How to Avoid Overage Charges on a Dumpster

The listed price covers the container and a fixed weight. Everything above that is billed by the ton, at a median of $76. Most people who get a bigger bill than they expected went over the weight, not over the rim.

Volume fills up last

A dumpster is sized in cubic yards, which measures space, not weight. For light debris (furniture, boxes, drywall) you run out of room first and the weight allowance never matters. For anything dense you hit the weight limit while the container still looks half empty.

What the heavy stuff weighs

Concrete runs about 4,000 lb per cubic yard. Dirt is 2,200 to 3,000 depending on how wet it is. Asphalt shingles are roughly 400 to 430 lb per square for architectural, 230 to 250 for three-tab, a 25-square tear-off is around five tons on its own.

That's why haulers cap heavy material at a 10-yard and only fill it partway. A 20-yard of concrete would be twenty tons, which no roll-off truck can legally lift.

Three things that prevent it

Say what's going in when you book. "Roof tear-off, about 25 squares" gets you the right container and an honest quote. "A dumpster" gets you a guess.

Ask for the clean-fill rate. If your load is only concrete, brick or dirt with no wood or trash mixed in, many haulers charge a lower flat rate because the material can be recycled instead of landfilled.

Keep prohibited items out. Paint, tires, batteries, mattresses and appliances with refrigerant carry their own surcharges or get the load rejected outright.

Do the weight math before you call

You do not need to be precise. You need to know which side of the allowance you are on. Rough out the volume of what you are throwing away in cubic yards, multiply by the weight per yard for that material, and compare it with the tons your rental includes.

A single-layer tear-off on a 2,000 square foot roof is about 20 squares of architectural shingle, so roughly four tons before you count the underlayment and the old flashing. A 12 by 12 patio slab four inches thick is about 1.8 cubic yards of concrete, which is another three and a half tons. Both of those blow through a standard allowance on their own, and both look like almost nothing in the container.

The project pages run this calculation for common jobs and show whether the typical load clears the allowance or not.

What happens when you do go over

Nothing dramatic. The truck weighs the container loaded and empty at the scale house, the difference is your tonnage, and anything above the allowance appears on the invoice at the overage rate. You are not refused and the load is not returned.

Two things do get a load rejected rather than surcharged: material the yard cannot legally accept, and a container loaded above the rim, which cannot be tarped and cannot legally travel. Keep everything below the top rail. If it is heaping when you finish, call for a swap rather than hoping the driver takes it, because a wasted trip costs more than the second haul.

Estimate the weight for your project →

Common questions

Figures on this page come from the Dumpster Price Index. How the data is collected.