Dumpster Rental in Downtown Greeley, CO

Roll-off containers for Downtown Greeley homes and jobsites

Downtown Greeley is a designated historic district, and the City designated it itself. The Downtown Greeley Historic District was created by the City on 25 November 2002, and the City publishes its own boundary as “7th to 10th Streets between 8th and 9th Avenues, and including the Weld County Courthouse, Lincoln Park and Greeley High School.” That is the second of Greeley’s two local historic districts; the first is Monroe Avenue, designated in 1999. The local historic register runs to 102 designated properties.

Read that boundary again, because it contains something unusual. The Weld County Courthouse is inside the City of Greeley’s own historic district. The courthouse at 9th Street and 9th Avenue was built in 1917 to a design by the architect William N. Bowman, and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 9 January 1978. So the seat of a county of 3,984.94 square miles and 378,426 people (Census QuickFacts) sits in the middle of the city’s oldest protected few blocks. County government and the city’s historic core are the same address. That is not decorative — the county building department, the county right-of-way permit desk and county planning are all on 1150 O Street, a short way north of this grid, on (970) 400-4000, and a contractor working a job out at Briggsdale or Keenesburg sorts that paperwork here.

Downtown addresses are easy to describe once you know the grid. In Greeley, numbered streets run east and west, numbered avenues run north and south, and the avenue numbers climb as you head west out of downtown. North of the numbered grid the east–west streets are lettered instead — A Street, O Street. So “714 8th Street” is the Greeley History Museum, in the district; “1150 O Street” is Weld County, north of it. Tell us the nearest cross street and avenue and we will know exactly which approach the truck needs. Please avoid calling this stretch anything grander than what it is: it is downtown Greeley, around 8th Street and 8th Avenue.

The work down here divides cleanly. On the commercial side it is tenant finishes and tenant strip-outs, restaurant and bar refits, upper-floor apartment conversions in old buildings, and roof work. On the residential side it is the older housing that surrounds the district on every side. Greeley’s median home was built in 1985 and roughly 46 percent of the city’s housing predates 1980, with 7.2 percent built in 1939 or earlier. Downtown is where the oldest of that sits. A pre-1978 building means the federal lead renovation rule is live, and a building put up before 12 October 1988 means asbestos is a state air-quality question before demolition. Both are covered below and in more depth in the lead and asbestos guide.

And downtown is the one part of Greeley where a container genuinely may have to stand in the street rather than on a driveway. That changes the answer, and Greeley has written the answer down.

What we know about working in Downtown Greeley

Start with the thing that surprises people who moved here from a city with municipal collection. Greeley does not run the trash trucks. It licenses the people who do. Greeley Municipal Code § 8-368 is titled “License required” and reads: “All refuse haulers who collect, transport or remove refuse, garbage or ashes within the city shall be required to have a license.” It sits in Title 8, Chapter 11 — inside Business Taxes, Licenses and Regulations, alongside the chapters on pawnbrokers and tree trimmers. And § 8-371 declares the City “the sole agency for the collection and disposal of refuse” acting “by and through its duly authorized agents, employees, contractors or city-licensed operators.” That is a real regime with a section number, and it applies to everyone working inside the city limits. We describe the rule and say nothing at all about our own paperwork in either direction — ask us on the phone and you will get a proper answer. You can read the code yourself at the City’s municipal code.

Now the street. The City’s own published permitting guidance names dumpsters directly: “Placement of dumpsters within the Public Space and roadways requires Public Space Traffic permits and proper signage.” That is the City’s sentence, not our summary of it, and it covers both the permit and the signage. The desk is Greeley Public Works Permits, 970-350-9881, at 2835 W. 10th Street, Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., with applications through the City’s online portal. A Traffic Control Permit is the one that covers work in Public Space without ground disturbance that affects mobility, and container placement is expressly on that list. We do not publish a fee for it, because the City sets its fees on an annual schedule we could not retrieve; call and ask. Do not confuse this with § 12-269(a), which allows “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. It is not a 24-hour free pass for a roll-off in an 8th Street parking lane. See the Greeley permit guide for the full walk-through.

On private property — a driveway, a yard, a parking lot, a leased loading area behind a building — no Public Space permit is in play at all. That covers most of what we set, even downtown, because the alleys behind these blocks are often the practical answer.

