Who picks up old appliances in Minneapolis?

The short answer

Five channels, in the order most Minneapolis households try them:

• The retailer delivering the new one. Free or cheap, but only on delivery day.
• A scrap metal hauler. Free or paid, but usually curbside only and not for anything with refrigerant.
• The city's bulky-item request. A per-item charge; check your city's page for current terms.
• A Hennepin County drop-off site. Cheap, if you can get it into a vehicle and out there.
• Flat-price pickup. A standard refrigerator is $164, a washer $133, a dryer $128, a stacked washer/dryer combo $189. From the basement, with no surcharge.

The right answer depends almost entirely on one thing: what floor it is on.

Channel 1: the retailer's haul-away

This is the best deal available and almost nobody uses it correctly. When a store delivers your new appliance, the delivery crew will usually take the old one — sometimes free, sometimes for a modest fee you select at checkout.

The conditions are strict and they are why it fails:

• It only happens on delivery day. Not the week after.
• It has to be disconnected, defrosted and drained before they arrive. A fridge that is still cold and a washer with a full hose get refused.
• They take the one appliance they delivered a replacement for. Not the second fridge in the basement, not the dead chest freezer.
• Many delivery crews will not go down basement stairs at all.

Which is the catch in Minneapolis, because in this housing stock the laundry pair is nearly always in the basement.

Channel 2: scrap metal haulers and the alley

Minneapolis has alleys, and alleys have a scrap economy. Put a steel appliance out on the apron and there is a real chance it is gone before the day is out.

Two limits. First, this works for metal — a dryer, a washer, a range, a water heater. It does not reliably work for anything with a sealed refrigerant system, because that has to be handled by someone certified to recover the refrigerant, and a scrapper cannot legally take it as-is.

Second, it only works if the appliance is already in the alley. Nobody circling the alleys in Camden or Northeast is coming into your basement to get it, and a washer on a hand truck down a half-flight of pre-war stairs is a two-person job.

And from December to March the alley plan stops working anyway. A dryer in a snowbank is invisible.

Channel 3 and 4: the city and the county

City bulky-item pickup. Most municipal programs in this metro will collect large appliances on request for a per-item charge, with appliances containing refrigerant often priced separately from the rest. Check your city's bulky-item page for the current charge, the scheduling lead time, and whether you are inside Minneapolis proper or in Richfield, St. Louis Park, Edina or Golden Valley — the programs differ.

County drop-off. Hennepin County operates drop-off facilities that accept appliances, generally for a fee that varies by type. Check current hours and rates before you drive out; a wasted trip with a range in the back of a borrowed pickup is a bad afternoon.

Both of these are genuinely cheap. Both assume the appliance is already outside, and neither solves the stairs.

Channel 5: flat-price pickup, from wherever it sits

Published rates, disposal included, carried out from any floor:

No stair charge, no refrigerant surcharge, no disposal fee added afterward. The minimum for a visit is $75.

The Minneapolis-specific problems

Basement laundry. Standard in this housing stock. The pair goes back up a narrow flight with a turn at the bottom, and in a lot of these houses the door at the top opens inward into a landing with no room to swing.

The second fridge. Extremely common here — a beer and overflow fridge in the basement or the detached alley garage, often twenty-five years old and drawing power the whole time. A garage fridge in an unheated Minneapolis garage has also been cycling through forty-degree temperature swings for two decades, which is why it eventually dies in January.

The chest freezer. Under the basement stairs, full, and frozen shut. Unplug it and let it drain onto old towels for a full day before anyone tries to move it.

Old boiler-era water heaters. In houses that still run radiators, the water heater is often wedged in beside the boiler in the tightest corner of the basement.

How to pick in one question

Is the appliance already outside, or can you get it outside?

If yes: take the free or cheap route. Retailer haul-away on delivery day, the alley, the city request, or the county drop-off. You will pay very little.

If no — and in a Minneapolis basement the honest answer is usually no — then the free routes are not actually available to you. They are available to a version of you who has already done the hard part.

Common combinations, with the addition shown: washer $133 + dryer $128 = $261. Kitchen gut with standard fridge $164 + electric range $134 + dishwasher $109 = $407. Basement clear-out with chest freezer $146 + water heater $131 = $277.

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