Dumpsters

r0GuE · May 22, 2004

I just bought 3.2 acres that has a good bit of old junk on it. Metal scraps, tires, you know the drill. I'm sure I could fill AT LEAST a small dumpster, perhaps a mid to large.

What I'm wondering is what is the typical cost of these things, and do they let you keep them until they are full, or is it a timed thing (like a week or a month).

I'm sure these things vary by company, but I'm guessing there are norms here..

Thanks,!!!

MikePA · May 22, 2004

We have a 4 cubic yard dumpster from Waste Management at our barn. It gets emptied every other Monday and they charge us $90/month. We had to sign a 1 year contract.

The 4 cubic yard dumpster is the kind they pick up with the front mounted forks and lift up over the cab of the truck to dump. Since we didn't need, nor did we have the room for, the long dumpster that slides off the back of a truck, we didn't check prices on them.

You will need a flat place where they can leave the dumpster and a straight path to it.

ShaleniFarm · May 22, 2004

We had the need for a couple of 30 yard dumpsters, the long ones.

Cost around $330 for each fillup. Had about a 2 week window to use it.

Have a good one,
Neil.

MadReferee · May 22, 2004

A friend is curently hunting for dumpsters for interior demo debris for a house he is restoring. Costs for a 20 yard dumpster average around $520. If load exceeds 4 tons then add $90 per ton. You can keep it for 2 weeks then it costs $20 extra per week. Pickup and delivery included. Not much competition here so prices may be high.

r0GuE · May 22, 2004

Sounds like it will be cheaper to hire some guys to go down and clean it up than it would be to keep a dumpster for months and try and do it all by myself. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

OkeeDon · May 22, 2004

I had the same problem, except that it's my own mess I had to clean up. After i closed my business, I was faced with a yard full of "stuff" that had been accumulating over 16 years. There were a lot of old bbq grills we took in on trade and kept around to strip for parts; some cars and parts that were left over from some projects; a couple of small storage sheds we had thrown together at one time or another; and a bunch of drywall scraps and other debris we took out of the building as we remodeled it. It wasn't an eyesore, and I didn't have to go far to gather it up, because it was all in a fenced, 1/4 acre yard behind the store building. But, golleee, how "stuff" can accumulate over the years when it's out of sight and you're busy running a business, and say, "I'll get time to clean it up, someday, Real Soon Now." From their own descriptions, I'd say TaylorTractorNut and Wrought'nHarve know the feeling.

I had a small, 2 cubic yard dumpster for the business that I paid about $80/month for, but I let that go a couple of years ago when I closed the business. A roll-off was about the same expense as the others mentioned, and it was just $$$ that would disappear. I knew I could use a dump trailer for my Okeechobee project, hauling brush and shell rock and such, so I bought one about 6 months ago for $1,800 off EBay. It holds about 5 cu. yds., and so far I've made about 8 trips to the landfill, every time it gets full. We just let it sit there, and toss trash and debris in it, until it gets full, then haul it away and dump it. Takes about 45 minutes for a round trip to the landfill, and that hydraulic dump sure makes it easy. The landfill charges by the ton, and each trip has cost me about $15 - 20, which is part of the dumpster fee if you go that way.

But, the part I like, is after it's all cleaned up and hauled away, on my time schedule, I still own the dump trailer. So, it's not like pi$$ing away the money on dumpster rental. Once I get all my construction work done at the new place, I'll keep it around and continue to use it as my personal dumpster, primarily to keep the country place from turning out like my commercial property. I guess I've got a bit of red neck string saver in me.

rozett · May 22, 2004

I agree with Don.... invest in a dump trailer. I bought a large one (12k pound tandom axle) but you are always finding new uses for it. I haul firewood, 75 bags of shavings (horse bedding) at a time, brush and right now it holds 170 fence posts. I can haul it with my truck or hook it to the tractor. Like Don, I got mine on Ebay. Paid half the cost of new, for a one that was 10 months old.

Taylortractornut · May 22, 2004

I drive a roll off truck for a private company, dad and I used to own 2 of them and about 12 dumpststers. we had a monthly a by monthly and then a six months rate on the 2 yard containers. We didnt like to rent out 40 yarders because some home owners thought they could fill them to the top with dirt. I am able to trade truck mechanic work for use of the truck on the weekends and Waste Managment sold a few inside rail roll offs containers. They will work on our truck to. I thought about buying one for 450 dollars to hold scrap metal in and keep on my weekend jobs.
You could ask around sometimes prices vary from location to location if they are in tight or havesome spares around you may rent one cheaper.

MikePA · May 22, 2004

some home owners thought they could fill them to the top with dirt. 
I put some dirt in ours once and the driver who picks it up knew it right away. He was very nice about it, but he let my wife know that if he couldn't pick it up, we were repsonsible for emptying it until he could. My wife let me know this as well. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

r0GuE · May 22, 2004

Could you guys post a pic of the dumpster trailers when you get a sec. I don't think I've ever seen one.

Cliff_Johns · May 22, 2004

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 · May 22, 2004

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 · May 23, 2004

( Could you guys post a pic of the dumpster trailers when you get a sec. I don't think I've ever seen one. )

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 · May 23, 2004

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 · May 23, 2004

$250 per pickup 40 yd. WCA

jinman · May 23, 2004

( The shell rock goes for $1.50/cu. yd. at the pit )

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 · May 23, 2004

( ............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. )

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 · May 23, 2004

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 · May 23, 2004

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 · May 23, 2004

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.