Dumpster Rental FAQ for Greeley and Weld County

Same day if you call early, next day on most things. We run out of the yard here in Greeley, which puts the whole city grid, Garden City, Evans and Lucerne inside a short run. Nine in the morning is the honest cutoff for a same-day set, because after that we are usually committed to a route. The longer runs — Platteville, Ault, Galeton, Gill — we would rather schedule than promise, because a single trip out there eats most of a morning. Two things slow a same-day down more than distance. One is a placement that has to sit in a public street, which needs the City’s answer first. The other is an approach nobody has looked at that turns out to be narrow, low or soft. Call (970) 888-6911 and we will tell you which one you have.

Five things, and they take about two minutes. The street address, because in this market that decides whether the City of Greeley’s rules apply at all — a Garden City or Evans address answers to a different government, and Lucerne, Galeton and Gill answer to none. What is going in the box, because concrete, tile, plaster and soil price and load completely differently from cabinets and carpet, and because some things cannot go in at all. Where you want it set and what that surface is made of. The width, grade and overhead of the approach, since the hoist needs better than twenty feet of clear air to stand a box up. And a realistic finish date, so we schedule the pull instead of leaving you to chase it. If you are not sure about any of it, describe what you can see and we will work it out on the phone.

No, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight. There is no form anywhere on this site. Every job here starts with a two-minute conversation, because in this market the answers genuinely depend on the address: whether you are inside the Greeley city limits, whether the box has to go in a street, what the approach looks like and what is going in the load. A form collects the details we would ask about and none of the ones that actually decide the job. Call the yard on (970) 888-6911 and you will get a straight answer while you are on the phone, including the answer “that is a question for the City” where that is the truth.

No, as long as we have agreed the spot in advance and the approach is clear. Plenty of our sets go in while the customer is at work. What we need is a clear driveway, cars moved, gates unlocked, and a photo or a plain description of where the rails should sit — a mark on the drive works. What we will not do is guess at a placement we cannot see, or force a box into a spot that will damage an apron, a wall, a sprinkler line or a service. If it looks wrong when the driver arrives, he will call you rather than improvise. On an alley set in the older part of the city, we also need the neighbors’ bins moved on the morning.

For a 20-yard container, roughly sixty feet of straight approach, about eleven feet of working width, and better than twenty feet of clear overhead so the hoist can stand the box up as it comes off the rails. A 30 or a 40 wants noticeably more of all three. In downtown Greeley, the Monroe Avenue district and around Glenmere the overhead is usually the problem, because the street trees and the older service drops are older than the trucks. Out on the county roads the problem is nearly always the surface: a gravel lane that carries a pickup all year will not necessarily carry a loaded roll-off truck back out after a wet spell. Send a photo of the last hundred feet and we will tell you before we come.

We schedule Saturdays around the route rather than as a standing service, so ask when you book and we will answer honestly for that week. Worth knowing if you are planning your own trips instead: Weld County’s household hazardous waste facility at 1311 North 17th Avenue in Greeley runs Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 8 to 5, on (970) 400-2217 — free to Weld County residents, capped at 200 pounds per household per visit. A weekend project that ends with a load nobody can tip until Monday is a common way to lose a day, and the Saturday HHW window is the one municipal opening most people miss.

Call and we will swap it. A swap is a pull and a return set, and it beats the alternative, which is a container we cannot lawfully lift. Debris has to sit below the top rail so the load can be covered for the road, and covering it matters here for a published reason: the landfill operators serving this market state that all incoming loads are subject to random inspection and that uncovered or unsecured loads will be charged double. On top of that, this is chinook country — Weld County publishes a 115 mph basic residential design wind speed — and an open box of light material redistributes itself across the street in a wind event. If material is standing proud of the rails, stop loading and call. On roofing and demolition we plan the swap in from the start.

Yes, across Weld County. Inside the Greeley city limits we can quote you the rules by section number. Outside them we cannot, and we say so rather than guessing: Garden City and Evans are separate municipal governments, as are Eaton, Ault, Kersey, La Salle and Platteville, and we did not establish any of their container, permit, licensing, fire district or code answers. Lucerne, Galeton and Gill are unincorporated, so there is no municipal government at all and the county and the fire protection district are what is left. On the longer runs we schedule rather than promise same-day, and we book the delivery and the pull together.