What does apply everywhere is the fire code, and here Greeley is unusually clean. The City adopted the 2021 International Fire Code at Greeley Municipal Code § 22-454, effective 1 January 2023, and the Greeley Fire Department says the same thing on its own page. Greeley makes no amendment to Section 304, so the model rules apply as written. Under Section 304.3 a dumpster must not be stored inside a building or placed within five feet of a combustible wall. Every roll-off we place is far over the smallest threshold in that section, so there is nothing to weigh up: five feet, always. On a downtown building with a wood-framed rear porch or a combustible overhang, that measurement comes off the nearest combustible surface, not off the property line. The Greeley Fire Prevention Bureau takes placement questions on (970) 350-9510, and the department runs seven stations across the city.

Two more City rules matter downtown. § 12-269(b) puts the clearing obligation on the property owner in plain words: “All refuse and debris remaining as a result of the demolition or repair of any buildings or the erection and completion of any buildings shall be removed following substantial completion of the work.” And for commercial sites, Development Code § 24-1058 is why Greeley’s permanent trash corrals look the way they do — a receptacle sized for the uses, screened on three sides by a six-foot solid wall or fence with a five-foot gate, materials matching the building, lids closed. That standard is about a permanent enclosure at development review, not about a temporary roll-off on a job, and nobody should tell you to build a wall around a rented container. What it does tell you is that the corral behind a downtown restaurant is sized for its daily waste and will not absorb a kitchen tear-out.

Because these blocks are old, two off-site rules come up constantly. Colorado is not an EPA-authorized state for lead renovation work, so firms certify with the EPA directly, and the trigger is compensated renovation disturbing paint in housing or child-occupied facilities built before 1978. Asbestos is handled as air quality here, under CDPHE Regulation 8, Part B: single-family trigger levels are 32 square feet, 50 linear feet or a 55-gallon drum, notification runs 10 working days ahead, the notice is $60 and a single-family permit $180, and buildings constructed after 12 October 1988 are exempt. The number is 720-507-5136. Finally, if your property is on Greeley’s historic register or inside the district, check with the City before exterior work or demolition. We could not establish what triggers a review or who conducts it, so we are not going to describe a process we did not verify — Greeley 311, (970) 351-5311 is the number, and the City will route it.

• RegionWeld County
• Distance from our yardA few blocks from the yard on 14th Avenue, in the oldest part of the city grid
• Main routes8th Street and 9th Street east and west through the district
• Typical deliverySame or next day

Getting a truck to you

Downtown is the shortest run we make and the fussiest last hundred feet in the city. The grid gets us there without drama — numbered avenues in from the west, numbered streets across — and then the job becomes geometry. Lots here were platted long before roll-off trucks, drives are narrow where they exist at all, and the mature street trees and older service drops sit lower than the hoist wants. A 20-yard container needs roughly sixty feet of straight approach, about eleven feet of working width and better than twenty feet of clear overhead so the box can stand up off the rails; downtown the overhead is usually what fails first. Nine times in ten the answer is the alley behind the building rather than the street in front of it, and an alley set is private-side work with no Public Space permit in play — but it needs the bins moved, the gate unlocked and the parking cleared before we arrive. If the container truly has to sit in a parking lane, that is a Public Space traffic permit and signage from Public Works on 970-350-9881, and it wants a few days’ lead time rather than a phone call on the morning. We carry plywood as a matter of course for aprons and older concrete; read the driveway protection guide before delivery day. Send a photo of the approach and the overhead and we will tell you what fits. (970) 888-6911.

Routes we run: 8th Street and 9th Street east and west through the district, 8th Avenue and 9th Avenue north and south past the courthouse block, 10th Avenue and 11th Avenue for City Hall and the western side, the mid-block alleys, which are how most downtown containers actually get set, US 85 Business and the numbered avenues for the run in from the yard.

