfills, Resources Recovery Facility (Miami), Los Reales Sustainability Campus (Tucson), Broome County Landfill (Binghamton), Trail Ridge Landfill (Jacksonville), Washington County landfill (St. George), Greater El Paso Landfill (El Paso). Their price lists give no mattress price. The calculator prices the rest of the load and marks the mattress as not priced: call the site before you go, or ask your city about bulky-item pickup.
Some sites use a “hard-to-handle” rule instead: a higher price for a load with bulky items. In Riverside County a pickup with a mattress pays the hard-to-handle flat rate of $21.10 instead of $15.70, so one mattress or three cost the same. At the Orange County landfills in California, a pickup under 880 lbs pays $15 more if it carries items longer than six feet, and a heavier load is weighed at $107.70 a ton instead of $92.70.
Cheaper ways to get rid of a mattress
Before paying at the gate, three things are worth a call. Your city may collect bulky items at the curb, sometimes free a few times a year. A store delivering a new mattress may take the old one away, often for a fee printed at checkout. And a few states run mattress recycling programs funded by a small fee paid when a new mattress is sold, with drop-off sites that take used mattresses from residents at no charge. We have not read the rules of those programs for this site, so we print none of their terms: look up the state environmental agency page before you go.
If you do take it to the dump, put the mattress on top of the load and keep it dry: a soaked mattress weighs far more, and at a weighed site you pay for the water.