Sizing

What Size Dumpster Do I Need? An Honest Paducah 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 everything after that is 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, brick, tile. 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 around here, because the original single-width drives on the mid-century streets in Lone Oak and Hendron often will not take anything longer.

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 barn teardown or a whole-property clearance.

Worked examples from real Purchase-area 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 about 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 Smithland, Wickliffe, Bardwell and around the Paducah historic district 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 that has been rained on

Water is heavy and this is a humid part of the country. A container left open through a wet week gains real weight you pay for by the ton. If the load is already dense, keep it covered.

Wet brush, soil and stumps

Freshly cut green material holds a great deal of water, and stumps bring soil with them. Both belong in a smaller container than you would guess, and both are worth letting dry where you can.

When the driveway decides for you

In a lot of our service area the binding constraint is not the debris at all — it is the driveway. The mid-century housing in Lone Oak, Hendron and Reidland was built with single-width drives, and the mature shade trees those streets are known for hang low over them.

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. A fifty-year-old oak does not negotiate on that last one.

Which is why we will sometimes tell you 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. Clean brush goes to a compost route rather than a landfill one. Scrap metal is sometimes worth money rather than costing it.

So on a barn teardown producing concrete, clean timber, metal sheeting and general debris, two or three containers will very often cost less in total than one mixed 30 yard, even after paying for the extra 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

• 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.
• 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 gravel drive, a septic system, 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.