Allapattah is one of the last places in Miami where the warehouses are still actually warehouses. Sit northwest of downtown, off 20th Street or 12th Avenue, and you’re surrounded by loading docks, produce wholesalers, auto shops, and bay after bay of tenants who use their space to work — not to look good on Instagram. That’s a specific kind of building, and it produces a specific kind of cleanout. Here’s what a warehouse cleanout in Allapattah actually looks like when we do one.
Why Allapattah Cleanouts Are Their Own Animal
Allapattah’s core is a genuine industrial district — much of it carries the City of Miami’s D1 and D2 industrial zoning, and it has been the neighborhood’s identity for decades. The wholesale produce trade has operated out of here for generations, and around it grew everything industrial districts attract: distributors, fabricators, importers, contractors’ yards, and small operations renting a single bay.
Two things follow from that, and they shape every job.
The tenants stay a long time. A bay that’s been the same business for fifteen years has fifteen years of accumulation in it. Nobody threw anything away, because there was always room in the back.
The material is commercial, not household. Pallets, racking, dead equipment, inventory that never sold. None of it belongs in a residential waste stream, and none of the free programs people ask about will touch it.
The Job: A Bay Fifteen Years Deep
This is a composite of the Allapattah warehouse job we run most often — a tenant who’s been in the same bay a long time, moving out or downsizing. What was in it:
- Pallet racking, partially disassembled. Uprights, beams, wire decking. Heavy, awkward, and the single biggest volume item in most warehouse cleanouts.
- Broken and mismatched pallets stacked four deep along a wall, plus a drift of shrink wrap, banding, and crushed cardboard behind them.
- Dead equipment — a pallet jack that stopped working, a compressor, a floor fan, a chest freezer that had been unplugged for years.
- Office contents from the mezzanine: desks, filing cabinets full of paper, a stack of old monitors and a dead server tower.
- Inventory that never moved — the boxes in the back corner that got walked past every day for a decade.
- Build-out leftovers from a partition wall a previous tenant put up and a later one took down halfway.
The wrinkle in Allapattah is almost always the dock and the street. Bays share a loading apron with the neighbors, trucks are actively running produce and freight during business hours, and the surrounding streets carry real commercial traffic. You can’t tie up a shared dock all afternoon — the business next door has a delivery coming. We schedule early, stage in one spot, and load in tight passes instead of spreading out.
Why the Free Programs Don’t Apply
This comes up on almost every commercial call, so it’s worth stating plainly.
The City of Miami’s Mini Dump is a residential service — residents hauling their own household bulky items and yard trash, one trip per resident per day, capped at roughly a pickup-truck load. A business isn’t eligible, and a warehouse bay isn’t a household.
Miami-Dade County’s bulky waste pickup is residential too, and construction and demolition material is capped at three cubic yards on top of that — and it can’t be commingled with other waste without reclassifying the whole load. Three cubic yards is a closet. It is not a run of pallet racking.
Commercial material also has to reach a permitted facility, and moving solid waste over public roads requires a hauler permit. We hold Miami-Dade general hauler permit #17079 and carry insurance, which is what your landlord’s certificate-of-insurance request is actually about. If you want the residential side of the rules explained, we covered it in our Miami-Dade bulky waste pickup guide.
How We Work a Warehouse Bay
Sorting happens as we load, not after. On a warehouse job that’s where most of the value is, because a surprising share of the load isn’t trash at all.
Racking, the pallet jack, the compressor, the freezer cabinet, and the steel from the partition framing all go out as scrap metal recycling. Monitors, the server, and the rest of the electronics are handled as electronics removal rather than dumped. Intact desks, chairs, and filing cabinets go out for donation whenever they’re usable — office furniture from a warehouse mezzanine is very often still perfectly good. What’s left is the genuine waste, and the demolished partition material is handled as construction debris.
We leave the bay broom-swept. On a commercial move-out that isn’t a nicety — it’s usually the difference between getting the security deposit back and arguing about it.
What a Warehouse Cleanout Costs
Pricing is by volume — how much room the load takes in the truck — with weight as a factor. Racking and equipment are dense, so warehouse loads tend to land toward the top of each range:
- Quarter truck load (a corner cleared, a few pieces of equipment): $175 – $350
- Half truck load (pallets, cardboard, and a partial office): $350 – $550
- Three-quarter truck load: $550 – $700
- Full truck load (a full bay like the one above): $700 – $900+
A fifteen-year bay is usually more than one truck, and you get a firm quote on site before anything is lifted. The full breakdown is in our 2026 Miami junk removal pricing guide. If the clear-out is going to happen in stages over a few weeks rather than in one push, a mini roll-off container is often the cheaper route — and its smaller footprint won’t block a shared dock the way a full-size dumpster does.
Serving Allapattah and Miami’s Industrial Core
We handle commercial junk removal across Allapattah, Wynwood, Overtown, Melrose, and Civic Center, and we work with property managers, brokers, and tenants on move-outs throughout Miami. Renovating the bay instead of vacating it? That’s a different job with different rules, and we broke it down in our Wynwood renovation debris guide. For office-heavy spaces, see how we handled an office cleanout in Doral.
One practical tip for commercial tenants: book the cleanout at least a week before your lease end date, not the day before. The most expensive warehouse call we get is the one where keys are due back tomorrow and the racking is still bolted to the floor.
Clear the Bay, Close the Lease
1866 Junk Be Gone has been hauling Miami’s junk for 22 years. Licensed Miami-Dade waste hauler #17079, fully insured, with donation and recycling built into every job. We do all the loading and hauling — your team stays on your actual business.
Call (305) 634-2749 for a free walkthrough quote, or book online. Available 7am–7pm, 7 days a week.