Sizing

What Size Dumpster Do I Need? An Honest Hammond Sizing 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 guest bathroom gut. A garage clear-out. A patio slab. Broken concrete, ceramic 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 frequently the right one. A great many callers ask for a 10, describe the job, and turn out to need around thirteen yards. It is also the practical maximum on the narrow drives you find in old Natalbany and the mill-village streets.

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 land-clearing job out toward Robert or Loranger.

Worked examples from real Tangipahoa jobs

The Louisiana weight traps

Four materials catch people out here more than anywhere 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.

Anything that has been wet

This is the big one in south Louisiana. Saturated drywall, insulation, carpet, subfloor and furniture weigh a multiple of what the same volume weighs dry. Flood and storm debris routinely comes in at double what people estimated. If your job is flood-related, say so when you book and we will size for it rather than for how the pile looks.

Plaster, lath and old tile

The older housing in Amite, downtown Ponchatoula and the historic parts of Covington is full of it, and it is dense. A 15 yard filled with plaster can hit its weight allowance at half volume.

Wet vegetation and soil

Freshly cut green material holds a lot of water, and a container sitting open through a Louisiana wet week gains real weight. Stumps and root balls are worse, because they bring soil with them. Let vegetation dry where you can.

When to size up and when to size down

Size up when the material is light and bulky — furniture, mattresses, drywall, cabinetry, packaging, barn sheeting, brush, carpet. The price difference between sizes is smaller than the capacity difference, because much of what you are paying for is the truck movement rather than the box. If you are borderline on a light load, the bigger container is usually better value.

Size down when the material is dense — concrete, brick, tile, plaster, soil, wet vegetation, anything flood-soaked. A bigger container does not help you. It just gives you enough room to become illegally overweight.

Size down also when the driveway genuinely will not take the length. A 20 yard needs twenty-two feet plus roughly ten feet of clear run behind it. On the older narrow drives in Natalbany or downtown Ponchatoula, a 15 yard often makes more sense than a 20 you have to park across the sidewalk.

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 or clean vegetation. Scrap metal is sometimes worth money rather than costing it. So on a demolition producing both concrete and general debris, two containers — one clean concrete in a 10 yard, one mixed in a 20 — 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.
• Where it is going. Driveway, street, job site, and what the surface is.
• Anything unusual. A ditch culvert at the road, low oak branches, a long gravel drive, a septic field, ground that has been wet.

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.