How to Load a Dumpster the Right Way

Start with the flat things

Doors, plywood, countertops, fence panels and anything sheet-like goes in first, laid flat across the floor of the container. This is the single biggest difference between a container that holds a job and one that does not.

Flat material stacked at the bottom gives you a level base to build on. Thrown in halfway through, the same pieces bridge across the load and leave air underneath that you cannot get back.

Break down anything that holds air

A dresser with the drawers in takes up four times the space of the same dresser flat-packed. Boxes get collapsed, furniture gets taken apart where it comes apart easily, and anything hollow gets filled with smaller debris rather than riding empty.

The exception is anything you are not sure about. If it might be prohibited, it stays out until you have asked.

Distribute the weight, do not pile it

Load evenly from end to end rather than building a mountain in the middle. An unbalanced container is harder to winch onto the truck, and on a driveway it puts all of the load on a short section of the rails.

Heavy material low, light material high, and walk the perimeter as you go rather than throwing everything through one door.

The rule that decides whether it gets collected

Nothing above the top rail. Not a mattress, not a sofa arm, not one length of lumber.

A container loaded above the rail cannot be sheeted, and sheeting is a legal condition of the truck leaving with it. If the load is proud on pickup day the driver cannot take it, which costs you a day and costs us a run. Level with the rail is the whole rule.

What can and cannot go in at all is on the dumpster sizes and weight limits page.