Oh to have the problem of too many people wanting my free stuff that I can afford to pick and choose.
Just helped a son move from the Midwest to San Antonio, ~900miles. What we learned is that it will take TWICE as long and COST twice as much to move as you think.
I did say, “gone.” 
To be fair, there was not much bulk – except for the paint he could have tossed it into the trash barrel at the house but it just griped him to toss perfectly good stuff. Nowadays there are construction charities that will take them but this was long ago.
I absolutely love having access to a dumpster. Garbage day is any day I want it to be.
I’m amazed by all the people who collect scrap metal. I once had a friend help me lift a huge metal desk “into” my dumpster. Before we drove away there was a guy with a truck taking the desk.
The ONLY time I tried to move anything on CL was when we moved into this house 7 yrs ago. There was an old pool table which we offered free to anyone who would disassemble it and haul it away. We immediately got several responses, all along the lines of, “I’m in my car, driving to you. Will it fit in my hatchback?”; “Can I use your tools?”; “Will you help me carry it?”
Yeah, I’m gonna allow these yahoos onto my property where they can damage my possessions and themselves… 
We ended up paying a couple hundred $ to a bonded/insured company to haul it away.
I remember reading that, when there was a sanitation workers’ strike in NYC in the Seventies, some people would gift-wrap their garbage and “accidentally” leave it in their apartment buildings’ hallways. It didn’t take long to disappear.
I’ve read this several times before and always wondered if there was later retaliation.
Which is why you don’t leave it outside your own door, but rather one down the hall. NYCers almost certainly thought of that; retaliation almost seems to the official sport in that city.
A lot of people don’t want a random stranger, vetted by nobody, to load all their stuff up into a van and drive away with it.
Sure, I expect most people offering to do such a job would be honest; but probably not all of them. Plus which, random individual might or might not know how to move heavy items without injuring either the items or themselves.
I think most people who manage a move by just finding a couple of guys with a truck are finding a couple of people they know who have a truck. In that case the move may well cost less cash, because the people are doing it to help out a friend/relative, whether out of the goodness of their hearts and/or out of an expectation that sooner or later they’ll be on the other end of the deal in some fashion.
I used to buy and sell a lot of stuff on Craigslist, and I found that items too large to fit in a regular car tended to go dirt cheap. I once bought a 4-piece sofa sectional with 3 built-in recliners in very good condition for $100. Luckily I was able to borrow my dad’s Expedition and make two trips. I think the sellers were just happy to have someone haul it away. I once sold an amp for more than that, when it was several years old and had only cost me $300 originally–but you could carry that down the stairs one-handed.
When Mayor Menino decided to call an 48-hour limit to saving parking places after a snow storm in Boston one year, he told sanitation workers to just gather anything left on the streets. A lot of people got rid of hazardous waste (paint, CRTs, A/Cs) that they would normally have had to pay to dispose of.
I would never have thought of that! Hilarious!
In a similar vein I read of a taxi driver who wouldn’t even gift wrap his trash, just box it, and put in the back seat of his cab. It never lasted past the third fare.
I do buy tools from Craig’s List. My interest is in sturdy quality items, often industrial quality, and they will have actual intrinsic value that is pretty easy to determine. I haven’t seen that many of the other listings but I can imagine what they must be like. Even with tools some things are obvious, ‘vintage’ means ‘rusty and broken’, ‘works fine’ means ‘could stop working next time it’s turned on’. ‘Half retail price’ means ‘half the inflated retail price for something new’, which is what the retail price should have been, and now as a used item worth half that if in perfect condition, and half that again if actually used. I also see a tool appear and then shortly after a number of similar tools, as if people are seeing the first one and thinking “I’ve got one of those I should try to sell too!”. But after cutting through that kind of nonsense I’ve had good experiences, but these aren’t typical household items.
It must be a real adventure trying to buy and sell furniture and appliances that way though.
When we packed up the house in SCal to make our final move to AZ, we had CRAP up the wazoo. Mr VOW called the trash people and got us a dumpster.
OHGAWD.
We lived on a busy street, and that dumpster tangled up traffic for blocks. Our next door neighbor came out late one evening, and the scavengers had moved the dumpster to the middle of the street, essentially emptying it and scattering it all around, so they could “browse.” She raised Hell, told them to put everything back in the dumpster and move it to where they found it, or she was calling the cops. Since she had her phone in her hand, they took her seriously and did as they were told.
Putting crap in a dumpster in front of your house is like issuing engraved invitations to the Hoarder Ball.
~VOW
Round here we have the opposite problem. Order a dumpster and next thing you know it’s filled with other people’s trash.
I’m not proud to report that I’ve disposed of a piece or two of cement that we dug up in our yard by dumping it in a neighbor’s construction dumpster. I’ve offered folks a six-pack to allow us to do that but other times I’ve just dropped it in early in the morning.
I’d be careful. At work, a neighbor witnessed someone putting stuff in my dumpster. He got their license plate and told me about it, so I called the police.
The police investigation led to the culprit, the car owner’s son. He was tasked with cleaning out the garage and figured he’d use my dumpster.
The cop asked if I’d be satisfied with the guy emptying my dumpster. It was pretty disgusting; he loaded all the nasty garbage along with his garage stuff into his car’s interior.
When my wife and I were selling baby furniture, every single buyer did the “So, uh, it’s $60 but we only have $50 so…” thing. We eventually just started adding $10 the prices. Sure, we could have told them to get bent but assuming an extra haggling surcharge was the path of least resistance.
Oddly, when I sold a backyard play set, the buyers didn’t try to haggle at all. I was pleased enough to not go through it that I offered some extra backyard toys I had in the garage. And, when my wife got a buyer on a piece of exercise equipment, I plugged it in to find out that the display was sort of messed up. The buyer arrived and I immediately told him about it and was ready to take less money but he looked and said “Good enough”. Baby furniture, though… yeesh.