What size dumpster do you actually need?

Order a dumpster that is too small and you are booking a second one. Order too big and you paid for air. Here is how to get it right the first time, using the four sizes we actually deliver across Reno and Sparks.

The four sizes, in plain English

• 2-yard mini dumpster (72″ × 12′, 1,600 lbs included) — carpet from a couple of rooms, a garage corner, a small kitchen refresh.
• 10-yard trailer (83″ × 14′, 1.2 tons included) — our driveway favorite. It sits on rubber wheels, so it never touches your concrete. Right for most single-room renovations.
• 13-yard (83″ × 14′, 2.6 tons included) — full-room renovations, roofing tear-offs, and big cleanouts.
• 15-yard (83″ × 16′, 3.1 tons included) — whole-home cleanouts and serious demo. If you are debating whether it is enough, it is enough.

The weight math nobody explains

Every rental includes a weight allowance — and dense material eats it long before the box looks full. A 15-yard dumpster includes about 3 tons, but tile, concrete, dirt, and wet sod can hit that with the dumpster barely half full. Two rules of thumb:

• Bulky-but-light (furniture, boxes, insulation, brush): pick your size by volume — how much space it takes.
• Heavy-but-dense (concrete, tile, roofing, dirt): pick by weight — and go smaller than you think, or ask us to do the math with you.

Real projects, real sizes

Street placement and neighbors, briefly

Driveway placement needs nobody’s permission but yours. The street is a different story — public right-of-way rules vary between Reno, Sparks, and county pockets, and some placements want an encroachment permit. Two honest tips: tell us at booking if the driveway is impossible and we will help you figure out what your address actually requires; and either way, talk to the neighbors before the dumpster lands. A thirty-second heads-up converts “who put THAT there” into “oh good, can I toss two things in?” — which brings up the underrated move: splitting a dumpster with a neighbor. Two half-garage cleanouts share one rental beautifully, and the driveway diplomacy handles itself.

Driveway logistics nobody mentions

Before you book, look up: delivery trucks need overhead clearance, and the most common placement surprise in Reno neighborhoods is a low branch or a service line where the dumpster needs to swing. Then look down: you want a flat spot roughly a car-and-a-half long for the mid sizes, with straight-line access — dumpsters do not corner. Boards go under contact points on every reputable delivery (they do on ours), but if your driveway is fresh concrete or pavers you love, say so at booking and we will place accordingly. HOA folks: the 10-yard trailer is your diplomatic option; on wheels, it reads as “equipment” rather than “dumpster,” and it never touches the surface.

Choosing your rental period

Standard rentals start at 7 days, which earns its keep on real-world projects — garage purges, room-by-room cleanouts — where the real constraint is your energy, not the dumpster. Need longer? Custom rental periods are available, and the honest tiebreaker is this: if your project depends on weekend labor, book the window that covers two weekends. The single most common extension call we get is Sunday night, one weekend in.

The mistake that costs people money

Overfilling. Anything above the rim cannot legally ride on the road, so it comes out before the truck leaves — and now you have a pile again. When in doubt, book the size up, or start smaller and text us a photo mid-project; swapping or adding a dumpster is painless. And if the whole pile is ready to go today, skip the rental entirely — full-service junk removal is built for exactly that.

What cannot go in

No wet paint, chemicals, tires, batteries, or anything with refrigerant (fridges and freezers need certified handling — we do that separately). Dirt, concrete, and roofing are fine in the right size. When you book online you will see the full list before checkout.