The 20 is the default and it is the right answer more often than any other. It handles a whole-house declutter, a multi-room remodel, a garage and basement clear or a large yard job, and it still fits most Greeley driveways without going anywhere near a street. Below it, the 15 takes one room, one bay of a basement, or a tight older lot in the Monroe Avenue or Glenmere blocks where a 20 will not turn. Above it, the 30 is a large remodel, a full estate cleanout or a commercial strip-out, and the 40 is bulky light material only. The full sizing guide is here.

Because that is what it is for. Concrete, brick, block, mortar, tile, plaster, asphalt, soil and rock are dense enough that a container reaches lawful road weight long before it looks full. Put a bathroom’s worth of tile and mortar in a 30 and you have a box that is a third full and cannot be lifted; put it in a 10 and everybody is fine. In Greeley this comes up constantly, because the housing is old enough that plaster and lath, cast-iron waste pipe and multiple layers of flooring are ordinary finds, and because a 30-inch frost line means excavation spoil is deeper here than newcomers expect. Heavy debris containers.

A 15 or a 20, and roofing never goes in a 30 or a 40. Asphalt shingle reaches lawful payload while the box still looks half empty, so a bigger container does not buy you more roof — it buys you a container that cannot legally be moved. In Greeley there is a second reason to size down: roughly 46 percent of the city’s housing predates 1980 and the median home was built in 1985, so a great many roofs here are on their third or fourth covering and come off in multiple layers. Plan a swap rather than a bigger box. Roof sizing in detail.

It means nothing stands above the top edge of the container. That is not a preference, it is what makes the load lawful and coverable for the road. A box loaded above the rails cannot be tarped properly, cannot be lifted safely, and gives us the awkward conversation where the driver has to unload part of it in your driveway before he can take it. Two independent local reasons back it up: the operators serving this market publish that uncovered or unsecured loads are charged double and that loads are subject to random inspection at the gate; and Weld County publishes a 115 mph basic residential design wind speed, which is a serious wind to be carrying loose material into.

Because it decides how much material comes out of a hole. Greeley’s own adopted residential code specifies a frost line depth of 30 inches, and Weld County publishes the same figure. That means footings, water services and sewer laterals here sit at least two and a half feet down, so a foundation repair, a sewer lateral replacement or a footing job produces meaningfully more spoil than the same job in a warmer state — and soil is heavy. It is also why basements are ordinary on the Front Range: where you must dig 30 inches anyway, the marginal cost of a full basement is low. Basement finishes and clearances are a normal Greeley job for exactly that reason.

Count pickup loads, then be honest with yourself. A standard pickup bed loaded level is roughly two cubic yards, so a 20-yard container is about ten of them — and almost everybody underestimates a house. Two better questions than volume, though: what is the heaviest thing going in, and is the load mixed. A 20 of cabinets, carpet, drywall and furniture is straightforward. A 20 with a tiled bathroom floor and a patio slab in it is a weight problem pretending to be a volume problem. Describe the material rather than guessing a number and we will size it properly on the phone.

Nearly always, yes. Clean concrete, brick, block, asphalt, soil and rock are dense, and they are also the loads with the best chance of a separate route, so keeping them out of a mixed box helps twice. The practical arrangement on a job with both is a 10 for the heavy material and a 20 for everything else, running side by side. Mixing a slab into a general remodel load means the whole container hits weight early and the light material has nowhere to go. Tell us what the heavy component is when you book and we will set it up that way from the start.

A 30 for a full house, or a 20 with a planned swap where the driveway will not take a 30 — which in the older Greeley neighborhoods is often the case. Estate work is bulky and light, so volume is the binding constraint rather than weight, right up until somebody empties a garage full of paint, oil and old chemicals. Those cannot go in the box at all, and there is a free route for them at Weld County’s household hazardous waste site. Plan the sort before the container arrives rather than after. The estate cleanout checklist.

