Dumpsters

[Cliff_Johns]

Around here you can get a one of those big trash dumpsters (that are pulled up onto a trailer) for just a weekend. They bring it Friday after noon and drive off with it Monday morning. It pretty cheap, but you have to have plan ahead to make maxium use of it. You might ask around about it. If you can stage a load, then load it up on the weekend, you might be able to save some money.

Cliff

 

[jhburke]

My family bought a spring shop. We had a scrap yard to set in a dumpster in place to put the obsolete metal in. We asked the driver how much to put in it. He said fill it. He had one of those 2 arm lifters that picked up the dumpster and set it on the chassis. When picked up the dumpster he had to rev up and jump on hydrulics several times to get it on the chassis. He left with the front wheels barely touching the ground. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[Junkman]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Could you guys post a pic of the dumpster trailers when you get a sec. I don't think I've ever seen one. )</font>

easier to post a link to the site... View Web Page Here..... another site.... Click here...... Plans to build it yourself for only $34.99... Order plans here.......

 

[OkeeDon]

This is what mine looked like when new: U-Dump Standard . Attached is a pic of the actual one I got. They are around $5K to $6K new. I paid $1,800 on EBay. It was located in Clewiston, FL, about 2-1/2 hours from my place -- I got lucky. It had a little rust in the floor. I'll weld in a new steel floor after my barn is built and I have a place to work, but for now, I bolted some plywood in the floor to cover the rust holes, and it works fine. It's 6' x 12' x ~30" high bed, is rated at 12K lbs., and holds about 5 cu. yds. -- more if it's heaped up. When I start hauling shell rock to surface my 800' driveway, I'll only haul about 4 cu. yds at a time, because the shell rock weighs over 2,500 lbs. per cu yd. I'll have to make about 80 trips to the rock pit where they excavate the shell rock (similar to a crushed limestone with sea shells in it -- excavated from about 60' down -- used to be ocean floor under us), but the pit is only about 3 miles from my property.


The shell rock goes for $1.50/cu. yd. at the pit, or about $30 for 20 yards, which is a normal large dump truck full. I need about 320 yards, which will cost me about $480 plus the cost of driving 480 miles -- 80, 6 mile round trips. Call it $1000 total in round numbers. That same amount would be 16 - 20cy truck loads at $200/truck, delivered, or $3,200. The difference, $2,200, pays for the dump trailer and the new steel bottom. I also figure I've saved about $1,000 in dumpster fees, so far. By the time I'm done, not only will the trailer be free, it will be filling itself up with $$$ I've saved. When it runs over with $$$ I'll by a new one... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Chechnya]

$250 per pickup 40 yd. WCA

 

[jinman]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( The shell rock goes for $1.50/cu. yd. at the pit )</font>

Don, at the rock crushers here, they price rock by the ton. I'm really surprised they price it there by the yard. How do they do that? With a weight system, they weigh you in and out and it's a simple thing. Selling by the yard seems to mean a much more complex way of doing it. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif ...just curious.

I'd love to see a picture of you in line with all the dump trucks getting ready to be loaded. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif Look out for the loader operator. If they don't like you, they've been known to not be too gentle when they drop the bucket-full into your dump bed. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[Junkman]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( ............Don, at the rock crushers here, they price rock by the ton. I'm really surprised they price it there by the yard. How do they do that? With a weight system, they weigh you in and out and it's a simple thing. Selling by the yard seems to mean a much more complex way of doing it. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif ...just curious. )</font>

Many materials are sold by the yard and the yard is calculated as one heaping scoop of the loader. For the most part, they are fairly accurate for the average persons purchases. When product is sold by the ton, there is a tendency to wet it down with water to "wash" it and to keep the dust down. Water weighs 8 pounds per gallon and it isn't unusual for a 4 or 5 yard dump truck to have an additional amount of weigh of 100 pounds in the form of water on the product. In the case of top soil, the moisture content can vary greatly and effect the cost dramatically. Where I live, one company delivers top soil by the ton and the other one delivers by the yard. I always buy it by the yard because it is less expensive. There have been times that my delivery doesn't have the amount that I had asked for, because the material is wet from the weeks rain and it is too heavy for the truck to deliver the full amount that would have been delivered if it were drier. The same applies to mulch, which costs about $35 per yard in this area. I paid $6.00 a yard for the top soil last year. Haven't checked this years price. I usually buy about 100 yards at a time for landscaping projects.

 

[OkeeDon]

The stuff is often excavated wet. The pits are primitive -- no scales. They just dig the stuff out and put it in your dump bed. Sometimes the water is still running out of it by the time it gets the 3 miles to my place. Junkman's right -- they know how many yards the bucket holds, and just count them. It's a lot like buying sand, which I think is also sold by the yard, unless it's been dried.

Here's a link some of you may find iteresting to a rock pit in Fort Drum, Florida, which is in Okeechobee County, about 25 miles North of my place, and almost up to YeeHaw Junction. The first part of it shows a hand-drawn chart of the layers at the Rucks pit (Rucks is a big name in our area; ranches, dairies, excavating, sod, etc. It was a Rucks that originally owned all the land where my place is.) There are no depths specified, but there is a tree, etc. on top that might be used as an indicator of scale. I don't know enough about the various scientific names to know exactly where the shell rock comes from, but I do know the Rucks material is of superior quality to the stuff I get from the nearby pit, the Rucks material consisting of more coquina.

If you scroll down through the pictures of people digging for their "gems" in the pit, you'll see some shots of the draglines they use to mine the shell rock. The roads the trucks are driving on are the shell rock material. It's pretty much all we use, piled on top of sand, for our well-dressed driveways.

 

[jinman]

Junkman & Don, of course you are right about many materials being sold by the yard. I've gone to places selling materials and had them use the bucket method of measuring. In every instance, I always felt I paid more for it, but probably because materials was not their primary business. I'm just surprised to see a quarry of any size selling material that way. The larger quarries here have mountains of crushed stone and probably sell several thousand truckloads of rock in a single day. Even the smaller crushers have a constant line of trucks coming and going all day.

There's a lot of highway and airport construction going on all the time in this area. On my way to work in the morning, I'd bet I see at least 50 truckloads of rock (most of it washed and dripping) on my 70 mile commute. My guess is that the shell rock quarry doesn't do that volume of business. If they do, I'll bet the "bucket counter" is pretty darn busy. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Thanks for the link, Don. When I owned a house in Virginia (while I was in the Navy) my driveway was crushed oyster shells. I know shell rock must make a pretty good top-dressing for roads. Does it make much dust when it gets dry?

 

[OkeeDon]

No, surprisingly little dust. After repeated compacting and wetting it tends to become cohesive like concrete -- probably the nature of the limestone base. It does create a surface film when it's wet that tends to cling to things, thus tires and shoe soles turn white, and it gets tracked around. The shells tend to migrate to the surface and provide a hard surface. They are sharp, and if one was to drive rapidly and turn sharply on it, it would tear up tires. It's not a friendly surface to bare feet.

Because of our lack of gravel, a fair amount of shell turns up as aggregate in number 2 asphalt, and if not finished with a top layer, the surface does tear up tires. Most of the roads in our city were constructed far before the home construction started, and were left with that underlayer of asphalt, to be finished later. In my (much) younger days, to stave off starvation, I had a second job delivering newspapers at night. I drove and cornered fast, and I ripped up tires beyond all expectations.

But, shell rock is mostly used for country driveways and parking lots, so the speeds are not high and the damage is unnoticeable.