Your Dumpster Can Fill Up in 20 Minutes. Here Is How to Stop It.

We have dropped a dumpster at an apartment property, driven back to the shop, and had the office call before we got there to say it was already full.

Twenty minutes. Nobody from the property had touched it yet.

If you manage multifamily, you already know how that happens, and it has nothing to do with anybody being difficult. It is math and human nature.

The math

Take a property with 3,000 residents. On an average day you have around ten households moving in or out. Every one of those turns produces something nobody wants to keep. A mattress. A couch that came from a first apartment and never fit anywhere since. Three car loads of boxes.

Now add the other 2,990 residents. The trash room or the compactor is a walk across the lot. The dumpster you just had delivered is right there, forty feet from a back door, with the top wide open.

Nobody is being malicious. They are taking the shorter walk.

What it costs the property

You rented that bin for a reason. A unit turn, a renovation, a storm cleanup, clearing out a storage room that has not been touched in ten years. Instead you pay to haul your residents’ furniture, and the job you called about is still sitting there.

So you order a second bin. One project costs two rentals, and the schedule that depended on the first bin has already slipped.

What the lids change

We now offer locking lids as an add on for our 15 and 20 cubic yard dumpsters. The lids are hinged panels that fold down over the top opening and cover it completely. Closed up, there is nothing to toss a bag into on the way past.

How you secure them

Locks are not included, and that is on purpose. Whatever goes on the lids is yours, and so is the key. We are not part of that chain and we are not holding a copy.

A padlock is the obvious answer. Locking nuts on the bolts work too, and some properties prefer that because there is nothing hanging off the bin for somebody to cut. Either way, be realistic about what you are buying. This stops the resident walking past with a trash bag, which is the person actually filling your bin. Somebody determined, with tools, and willing to stand there working at it in your parking lot, is a different problem and no lid solves that one.

Two things worth knowing before you book

These bins are level load only, and with lids on that is not a suggestion. The panels have to close, so the load has to stay below the rim. If your crew is used to heaping a bin above the sides, plan on the next size up rather than planning to overfill.

Loading does not happen over the top. Our bins have Double Doors for easy walk-in loading, so your maintenance team walks in at ground level and the lids stay shut the whole time. A closed lid and an easy load are not a trade off here.

Where this earns its keep

• Unit turns and make readies, where the bin needs to last the week you planned for
• Renovations in occupied buildings, which is the hardest case, because residents walk past the bin every day
• Student housing during move out, where the volume is real and so is the overflow
• Senior living and HOA communities, where an open bin in a shared lot gets used by the whole street
• Storm and tree cleanup, when a bin has to sit over a weekend
• Self storage properties clearing out abandoned units

Everything else is the same

The lids are an add on, not a different service. You still get 100% Driveway Protection, so the boards go down before the bin does, whether that is a new asphalt lot or a drive that has been there twenty years. Post-Job Cleanup when we take it away. Same Day Delivery and Pickup when we have a truck, which on a property with a turn deadline matters more than most people expect.

The lids are available on the 15 and 20 cubic yard sizes. The 15 handles most single unit turns. The 20 is the one to ask about if you are doing several units at once or clearing a common area.

If you manage a property in metro Atlanta

Call or text us at (404) 692-2838. Tell us the property, how many units you are working on, and whether the bin has to sit where residents park. We will tell you which size fits and when we can be there.

We have been doing this in metro Atlanta since 2012, we are locally owned, and the person who answers the phone can see the truck schedule. We have a limited number of lids, so if you have a turn date in mind it is worth calling early rather than the morning of.