Liquids of any kind — paint, stain, solvent, thinner, fuel, motor oil, antifreeze. Pesticides, herbicides, pool chemicals and household cleaners. Propane cylinders and pressurized tanks. Lead-acid batteries. Mercury bulbs and thermostats. Refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners containing refrigerant. Electronics, which are banned from Colorado landfills outright. Waste tires. Asbestos-containing material, which is a regulated stream. Medical or infectious waste. And hot ashes, which are a genuine fire cause in an open container. Everything else in a normal house, remodel, roof or yard job is fine. If you are unsure about something, ask before it goes in rather than after — a single can of paint at the bottom of a load creates a problem for everybody. Full list here.

To Weld County’s household hazardous waste facility at 1311 North 17th Avenue in Greeley, and it is free to every Weld County resident. Open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 8 to 5, on (970) 400-2217. It takes paint, solvents, thinners, pesticides, pool chemicals and automotive fluids. The limits are worth knowing before you load the car: 200 pounds per household per visit, nothing in a container larger than five gallons, no leaking containers, and no plastic bags. This is the single most useful municipal fact in this county for a homeowner clearing a garage, and hardly anybody knows it exists.

No. Electronics have been banned from Colorado landfills since 2013 under C.R.S. § 25-17-303 — televisions, monitors, computers, printers and similar equipment. They need a dedicated electronics recycler. Note the trap that catches people out: the county’s household hazardous waste facility does not accept electronics either, and neither does it take appliances. So “take it to the county site” is the right answer for paint and the wrong one for a television. If a cleanout has turned up a stack of old screens, sort that out separately before the container arrives.

Not in the container. Colorado routes waste tires through registered channels — a collection facility, a processor or a monofill — rather than into a landfill, and the local facilities refuse them at the gate. There is also a transport rule worth knowing on any rural property: no person may transport ten or more waste tires without state registration, so a barn full of old implement tires is a job to arrange separately rather than something to load into a pickup. The City of Greeley’s annual spring clean-up does take a small number of tires under its own limits, but that is two days a year and City residents only.

No, not while it still contains refrigerant. Refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners are handled separately because of the refrigerant, and the county’s household hazardous waste facility does not take appliances. The City of Greeley’s annual spring clean-up does accept appliances, including a limited number of refrigerant-containing ones per household — but it runs two days a year, is City of Greeley residents only with photo ID, and charges per load. If your clearout has appliances in it, tell us when you book and we will talk through the timing rather than have the driver find them in the box.

Not for a container — they are bulky rather than restricted, and a mattress-heavy load is a volume question, not a weight one. What is worth knowing is a piece of Greeley’s own code that catches landlords and homeowners out: the City’s definition of refuse at § 20-974 expressly includes “upholstered furniture… used or stored outdoors in any unroofed area.” In Greeley, a couch on a porch is legally refuse. And § 12-269 requires owners, agents and tenants to keep premises free of accumulated refuse. So a pile on the curb strip while you wait for the right weekend is a code problem rather than a plan.

It is allowed, and this surprises people who have moved here from a state with a ban. Colorado has no statewide yard-waste landfill prohibition, and the facilities serving Weld County accept green material. What is also true is that a genuinely clean load has better routes: the City’s GROW Center on 970-673-3718 takes grass clippings, leaves, plants, limbs, branches, Christmas trees and clean wood — and the City is specific that clean wood means unpainted, untreated lumber — and A-1 Organics composts at Eaton on 970-454-3492. Where a container earns its place is the mixed load: storm debris with fence panels, shed sheeting and roof litter through it. Yard waste guide.

It changes the order of the job more than the contents of the box, and in Greeley it comes up constantly — median year built 1985, with 7.2 percent of the housing built in 1939 or earlier. Asbestos-containing material is a regulated stream and does not go in a general container. Colorado treats it as air quality under CDPHE Regulation 8, Part B: single-family triggers are 32 square feet, 50 linear feet or a 55-gallon drum, with 10 working days’ notice for removal above trigger and for any demolition, a $60 notice and a $180 single-family permit, and exemption only for buildings after 12 October 1988. 720-507-5136. Full guide.

