Donating exercise equipment: weights yes, treadmill no

If it fits in your trunk and it works, you have a free answer today. Goodwill, Salvation Army family stores and Habitat ReStores will almost always take hand weights, plates, kettlebells, resistance bands, yoga mats, jump ropes and a folding weight bench at the counter, though every store sets its own accept list. No call, no appointment, no pickup to schedule.

Ask for a receipt on the way out. They will not write a value on it. You do that part.

Nothing on this page should talk you out of loading the car on Saturday. The rest of it is about the machine you cannot lift.

A Habitat ReStore is the best odds in the country for a working machine. Most have floor space, a loading dock and their own trucks, which is exactly what a thrift storefront does not have. Each ReStore is operated by an independent local Habitat affiliate, so the accept list and the pickup radius are set by the store you call, not by a national policy. That is why you could not find a straight answer online.

Find the nearest one, ask for the donation coordinator, and say four things:

• •What it is, the brand, and whether it powers on.

• •What floor it is on, and whether there are stairs.

• •Whether you can get it to the garage or the driveway yourself.

• •"What date can you come?"

The last one is the whole call. A yes with no date is not a plan. If the date works, you are finished here and you owe nobody anything.

A full size treadmill weighs 200 to 400 pounds. An elliptical runs 100 to 250. That is the whole reason, and no amount of good condition fixes it.

Free home pickup programs are built around what one person can carry to a truck. A treadmill fails that before anyone looks at the machine. As a rule, charity crews collect from a porch, a garage or a ground floor room, and they do not carry down basement stairs or disassemble.

Selling it has the same problem wearing a different hat. The buyer has to bring a truck and a second person to your house on a weekday evening. That is why so many of those listings sit.

And here is the part that makes every free route worse than it looks. All of them make you do the physical work first and tell you the answer second. You borrow the truck, find a helper, get 300 pounds down the stairs, strap it, drive it across town, and a person at the dock decides. If it is a no, you load it again and drive it home.

This is a removal, not a donation. If the machine works and a ReStore will take it, the call above is still the better answer.

You move it as far as the curb or the end of the driveway. That is the whole job on your side.

Most home treadmills fold, and most have two transport wheels at the front. On a flat floor, one person can usually tilt it back and walk it out. Stairs are the exception, and stairs are the line where this stops being a one person job.

Past the driveway, none of it is yours. No truck to rent, no ramp, no ratchet straps, no lifting it into anything, and no favor to call in. You do not need to be home. Nobody comes inside the house.

Book first, then put it out. The removal price is set when you book and it does not change at the curb, so there is nothing to gain by staging it early. Put it out the morning of the pickup, not the night before, and nobody has to explain a treadmill on the sidewalk overnight.

Haulers head out between 8 and 10 in the morning. Almost half of pickups are done by noon and about three quarters by 2 in the afternoon. You get a text with the ETA before the hauler arrives, and photos once the machine is gone.

If the treadmill is in a finished basement and cannot come up the stairs, we are not your answer. You need a crew that comes into the house and carries it out. That is in home junk removal, it is a different service, and it costs more. Search for that instead.

And if the machine works, carries a name people know, and you have a free weekend, the ReStore call above is still the better ending. It costs nothing and the machine keeps going.