Landmarks and neighborhoods we work around

Permits, streets and placement in Downtown Greeley

Start with the question that decides everything else: which government are you standing in. In Downtown Greeley that question has a short answer, and it is the best news on this page. You are inside the Greeley city limits, and in Greeley somebody is in charge. Downtown Greeley is a district of the City of Greeley, not a town of its own. The Downtown Greeley Historic District was designated by the City on 25 November 2002, and the City publishes the boundary itself as “7th to 10th Streets between 8th and 9th Avenues, and including the Weld County Courthouse, Lincoln Park and Greeley High School.” Read the end of that sentence again: the county courthouse sits inside the city’s own historic district. That matters because a district is not a government — it has no council, no clerk and no code of its own. The government here is the City of Greeley, a home rule city under Article XX of the Colorado Constitution, and unlike a great many places, it has written down what it wants.

Three things follow, and each of them has a section number. First, Greeley does not run the trash trucks. It licenses the people who do. Greeley Municipal Code § 8-368 provides that “all refuse haulers who collect, transport or remove refuse, garbage or ashes within the city shall be required to have a license,” and § 8-371 makes the City “the sole agency for the collection and disposal of refuse” acting “by and through its duly authorized agents, employees, contractors or city-licensed operators.” That is a real regime and it applies to everyone working inside these city limits. We describe the rule and say nothing whatever about our own standing under it in either direction — ask us on the phone and you will get a proper answer. Second, the City adopts its own codes: the 2021 International Fire Code at § 22-454, the 2021 International Building Code at § 22-31 and the 2021 International Residential Code at § 22-76, all effective 1 January 2023, with a published 30-inch frost line in Table R301.2(1) of the residential code it adopted. Colorado has no statewide building code, so every jurisdiction adopts separately — and Greeley adopted. Third, the City runs its own fire department, seven stations of it, with a Fire Prevention Bureau on (970) 350-9510. You can read the code yourself at the Greeley municipal code.

And there is one number for the rest of it: Greeley 311, (970) 351-5311. That is the difference this site is built on. In Downtown Greeley you are not hunting for a desk; you are choosing between two you can name. Underneath the City sits the county, and here the county is a short walk away. Greeley is the county seat, and that is not a ceremonial fact. Weld County administration, the county building department and the county right-of-way permit desk are all at 1150 O Street in Greeley on (970) 400-4000, with Planning and Development Services on (970) 400-6100. Weld County is 3,984.94 square miles and 378,426 people, and every county permit counter that touches a construction job anywhere in it is here. A contractor working out at Briggsdale or Keenesburg sorts the paperwork in Greeley. None of that county machinery governs a job inside the city limits — for a Downtown Greeley address the City is the answer — but it is worth knowing where it is, because the moment a job moves outside the line, O Street is where it goes. Give us the address and we will tell you which side of that line you are on before we load a truck.

Now the part most of our competitors skip, and in Downtown Greeley it is unusually easy to state because the City states it. Begin with the line that is safe everywhere: on private property — a driveway, a yard, a parking lot — no Public Space permit is in play at all. None. That covers the overwhelming majority of what we set in Downtown Greeley. What can still apply on private ground is your covenants, a landlord’s consent, and the fire code — and only one of those three comes with a number attached to it.

What needs a phone call is the street case, and here the City answered the question itself, in writing, before anybody asked. The City’s published permitting guidance names dumpsters directly: “Placement of dumpsters within the Public Space and roadways requires Public Space Traffic permits and proper signage.” That is the City’s sentence, not our summary of it, and note that it covers the signage as well as the permit. The desk is Greeley Public Works Permits on 970-350-9881, at 2835 W. 10th Street. We do not publish a fee for it, because the City sets its fees on an annual schedule we could not retrieve — call and ask, and give it a few days rather than phoning on the morning of delivery. One provision people find for themselves and misread: § 12-269(a) permits trash and refuse containers on the public right-of-way “for one 24-hour period within a seven-day period.” That is the weekly curbside rule for a household cart. It is not a 24-hour pass for a roll-off in a parking lane. The subsection after it, § 12-269(b), requires that debris from demolition and repair work be removed, which is the other half of the same idea. Whether or not a permit is involved, call Colorado 811 before anything is dug, trenched, driven or pulled. Our Greeley permit and placement guide walks the whole sequence in order.