It depends entirely on where it stands. On private property — a driveway, a yard, a parking lot — no Public Space permit is in play at all, and that covers the great majority of what we set. In the street or anywhere in the public right-of-way, yes, and the City says so in its own words: “Placement of dumpsters within the Public Space and roadways requires Public Space Traffic permits and proper signage.” That is a Traffic Control Permit from Greeley Public Works Permits, 970-350-9881, 2835 W. 10th Street, Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., through the City’s online portal. The permit guide walks through it.

It is the City’s permit for work in public space that does not disturb the ground but does affect how people move — and the City’s own permitting document names dumpster and moving container placement on that list expressly. Note the second half of the sentence: “and proper signage.” The signage is part of the requirement, not an optional extra. Applications go through the City’s eTrakit portal and the counter is 2835 W. 10th Street, 970-350-9881. We do not publish a fee, because the City sets its permit fees on an annual schedule — Code § 18-66 says they “shall be set in writing annually by the city manager” — and we could not retrieve the current one. Ask the counter.

There is a 24-hour rule, and it is not about roll-offs. Greeley Municipal Code § 12-269(a) says nothing in that section prohibits “the placement of trash, garbage or refuse containers for pick-up on public rights-of-way for one 24-hour period within a seven-day period.” That is the weekly wheelie-bin rule — put the cart out the night before, bring it in on collection day. It is not authority to leave a roll-off in a parking lane for a day. A roll-off in a Greeley street is governed by the Public Space permit regime instead. Do not let anybody conflate the two for you; they are different provisions doing different jobs.

Five feet from a combustible wall, always. Greeley adopted the 2021 International Fire Code at Greeley Municipal Code § 22-454, effective 1 January 2023, and the Greeley Fire Department confirms the same edition on its own page. Greeley makes no amendment to Section 304, so the model rule applies as written: a dumpster must not be stored inside a building or placed within five feet of a combustible wall. Every roll-off we run is many times the smallest capacity threshold in that section, so the rule never switches off and there is nothing to weigh up. Placement questions go to the Greeley Fire Prevention Bureau on (970) 350-9510.

Not if we plan for it, and the mechanism is worth understanding: the damage comes from the point load under the rails and the wheels rather than from the total weight of the box. So new concrete, old lipped aprons, pavers and asphalt in summer heat are all worth flagging when you book. We carry plywood and lay it as a matter of course on anything we are told is new, old or soft. On soft ground after rain a loaded container sinks at the rails first. And in winter, snow and ice on a sloped drive change where a loaded box can safely be picked up from. Driveway protection guide.

Yes, and that is usually the right answer — a private lot means no Public Space permit is in play. What we look for is a corner residents or customers are not using, clear of the fire lane, clear of the permanent trash enclosure so the regular collection can still get in, and five feet from anything combustible, which on these buildings is often a wood stair tower, a balcony line or a timber canopy rather than the wall itself. One thing to know about the corral: Greeley’s Development Code § 24-1058 requires it to be sized for the trash the uses generate, which is why it will not absorb a tenant strip-out.

An alley set is often the best answer in downtown Greeley, the Monroe Avenue district and the older blocks around Glenmere — firmer ground than a narrow front drive, no parked cars, and no street permit if the box stands on your own alley-side pad or parking area. Two conditions: the alley itself has to be clear on the morning, including the neighbors’ bins, and the apron is usually old concrete or patched asphalt, so we lay plywood. If the only workable spot is the public alley surface rather than your own ground, that becomes a right-of-way question and goes to Public Works Permits on 970-350-9881 first.

Not for the delivery itself — setting a container is not excavation and needs no locate. For the digging that usually surrounds the job, absolutely. Colorado 811 requires at least two business days’ notice by statute, C.R.S. § 9-1.5-103, not counting the day of notice, and you white-line the dig area first; Colorado 811 itself advises three days. 811 or 800-922-1987. This matters more in Weld County than most places: the county produces more than 80 percent of Colorado’s oil and gas, and gathering and flow lines cross property that owners often know nothing about.

