Dumpster Placement and Driveway Protection

Purpose

A loaded roll-off is several times the weight of a car standing on a fraction of a car's contact area, delivered onto a slab poured for a car. This procedure fixes where the container lands, what it stands on, and what the surface looked like first, before the container is ordered rather than when the truck is idling in the street.

Scope

Covers roll-off container and dump-trailer placement for steep-slope tear-off on occupied residential and small commercial property: the approach, the bearing surface, buried services, load weight, and the surface condition record before and after.

Does not cover the ground protection line around the building, owned by the property protection SOP, or the closeout sweep, owned by the nail sweep SOP. Does not cover material delivery truck setup, owned by the rooftop loading SOP. Suspect asbestos-containing material never enters a general debris box.

Roles and responsibilities

What the container weighs, and what it stands on

Three numbers decide the size and the pad, and all three are read rather than guessed. Shingle tear-off debris is commonly figured at roughly 250 lb per square per layer for three-tab and roughly 400 lb per square per layer for laminated architectural; confirm against your hauler's published figures and weigh one full box once to calibrate your own number. Container tare comes off the hauler's spec sheet, and so does the tonnage included in the pull.

Rain is the one people forget. A 20 cu yd box is commonly on the order of 8 ft by 22 ft in plan, which is 176 sq ft of open top. One inch of rain over that is 176 divided by 12, or 14.7 cu ft, and at 62.4 lb per cu ft that is about 916 lb of water riding out on the pull.

The load path is not what it looks like. A roll-off does not sit on its whole floor: it bears on its rear wheels and its two long rails, and the peak surface load happens during the roll-off and the pickup, when the full weight travels through those rollers. That is why a pad is timber runners under the rails with sheet goods doubled through the wheel path, rather than one sheet of plywood laid flat, which mostly just stops a stain.

Procedure

1. Choose placement at the estimate and measure the approach. Walk the drive and the street, measure clear width, overhead clearance, turning room and the grade at the apron, and mark the spot and the truck path on the site sketch. Acceptance: a marked spot with clear width and overhead clearance in feet, plus a named second choice. Wrong looks like "put it on the driveway", which the driver reads as wherever the truck stops. Stop rule: no approach meeting the hauler's stated clear width and overhead clearance means street placement, a smaller box or a dump trailer, decided now. Hazard: measuring puts you in the street, so cones and a spotter go out on any drive meeting traffic, and low limbs get flagged rather than trusted to the driver's eye.

2. Rule out everything that must never carry a container, and call the locate. Check the as-built or county record for septic tank and lid, leach field, well, cistern, buried fuel tank and the service runs, and for any basement, crawl space or window well under the drive. Place an 811 one-call ticket. Acceptance: a returned ticket with marks on the ground, plus written septic and tank positions with their distance from the chosen spot. Wrong looks like a lid found under the box on pickup day. Stop rule: any of those inside the container footprint moves the container, and if nothing clear remains it goes to the street or a trailer. Hazard: if a service is struck at any point, nobody starts an engine, uses a phone or touches a switch within the area - everyone moves upwind and uphill on foot, and 911 and the utility are called from that distance.

3. Compute the loaded weight before the size is ordered. Multiply squares by layers by the per-layer weight for the material actually up there, add an allowance for felt, offcuts and fasteners, add the rain adder if the box sits open through weather, then add the tare. Acceptance: a stated loaded weight in pounds, a stated tare with its source, and a stated tonnage allowance, all on the order. Wrong looks like ordering by volume alone, which is how a half-full box comes in over its allowance. Stop rule: a loaded weight over the pull's included tonnage means a second pull is booked now or a larger allowance is agreed in writing. Hazard: none at this step, it is arithmetic at a desk. What it prevents is downstream: an over-tonnage box the truck drags rather than rolls, and that drag is what tears the apron.

4. Photograph the surface before the pad goes down. Shoot the whole drive, apron, curb cut, sidewalk and adjacent hardscape, then close-ups of every crack, spall, seam, stain and settled panel with a tape in frame for scale. Acceptance: a full set plus a close-up of every defect on the container footprint and the truck path, time-stamped the same day. Wrong looks like one photo from the street, which cannot show a 3/8 in crack that later becomes an argument. Stop rule: an asphalt drive already soft, alligatored or heaving does not take a container, and that is said to the customer in writing before delivery. Hazard: this is done standing in the drive, so the cones stay out and nobody backs a truck while somebody is crouched behind it.

5. Build the bearing pad before the truck arrives. Set timber runners on the rail lines, double sheet goods through the wheel path and under the rear rollers, and extend the protection past where the box will land so the rollers are still on it at both ends of travel. Acceptance: runners under both rail lines, doubled sheets in the wheel path, protection extending beyond the footprint in the direction of travel, photographed. Wrong looks like one layer of plywood laid flat, which spreads almost nothing. Stop rule: a pad that cannot be built long enough for the roller travel means street placement. Hazard: runners and sheets are two-person lifts with a real pinch point when a timber rolls, so hands go on top and never under an edge, and nobody reaches under a container once it has landed.

