Sizing

What Size Dumpster Do I Need? An Honest Apple Valley Guide

Most sizing guides lead with cubic yards. That is the least useful number, because almost nobody can estimate their own debris in cubic yards. Here is how we actually do it on the phone.

Why cubic yards is the wrong question

Every dumpster sizing guide opens the same way: a 10 yard holds ten cubic yards, a 20 yard holds twenty. True, and almost completely useless, because nobody standing in their garage looking at thirty years of accumulated stuff can convert that into cubic yards.

What we actually ask on the phone is three questions. What are you throwing away? How much of it, in terms you can picture — pickup loads, rooms, squares of roof? And where is it going to sit? Those three answers get us to the right container about ninety-five percent of the time, and the questions after that are all about weight.

The two constraints: volume and weight

Every container has two limits and you will hit one of them first. Volume is the obvious one: the box is only so big and you cannot legally load above the top rail. Weight is the one people forget, and it is the one that costs money.

Each size comes with an included tonnage. A 10 yard typically includes one to two tons, a 30 yard four to five. Go over and you pay a per-ton overage rate — which we quote before you book, so it is never a surprise, but it is still money you did not need to spend.

What each size really holds

10 yard — 12 ft × 8 ft × 3.5 ft

Three to four pickup loads. One to two tons included. The small-job container and, more importantly, the heavy material container. A bathroom gut. A garage clear-out. A patio slab. Broken concrete, tile, brick. Low three-and-a-half-foot sides mean you can throw material over the wall without a ramp, which matters when you are handling broken slab by hand.

15 yard — 16 ft × 8 ft × 4 ft

Five to six pickup loads. Two to three tons. The most under-used size in the industry and, around here, frequently the right one — because the driveways in the older inner-ring suburbs often will not take anything longer. A great many callers ask for a 10, describe the job, and turn out to need about thirteen yards.

20 yard — 22 ft × 8 ft × 4.5 ft

Seven to eight pickup loads. Three to four tons. Our most popular container by a wide margin, because it covers the three most common real-world projects: a shingle re-roof, a full kitchen renovation, and a three-bedroom whole-house clear-out.

30 yard — 22 ft × 8 ft × 6 ft

Ten to twelve pickup loads. Four to five tons. Same footprint as the 20 with eighteen more inches of height, so it holds half again as much without needing any more driveway. The builder's container, and the right call for a whole-property clear-out or a large basement and garage combination.

Worked examples from real south-metro jobs

The weight traps around here

Four materials catch people out more than anything else.

Concrete, block and brick

Roughly 4,000 pounds per cubic yard. A single cubic yard of broken slab weighs as much as a small car. This is why we will not put concrete in anything larger than a 10 yard, and why we will tell you to stop filling somewhere between half and two-thirds.

Plaster and lath

The older housing in West St. Paul, South St. Paul, Farmington and the Hastings historic core is full of it, and it is dense. A 15 yard filled with plaster can hit its weight allowance at half volume. Post-war drywall is much lighter, so the age of the house genuinely changes the answer.

Anything wet — or frozen

Water is heavy and so is ice. A container left open through a wet week gains real weight you pay for by the ton. In winter it is worse, because snow and meltwater freeze into the load and you are paying to haul ice. If the load is already heavy, keep it covered.

Wet soil, sod and stumps

Sod is far heavier than it looks and stumps bring soil with them. Both belong in a small container, and both are worth letting dry where you can.

The driveway constraint nobody plans for

In a lot of our service area, the binding constraint is not the debris at all — it is the driveway. The post-war housing in Richfield, Bloomington and West St. Paul was built with single-width drives, and a good many of them are short.

The arithmetic: a 20 yard is twenty-two feet long, and the truck needs roughly another ten feet of clear run behind it to roll the container off, plus about twenty-two feet of vertical clearance to raise the bed. Mature boulevard trees over the drive are a real constraint in the inner-ring suburbs.

Which is why we will sometimes tell you that a 15 yard with one swap is the right answer even though a 20 would hold the job. A container that does not fit is worth nothing at all.

Two smaller containers vs one big one

On larger jobs this is frequently the cheaper route, and almost nobody asks about it.

Disposal is priced by stream. Mixed construction and demolition debris costs more per ton than clean concrete. Scrap metal is sometimes worth money rather than costing it. And in Minnesota there is an extra wrinkle worth knowing: properly separated recyclable material can be exempt from the state Solid Waste Management Tax entirely, provided it is separated by you, collected separately, delivered to a recycler, and itemised on your bill. That is a genuine saving on top of the lower disposal rate.

So on a demolition producing both concrete and general debris, two containers will very often cost less in total than a single mixed 30 yard, even after paying for two container movements.

The test is whether you have enough of a clean stream to justify a dedicated container. Half a container of clean concrete, yes. A wheelbarrow full, no — just put it in the mixed can.

How to describe your job on the phone

You do not need to work any of this out yourself. What helps us most is:

• What the material is. "Kitchen cabinets, countertop, appliances and about 200 square feet of tile floor" tells us everything.
• Roughly how much. Rooms, squares of roof, or pickup loads — whichever you can picture.
• Roughly when the house was built. It tells us plaster or drywall, which changes the weight answer completely.
• Where it is going, and how long the driveway is.
• Anything unusual. Low branches, a steep drive, a septic system, soft ground, or a boulevard tree you are fond of.

That is a ninety-second conversation and it is the difference between a flat rate that holds and an estimate that moves. Call and describe the job — we will size it honestly, including telling you when a smaller and cheaper container is the right answer.