No, and understanding why explains a lot about how waste works here. Greeley Municipal Code § 8-371 declares that the City “by and through its duly authorized agents, employees, contractors or city-licensed operators, shall be the sole agency for the collection and disposal of refuse.” Read that phrase “city-licensed operators” — the City has declared itself the sole agency and then discharges the role through licensed private companies. § 8-368 makes the license explicit: “All refuse haulers who collect, transport or remove refuse, garbage or ashes within the city shall be required to have a license.” Greeley does not run the trucks. It licenses the people who do. We describe that rule and say nothing about our own paperwork under it in either direction — ask us on the phone.

For anything inside the Greeley city limits, start with Greeley 311 on (970) 351-5311; if it is not the right desk, 311 knows which one is. For a container in a Greeley street, Public Works Permits, 970-350-9881. For placement against a building, Greeley Fire Prevention, (970) 350-9510. For anything on unincorporated county ground, Weld County on (970) 400-4000 — and note that the county building department, the right-of-way permit desk and administration are all at 1150 O Street, in Greeley, with Planning and Development Services on (970) 400-6100. The full desk-by-desk breakdown is here.

No. Garden City is a separate statutory town of 72 acres and about 254 people, incorporated in 1938 and completely surrounded by Greeley and Evans. Two governments, one street. None of Greeley’s rules cross that line — not the hauler license at § 8-368, not the Public Space permit for a container in the roadway, not the City’s adopted fire code, not the Greeley Fire Department. We did not establish Garden City’s own rules and we found no official town website or phone number to publish, so we will not pretend to. If your address is in Garden City, say so when you call; on 72 acres the line is never far away.

No, and this is the local error that gives an outsider away fastest. Evans is a home rule city in its own right, with its own council, its own municipal code and its own permit counters, sharing a boundary with Greeley and with Garden City and belonging to neither. A home rule municipality operates under its own charter under Article XX of the Colorado Constitution and can legislate well beyond state statute — which is exactly how Greeley ends up licensing haulers and permitting containers in its streets. What Evans has done with the same power, we did not establish. Ask the City of Evans before planning a street placement.

No, and you should never assume they do. Each is a statutory town in Weld County with its own government. A statutory town draws its powers from state statute rather than a home rule charter, and in practice statutory towns often carry much less machinery than a home rule city like Greeley — but often is not always. We did not establish any of their answers on hauler licensing, container or right-of-way permits, dumpster ordinances, fire districts or adopted code editions, and we will not publish town phone numbers we did not verify. Ask the town, then call us with what they told you and we will work around it.

Nobody municipal, and that is not a gap — it is the actual legal position. All three are unincorporated communities on Weld County’s own official list of its unincorporated towns. There is no council, no clerk, no municipal code, no permit counter and no municipal collection service, so there is no town ordinance about containers to check. What is left is the county, the fire protection district and whatever attaches to your own land. On your own property no right-of-way permit is in play at all. In a county road, call Weld County Public Works on (970) 400-4000 — the county’s language reaches occupation of a right-of-way but does not name dumpsters, so a call is warranted rather than a permit assumed.

At county level, yes. Weld County’s own ordinance states that the provisions of the International Fire Code “shall apply only when adopted by a local fire district and shall not be enforced under this Building Code.” So on unincorporated ground the fire protection district is the fire authority, not the county building department, and district boundaries do not follow municipal boundaries. Inside the Greeley city limits it is the opposite: the City adopted the 2021 International Fire Code at § 22-454 and enforces it through its own seven-station fire department. Same county, two completely different answers, decided by a city limit.

Not construction or demolition debris, and this is the City’s own rule rather than our opinion. The Greeley Annual Spring Clean-Up expressly refuses “construction or demolition debris (including dirt, concrete, masonry, plywood, and similar materials).” It also turns away bagged loads — all materials must be fully visible — takes no enclosed trailers or box trucks, runs two days in early May, charges per load, and is City of Greeley residents only with photo ID. So a bathroom gut, a roof tear-off or a deck demolition has no municipal route at all. Dates change year to year: the Clean-Up line is 970-350-9336. Full breakdown.