One rule belongs to the driveway itself, and it is a fire rule. Section 304.3 of the International Fire Code provides that a dumpster must not be stored inside a building and must not be placed within five feet of a combustible wall. There is a threshold in that section expressed in cubic yards, and it does not matter here: every roll-off we run is far over it — even a 10 yard is ten cubic yards — so the five-foot rule applies to all of them, always. The debate you will find on the internet about which subsection and which capacity is academic; say five feet and stop. Measure it from the nearest combustible surface rather than from the wall plane, because on a Downtown Greeley lot with a deep eave and a narrow side yard the eave line is what actually decides where the box can sit, and we take that measurement before the rails come off the truck. Two more rules from the same section are worth having on a working site: containers over forty gallons need lids, and materials liable to spontaneous ignition — oily rags, stain and sealant-soaked cloths — belong in a listed disposal container rather than loose in a roll-off. That is a real jobsite fire cause, not a paper rule. Inside the city limits that question has a desk and a number. Greeley Fire Prevention Bureau, (970) 350-9510 — a bureau of the City’s own seven-station fire department, working to the 2021 International Fire Code the City adopted at § 22-454. Greeley makes no amendment to Section 304, so the model rule applies exactly as written.

Last, the run in. Getting a box off the rails cleanly wants roughly 60 feet of straight, about 11 feet of width and 20-plus feet of nothing overhead. In Downtown Greeley what fails that test is hardly ever the road. It is the final hundred feet of it. Nothing in this county is mountain driving — Greeley stands at 4,676 feet where the Cache la Poudre joins the South Platte, and a truck works a numbered grid in town and a section-line grid outside it — so the obstacles are small, local and entirely predictable once somebody has looked. On the old platted blocks: a service drop slung low over the only way in, a shade tree that has had sixty years to spread, a lot too narrow to swing on, an alley wanting the carts moved and the gate unlocked before we arrive. On the newer western ground: turf laid last month, an irrigation line run shallow alongside the drive, a street sitting on base course and waiting for its top lift. Out on acreage: a quarter mile of lane that has carried a pickup all winter and will cut up under nine tons in April. Walk it, look up, and tell us what you found.

Two questions follow the load rather than the address, and neither is settled at a town hall. The first is what the box is allowed to carry. CDPHE writes the solid waste rules at 6 CCR 1007-2, but the instrument that lets a disposal site exist at all is a county one: a certificate of designation under C.R.S. § 30-20-102, issued by the governing body with jurisdiction and reviewed by the state. Here that governing body is Weld, and the building it works out of is 1150 O Street in Greeley. Past a short list of statutory bans there is no master schedule of refused materials in this state — every facility writes its own into an approved operating plan. Which is why we ask what is going in the box while we are quoting it, rather than finding out when the ticket comes back.

The bans are brief and two of them trip people up. Electronics have been shut out of every Colorado landfill since 1 July 2013 under C.R.S. § 25-17-303, so a television, a monitor or a tower needs a recycler — and the county hazardous waste counter will not take them either, which is the surprise we field most often. Waste tires are refused at the gate, and moving ten or more of them takes a state registration, so they never travel with us. Green material runs the opposite way: Colorado has never put a statewide landfill ban on yard waste, and the gates serving this county list branches and vegetation among what they accept. We still keep it in its own load, for money rather than law. The City’s GROW Center on 970-673-3718 takes grass, leaves, plants, limbs, branches and untreated lumber, though anything painted, stained or nailed together stopped being clean wood the day it went up, and A-1 Organics composts at Eaton on 970-454-3492. Everything wet or reactive — paint, solvent, fuel, automotive fluid, a battery, a propane cylinder, pool chemicals — has somewhere free to go three days a week at 1311 North 17th Avenue here in Greeley, on (970) 400-2217.

Asbestos is where we stop, and there is no version of the job where we do not. Nothing containing it rides in one of our containers. Colorado files it under air quality rather than waste, which catches out anyone who has worked in another state: the CDPHE Air Pollution Control Division administers it under Regulation 8, Part B. On a single-family house the thresholds are 50 linear feet of pipe covering, 32 square feet of anything else, or a 55-gallon drum by volume; a certified inspector goes in first; the notice period is ten working days; the published fees are $60 for a notice and $180 for a thirty-day permit; and a demolition has to be notified whatever the quantity turns out to be. Anything built after 12 October 1988 is exempt where the documentation shows no asbestos-containing material was used. The line is 720-507-5136. None of that is ours to file — but every bit of it sits in front of the container, and a job halted by an inspector costs a great deal more than a week of waiting for one.

