Sizing
What Size Dumpster Do I Need? An Honest Local Guide
Most guides ask you to estimate cubic yards. Around here the answer usually turns on the basement and the age of the house.
Start with the material, not the number
Almost nobody can estimate their own debris in cubic yards, and guides that ask you to are not much help. We ask three things instead: what are you throwing out, roughly how much in terms you can picture, and where will the container sit.
Those three answers pick the size reliably. The cubic yard figure is just the label on the box.
Volume and weight, and which binds first
Every container has two limits and you will hit one first. Volume is obvious — you cannot load above the top rail. Weight is the one people forget and the one that costs money.
Each size includes a tonnage allowance: roughly one to two tons on a 10 yard, four to five on a 30. Past that you pay a per-ton overage, which we quote before you book.
What each size really holds
10 yard — 12 ft × 8 ft × 3.5 ft
Three to four pickup loads, one to two tons. The small-job container and the heavy material container: concrete, brick, tile, soil and plaster. Low sides mean you can throw material over the wall without a ramp.
15 yard — 16 ft × 8 ft × 4 ft
Five to six pickup loads, two to three tons. The under-used size, and the one we place most often in the dense older streets — Melvindale, Lincoln Park, River Rouge, Ecorse and the tighter parts of Wyandotte — where sixteen feet fits a short driveway and twenty-two does not.
20 yard — 22 ft × 8 ft × 4.5 ft
Seven to eight pickup loads, three to four tons. Our most common residential container, and the default across Dearborn's own streets, Allen Park, Garden City and the more spacious suburbs.
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 more driveway. The right call for a whole-house clear-out, a large basement, or a job site.
Worked examples from local jobs
| Job | Size | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bathroom renovation | 10 yard | Small volume; tile and cast iron are dense |
| Driveway or patio slab removal | 10 yard | Concrete runs ~2 tons per cubic yard |
| Pre-war plaster strip-out | 10–15 yard | Plaster is far heavier than drywall |
| Kitchen renovation | 15–20 yard | Cabinetry eats volume; tile drives weight |
| Dense older street, any job | 15 yard | Access is the limit, not volume |
| Composition re-roof, 24 squares | 20 yard | Around 4 tons — at the allowance |
| Full garage clear-out | 20 yard | Bulky and light — fills volume first |
| Full basement clear-out | 20–30 yard | Decades of storage; volume binds first |
| Three-bed whole-house clear-out | 30 yard | Contents fill volume before weight |
| Rental turnover | 15–20 yard | Mixed household and construction debris |
| Mature tree removal | 20–30 yard | Cut it down first; it halves the volume |
| Storm damage, whole yard | 30 yard | Bulky, light, and arrives all at once |
The basement factor
The single biggest difference between sizing a job here and sizing the same job somewhere without basements.
Nearly every house across Dearborn and the surrounding cities has a full basement. That is not extra living space so much as extra storage space, and on a house that has been in one family for decades it is usually full.
What that means when you are sizing:
- Add a size to whatever you first thought for any clear-out that includes the basement.
- Basement contents are bulky and light — boxes, furniture, old appliances, paperwork, holiday decorations, exercise equipment. Volume binds long before weight.
- Getting it up the stairs is the real work. Place the container as close to the door you will actually use as we can get it. Fifteen extra feet of carry, repeated three hundred times, is the whole job.
- Check for damp damage first. Anything that has sat wet is heavier and may need handling differently.
- Paint, chemicals and fuel live down there. Pull them before anything else moves — they have their own route.
Older housing weighs more
Our service area spans a wide range of building ages, and it changes the arithmetic.
The post-war suburbs — much of Allen Park, Garden City, Taylor, Livonia — are drywall over stud and modern-ish materials throughout. Sizing there is predictable.
The older cities — the pre-war streets of Wyandotte, Lincoln Park, River Rouge, Ecorse and the Detroit neighborhoods along our boundary — are a different job:
- Plaster and lath is dramatically heavier than drywall for the same wall area.
- Dimensional lumber is denser than modern framing.
- Cast iron plumbing weighs many times what plastic does — and is worth pulling as scrap.
- In any building predating 1980, have floor tile, pipe lagging and textured ceilings tested before demolition starts.
Rule of thumb: for pre-war renovation, size down one and expect to fill it.
Where the driveway decides it
In a good part of our area, the container size is chosen by the driveway rather than by the debris.
A 20 yard is twenty-two feet of container, and the truck needs roughly ten more feet of clear run behind it to set down and pick up. A 15 yard takes six feet less on the ground.
In the dense older cities that difference decides the job. It is also why we ask about the driveway before quoting rather than after, and why a swap on a 15 is sometimes cheaper in practice than a 20 that cannot be placed.
Two other constraints worth mentioning at booking:
- Overhead branches. We need about twenty-two feet of clear height to raise the bed, and the mature street canopy in this area is genuinely low in places.
- Winter. Snow banks narrow a driveway and ice changes what a loaded truck can do on a slope. Tell us if the approach is tight or steep.
How to describe your job on the phone
- What the material is. "Kitchen cabinets, countertop, appliances and 200 square feet of tile" tells us everything.
- Whether the basement is included. It changes the answer more than anything else.
- Roughly when the house was built. Pre-war and post-war size differently.
- Whether there is concrete, brick or plaster. Those get their own small container.
- Which city. Rules and access differ at every line around here.
- Driveway width, length and any low branches.
Ninety seconds on the phone is the difference between a flat rate that holds and a truck that has to leave again.
Need a container in Dearborn?
Call and describe the job. Three minutes on the phone gets you a size recommendation, a flat rate and a delivery window — and we will tell you if a smaller, cheaper container is the right answer.
Call (734) 292-8396