What’s the Easiest Way to Get Rid Of an Old Desk or Treadmill?

Getting a new standing desk or treadmill desk can create a sense of bringing out “the new you.” Hopefully a healthier and more productive you, if not a more stylish one. 

But then you look at your old workstation; a desk with so many dents, scrapes, and stains that a trash-bound racoon would be embarrassed to be found with it. With that desk and chair hanging around, it puts a damper on the new desk and new you, especially if you need to recover the space.

Time to get rid of it, but how?

Old Desk Difficulties

Getting rid of your old office setup can be a pain in the butt, even if you just got yourself a nice new cushy ergonomic chair. Desks, conference tables, and burned-out treadmills (presumably not worth the cost of repairing) can be bulky, heavy, and generally very awkward to move, aside from the added pain that it likely won’t go into your trash bin. If you are in your corporate office, you might be lucky enough to have a large dumpster and the manpower to fill it.

Are There Any Good Options?

• • Dump it: If you or a friend have a truck or other vehicle that can fit a desk or treadmill in it, you have the option of driving it to the closest city dump yourself. However, that is going to end up taking valuable business day hours or precious weekend family time that you’ll have to invest in the task, not to mention the dumping fee, potential for back injury, and potential damage to walls, hallways and doors if you have any mishaps along the way.
  • Sell it: Selling a used desk, much less a treadmill desk, is a bit of an unrealistic wish since so many people try to give away old desks or treadmills through Craigslist or Facebook. We’ve got dedicated articles on how to sell an old standing desk or treadmill desk, should you decide to attempt that route, But, spoiler alert: in the end, most are given away for free to anyone with the vehicle and muscle to take them away. 
  • Give it: You could give your old workstation to someone. Since the investment in time and energy to transport used desks, treadmills, and chairs isn’t small at all, just let the recipient know that part of the deal of getting free office equipment is that they need to haul it away themselves.
  • Donate it: While there may be schools, community centers and other charities that would otherwise be happy to take them off your hands, they generally don’t have the ability to pick up large, bulky items. And many of those facilities have already taken all the free furniture and old fitness equipment that they can use. But if you can find one to take it, you could theoretically take a tax deduction for it at a fair value.
  • Outsource it: You could contact one of those companies that’ll haul away any kind of “junk” you need to get rid of. Estimates are often hard to get online because they want to come out and eyeball your stuff first, and then give you the pressure sell to accept their pricing “since we’re already here.” The final tab can be surprisingly high for a single item. 

The Easiest Ways to Outsource Junk Removal 

1-800-GOT-JUNK is perhaps the best known one with nationwide franchises and TV advertising, but definitely check pricing first as it varies by geography and by franchisee. You’ll get the most bang for your buck if you have more than a single item to haul away, so it can be great if you have a whole workstation plus some other old furniture in the house that you want to get rid of in one shot. But for just hauling away a single desk or treadmill it can be on the pricey side. 

Another way to go might be to see if you can get someone on Taskrabbit or Thumbtack to do it for you, but it gets a little tricky with payment since dumping fees are variable by weight, and it usually requires at least two people to do it safely. 

There’s a new option now that’s awesome for this sort of task. One of the leading standing desk and office treadmill manufacturers, iMovR, has developed a nationwide network specializing in hauling away just desks, tables and treadmills. They started doing this as a convenience for their own customers who were buying new furniture from the company, but recently opened it to all comers. 

iMovR’s haul-away service is the only national program that has easy-to-understand, flat-rate pricing, and actually specializes in disassembling and hauling only these items.  Where other junk removal services won’t tell you the price until they show up ready to haul the stuff away, this one has totally up-front pricing based on the items you list to have removed when ordering the service from iMovR.

They offer this service in over 170 major metro markets in the USA (check their area lookup page to see if your zip code is serviced). There are two price tiers for each kind of item. The lower tier is when two movers can haul away the item in question without disassembling it first. If the item needs to be taken apart to fit through doors, hallways, and stairwells, there’s an upcharge for that; they’ll show up with the right tools and skilled technicians for the task.

They also make it a safe experience as well, with loaders that have passed full background checks, are properly licensed, and fully insured to cover any incidents. 

The service is easy to schedule through their website or with a phone call, and pickup can be scheduled as early as the very next day. 

iMovR’s haul-away service is very environmentally oriented as compared to most junk haulers we’ve examined. For example, they partner with One Tree Planted, a non-profit organization focused on global reforestation. With every removal performed, one tree is planted, with the ultimate goal of restoring the environment, ‘one tree at a time.’

One of the things we really like most about this program is that dumping things in the landfill is their last resort, not their first. When booking the pickup, for a small upcharge it’s possible to arrange for delivery to a charity or other address within 10 miles, instead of taking it to the city dump and recycling center (i.e. arrange your own tax-deductible donation receipt in advance). 

In some markets they’ll even potentially find a non-profit organization to accept your items if they’re in good working order. When it comes to tax deductibility certainly the bill for the haul-away service is deductible, but you as the taxpayer will generally need to declare the value of the item itself since charities will not generally appraise donated items; they can get you a receipt proving you donated something but that’s really necessary since you’ve already got the hauling receipt.

At the end of the day we find iMovR’s haul-away service to be the most cost effective with respect to your time investment and what the franchise brands tend to charge, at least for these specific types of items.