The other year to know is 1978, the cut-off for the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, and Colorado handles it backwards compared with most of the country: the state never took the program over, so a firm working on pre-1978 housing certifies with EPA itself. Whether that matters at all depends on where you are standing, and standing here it matters constantly, because close to half of Greeley predates the rule. The median house went up in 1985, roughly 46 percent of the stock is older than 1980, and 7.2 percent of it was already standing in 1939. That is the reason our guide to lead and asbestos in older Greeley homes sits on the front page of this site instead of at the bottom of it. One last item, and it is the one people skip. Ring Colorado 811 on 811 or 800-922-1987 before a shovel goes anywhere. C.R.S. § 9-1.5-103 puts the notice at two business days, not counting the day you give it; Colorado 811 asks for three; take the three and you cannot be caught short. Mark the dig in white before you call. Setting a box on a driveway triggers none of this. A footing, a fence line, a stump or a sewer lateral triggers all of it.

What the box stands on settles more arguments in Downtown Greeley than what size it is, and nearly every habit carried in from a rainier part of the country is the wrong habit here. Greeley sits at 4,676 feet on flat irrigated plain, and the 1991–2020 normal at Greeley–Weld County Airport — our own station, not a borrowed one from down the range — is 15.34 inches of precipitation in a year. What happens below the surface at your particular address is not something we will publish. That takes a geotechnical investigation, and guessing at it in print helps nobody. What is public, regional and genuinely useful is that the Colorado Geological Survey maps a potentially swelling-clay corridor running from Fort Collins and Greeley in the north to Pueblo and Cañon City in the south, with this city at the northern end of it, and clays of that sort can take up a great deal of water. The part we actually work with is the top few inches. Several tons ride on four small pads under a loaded container. Dry, this ground carries them without complaint. Come back after an irrigation set, a cloudburst or a thaw and it will take an impression and keep it. Hence the one rule we never bend: concrete rather than turf, mats under every wheel and both rails, on every drop, in every month of the year — and after a wet week we would sooner move a date than cut up two hundred feet of somebody’s drive.

The houses were built for that climate, and they have a floor below grade. Table R301.2(1) of the residential code Greeley adopted publishes a 30-inch frost line, and the county publishes the same number, so footings, water services and sewer laterals all begin below it. A trench that would be trivial in a warm state is a real excavation here, and trench spoil is the heaviest material that comes off a house. That makes a footing repair or a lateral replacement a 10 yard loaded low conversation and never a 20 yard one. Where it changes a cleanout is the stairs, because hand-carrying is the job: a smaller box set close to the walkout beats a bigger one parked wherever suited the truck. Two dates belong in the same breath, since they decide when outdoor work can start at all — the average last spring frost is 12 May and the first fall frost is 8 October. And because it comes up whenever a lower level is opened up: on radon we quote EPA rather than a map, and EPA’s position is that elevated readings have turned up in every zone it draws, so “all homes should be tested, regardless of zone designation.”

The age of the housing splits this market in half, and it is the half nobody expects who knows northern Colorado only from the newer corridor towns. The median Greeley home dates from 1985. Roughly 46 percent of the stock is older than 1980 and 7.2 percent of it was standing before 1940, while 39.1 percent of households here rent, against 22.1 percent across the county. So: an old city sitting inside the fastest-growing county in the state. 115,073 people on 49.09 square miles, incorporated 15 November 1885 out of the 1870 Union Colony, at the middle of a Weld County of 378,426 that turns out over 80 percent of Colorado’s oil and gas and $2.38 billion of agricultural product a year. Those figures are Census. Translated into containers it means two different loads on the same street: one is plaster, cast iron, pre-1978 paint and a third covering of shingle, the other is new-build tidy-up and a first remodel. The older one weighs considerably more, and it is the one we get called for.