6. Place the container with a spotter and a cleared roll path. Cone the roll path and the swing area, keep the customer, children and pets indoors, and put one spotter where the driver can see them with a stop signal agreed out loud before the truck moves. Acceptance: the container centerd on the pad on the marked spot, nobody inside the coned area during travel, pad intact underneath afterward. Wrong looks like a box landed square across a crack because the driver was watching the mirror. Stop rule: anyone entering the coned area stops the placement, and a box landed off the pad is repositioned before it is loaded. Hazard: the hoist cable is stored energy under tension, so nobody stands in line with it, straddles it, or works between truck and container under load - and if it parts, everyone is already outside the path because the cones went out first.

7. Load it so it can leave. Keep heavy material low and spread front to back, keep everything below the rail line, cover the top at every close of day and when weather is forecast, and latch the rear door. Acceptance: nothing above the rails, load spread rather than heaped over the axle, cover in place, door latched. Wrong looks like a heap thrown at the back door because it is the closest wall, which loads the axle and pressures the door. Stop rule: a box loaded over the rails is levelled before the pull is called, and nothing burns on site ever. Hazard: debris goes down a chute or in a bucket rather than thrown, nobody climbs into the box to redistribute, and handling tear-off means puncture-resistant footwear and cut-resistant gloves selected under 29 CFR 1926.95, because nails come up point first.

8. On pickup, restore the surface and walk it with the customer. Keep the same coned roll path for the pull, wait until the truck has left the drive before touching dunnage, then remove every runner and sheet, sweep the footprint to the nail sweep SOP, and walk the drive against the step 4 photographs. Acceptance: all dunnage removed and counted off site, footprint swept, and a signed comparison against the before photographs with any new defect written down and owned. Wrong looks like a crew that leaves at pickup and lets the customer find the stain. Stop rule: a new crack, spall or stain becomes a punch item with a photograph and a named owner the same day. Hazard: pickup is the second time the rollers move under load, so nobody reaches under, alongside or behind the container while the truck is hooked to it.

The record this produces

One container placement sheet: address, chosen spot and second choice with clear width and overhead clearance, the locate ticket number and what it marked, septic and tank positions with distances, squares and layers with the per-layer weight used and its source, computed loaded weight, tare and its source, tonnage allowance, pad build, delivery and pickup dates, and any permit number. Before and after photo sets attach. The office reads the tonnage line when the disposal invoice arrives and the permit line before the delivery date. If a driveway claim arrives, the answer is a dated close-up of that crack taken before the box landed.

Worked pass: 28 square reroof, two layers, 1960s asphalt drive

One layer of laminated architectural over one layer of three-tab. Architectural: 28 times 400 is 11,200 lb. Three-tab: 28 times 250 is 7,000 lb. Sum is 18,200 lb. Felt, offcuts and fasteners at 5 percent adds 910 lb, giving 19,110 lb of debris, or 9.6 tons. The 20 cu yd box carries a 4,200 lb tare off the spec sheet, so the pull grosses 23,310 lb. Against the 4 ton allowance included in the pull, 9.6 tons is 2.4 times the allowance, so step 3's stop rule sends the order out as two pulls booked in advance.

Step 2 fails. The septic as-built puts the tank lid 9 ft off the rear foundation wall, directly under the only flat section of drive wide enough for the box, and the 811 marks put the water service across the same run. The stop rule fires. The container is not shifted 3 ft and hoped for: it moves to the street under a right-of-way permit the office pulled two days ahead, and the crew accepts the extra carry.

Street placement did not cancel the pad. The crew still ran runners and doubled sheets through the roller travel, extended 6 ft past the box in the direction of travel so the rollers were on protection for the whole move, and step 4's photographs recorded two existing cracks in the apron the truck would cross.

Step 7's cover earned itself overnight. Rain came in ahead of forecast, and on the 8 ft by 22 ft plan the box would have taken about 916 lb of water per inch on an already over-allowance load.

References

• Your state's one-call statute and the national 811 number, for the locate ticket required before ground-disturbing work and worth pulling here regardless.
• 29 CFR 1926.95 for PPE selection, including puncture-resistant footwear and cut-resistant gloves for handling tear-off debris.
• The hauler's container spec sheet for tare weight, plan dimensions, required clear width and overhead clearance, and the tonnage included in the pull.
• Your municipality's right-of-way or street occupancy permit process where the container sits on public ground.
• See related: roofing-property-protection-before-a-tear-off and roofing-debris-and-nail-sweep-closeout.