Because three separate calendars land in the same fortnight, and that is unusual. The average last spring frost in Greeley is 12 May, so outdoor demolition, landscaping and lot work do not really begin before then and everything that was waiting starts at once. Student leases around UNC — 8,807 students in a city of 115,073 that is 39.1 percent renter-occupied against 22.1 percent county-wide — end in early May. And the City runs its two-day Spring Clean-Up in the same window. If your job can be scheduled either side of that fortnight, it will be easier for everybody. If it cannot, book early. More on the turnover calendar.

Yes. Northeastern Colorado — exactly where Greeley sits — averages seven to nine hail days a year and lies inside the most hail-prone corridor in the United States. What makes the Greeley version of that different from a newer market is the housing: roughly 46 percent of the city’s stock predates 1980, so a great many roofs are on their third or fourth covering and a tear-off comes off in layers. Multiple layers of asphalt shingle is dense debris that fills a container by weight long before volume, which is why roofing never goes in a 30 or a 40. Forecasts for this area come from the NWS Denver/Boulder office.

More than most people plan for. This is chinook country: downslope wind events on the Front Range have been measured at 137 mph at the mountain stations, and Weld County publishes a 115 mph basic residential design wind speed. An empty open-top container is a sail, and a loaded one full of shingle scrap, packaging or insulation redistributes itself across the street in a gust. So we set the open end thought about, we want loads level with the rails, and we want them covered — which is also the rule at the gate, where the operators publish that uncovered or unsecured loads are charged double and that incoming loads are subject to random inspection.

Yes. Greeley gets a real winter — the city sits at 4,676 feet on the high plains, and this is a semi-arid climate with 15.34 inches of annual precipitation measured at Greeley–Weld County Airport under NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals. What changes in winter is not whether we come but where the box can safely stand. Snow and ice on a sloped driveway change where a loaded container can be picked up from, frozen ground is firm on delivery day and soft on pull day after a thaw, and a box left through a thaw can settle. Tell us the grade and where the snow gets pushed, and we will plan the pull rather than discover it.

It can be, and the honest version is about surfaces rather than geology. The Colorado Geological Survey maps a corridor of potentially swelling clay soils along the Front Range urban corridor, and Greeley is the northern anchor of it — and those clays can expand substantially when they get wet. We are not going to tell you what is under any particular address, because site-specific soil behavior is a geotechnical question and nobody should answer it from a web page. What we work to is what we can see: soft ground after rain, ruts, and plywood under the wheels.

Container size, what is going in it, how long you need it, and where it is going. The disposal side is weight-based at the facility, with minimum charges and surcharges set by the operator, which is why the material mix matters more than the size does — a 10 of concrete and a 20 of furniture are different jobs. We do not publish gate rates for any facility, because they are the operator’s to set and they change; that is a question for the facility. And we do not publish a City permit fee, because Greeley sets its permit fees annually and we could not retrieve the current schedule. Call (970) 888-6911 for a straight number. How pricing works.

As long as the job honestly needs, agreed when you book. What we ask is a realistic finish date at the outset so the pull is scheduled rather than chased, and a phone call if the job runs long — moving a pull is easy, and a full box standing in a driveway for an extra fortnight is nobody’s plan. Two things do put a clock on it. A container in a Greeley street runs on whatever the City’s Public Space permit allows, not on our schedule. And Greeley Municipal Code § 12-269(b) requires that debris from demolition, repair or construction “shall be removed following substantial completion of the work.”

Yes, and it is worth doing that way here. Greeley is 39.1 percent renter-occupied against 22.1 percent county-wide, and the turnover runs on a calendar rather than at random — leases ending in early May, a much sharper turn in mid-August, and landlord turns and abandonment clearances all year. We will schedule sets, swaps and pulls across a group of properties as a block rather than treating each as a separate call. Two things to know before you plan around a municipal route: the City’s spring clean-up is City of Greeley residents only with photo ID and turns away bagged loads, so it will not take a landlord’s clear. Call (970) 888-6911.