Then the weather, where one hazard outranks the rest of the list put together. Hail is what pays for containers in this county. Northeastern Colorado runs seven to nine hail days a year inside the most hail-prone corridor in the United States, and the work never spreads itself out. It lands in one week, after one storm, with every roofer in Weld dialing the same numbers before eight in the morning. If your roof has just been hit, book it that day — and know that on a Greeley roof there is a sizing consequence attached, because a second course of asphalt still on the deck reaches lawful payload while the box still looks part used. Wind is second, and it is the one that damages property. Chinook downslope events come off the range hard enough to have produced recorded Front Range gusts of 137 mph, and the county publishes a residential design wind of 115 mph. A county does not write a figure like that down for decoration. An empty box walks, a heaped one redistributes itself along the street, and a loose tarp is a kite — so we weight whatever we cover, and we would rather tuck a container behind a windbreak than leave it standing in the open. Third, tornadoes: Weld has recorded more of them than any county in the United States, most of them short-lived landspouts on the Denver convergence zone, most of them on afternoons that looked unremarkable from the ground. And it is not only the big regional events. On 2 June 2014 a breach on the Cache la Poudre sent water into Greeley itself and prompted voluntary evacuations, with damage around 35th Avenue and F Street — a separate event from the September 2013 floods, in a city built at a river confluence. Warnings come out of NWS Denver/Boulder on 303-494-3210. A container left open through a real storm fills with water and grit, and you then pay us by the ton to carry it away. Cover it, or ask us for a tarp.

And there is one more calendar worth planning around here that no other market in this county has. Every May, three things land in the same fortnight. The last frost lifts around 12 May, so outdoor demolition and landscaping start. The university’s academic year ends in early May and leases turn over in a city that is 39.1 percent renter-occupied. And the City runs its two-day Spring Clean-Up, the one that refuses construction and demolition debris and turns away bagged loads. We do not publish a statistic about it, because there is not an honest one to publish — but that is the shape of the Greeley year, it is the busiest fortnight we have, and the practical advice is simply to book earlier in the first half of May than you think you need to. The other end of that cycle is mid-August. Our guide to move-out and rental turnover is written for landlords and property managers who live with both ends of it.

Collection inside the city limits is the City’s arrangement and it is written down, which is more than most markets can say. § 8-371 makes the City “the sole agency for the collection and disposal of refuse” acting through “city-licensed operators”, and § 8-368 requires the license. We describe that regime and say nothing about our own position under it in either direction. What is constant, and what matters to you, is the part no cart program anywhere solves: no residential collection is built for construction and demolition debris. Shingles, drywall, cabinets, tile, plaster, concrete and framing lumber are ours to handle, and a cart is not a kitchen tear-out, a basement or a roof.

The City makes that point better than we can, once a year. The Greeley Annual Spring Clean-Up runs two days in early May — the City’s own answer to “how do I get rid of this?” — and its published exclusion list refuses exactly what a roll-off exists for: “Construction or demolition debris (including dirt, concrete, masonry, plywood, and similar materials).” Bagged loads are turned away, it is residents only with photo ID, and the line is 970-350-9336. That is not our claim about a municipal program; it is the municipality’s own list, published by the City of Greeley. Check the dates each year rather than assuming last year’s. Our guide to what the City clean-up will not take goes through it item by item.

Underneath the City sits the county, and here the county layer is unusually easy to describe because there is only one county. Weld County collects no residential waste anywhere in the county. Inside the city limits the arrangement is the City’s own, under Title 8, Chapter 11 and § 8-371, and the county sits underneath it collecting nothing from anyone. What the county runs instead is drop-off. Weld County runs a household hazardous waste facility at 1311 North 17th Avenue in Greeley — free to every Weld County resident, open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 8 to 5, on (970) 400-2217, capped at 200 pounds per household per visit, nothing in a container over five gallons, nothing leaking and nothing in a plastic bag. Electronics and appliances are not accepted there, so those need a route of their own. Paint, solvents, pesticides, pool chemicals and automotive fluids cannot go in a roll-off, and this is where they go instead. The county also publishes a seasonal landfill voucher, one per Weld County address, for a single load. Every one of the seventeen places on this site is in Weld County, so both of those are open to every customer we have — which is a genuinely useful thing about working in one county instead of two. Neither the drop-off nor the voucher is a curbside service and neither takes job debris. That, in a paragraph, is the argument for a container — and it is not our argument. It is the two governments’ own description of what they do and do not do.

Sizes we deliver to Downtown Greeley