What You Need To Know Before Hiring a Skip Bin

While there are a lot of variations in the scenarious for which you might need a skip bin, we will cover below the most common denominators, which most customers need to know before hiring a bin for a first time.

• What Type of Rubbish Are you Trying to dispose of
• How much Rubbish do you have, as this will determine the skip bin size you will need
• Would the bin fit on your driveway - as this will determine whether the bin should go into driveway or on the road  / nature strip
• Would the bin damage my driveway - that will also be a deciding factor of whether to place on a bin on driveway or on council land
• How long can I keep the skip bin
• The urgency of bin delivery, which will determine the adequate time you need to allow prior to placing your bin order
• For Properties on Busy Roads or with complicated access  - think about site contact, who can assist the driver
• If you need the bin inside of a warehouse or commercial carpark, must ensure clearance of 4-5m in height and 3m in width to enable truck access.

We will now elaborate on each point below, to ensure that there is no mystery remaining when it comes to hiring a skip bin for the first time.

What Type of Rubbish Are you Trying to Dispose Of

The type of rubbish is a very important factor, which will affect the cost of your bin hire.  It is also very important to know the type of rubbish, as if you are only disposing of recyclable materials, such as concrete only or cardboard only, by specifying this material when ordering a bin, will save you money, particularly if you are ordering a bin with a company, which recycles waste and is able to pass on savings on recyclable materials to the consumer.

We offer various options for types of rubbish or waste types, which are all described in our Waste Type Table on our website. Examples of Waste types are:

• Mixed Heavy Skip Bins
• General Waste Skip Bins
• Green Waste Skip Bins
• 100% Concrete Skip Bins
• Concrete / Bricks / Soil and Metal
• 100% Metal Skip Bins
• 100% Bricks Skip Bins
• 100% Timber skip bins
  • Cardboard / Paper only Skip Bins

Full description of each waste can be found in our Waste Type Page or for a quick assistance over the phone, please call us on 1300 605 624 and we'll be able to instantly help you with the right type of waste for your bin.

What Size Skip Bin Do I Need

The size of skip bins is measured in Cubic Meters.  Therefore to select the right size skip for your waste - there are several approaches you can take.  If your waste is already sitting in a pile, ready to be loaded, you need to estimate the length, width and the height of your pile in meters, multiply all three, such as: height x width x length and the result will be cubic meters.  For example: if you pile is 1.3m long, 1.2m wide and 0.8m high: 1.3 x 1.2 x 0.8 =1.25 cubic meters.  As you will need to allow space for air pockets and inneficiency of packing, you would need a 2 cubic meters bin in this instance.

Due to majority of people tending to under-estimate the volume of waste that they have, which results in overfilling the bin, we recommend to always go one size up from what you think you might need.  An advantage of ordering a slightly larger bin is that the higher you go in size, the more savings you get per cubic meters of waste. If you are a visual person, another way to estimate the bin size that you might need is to check our Bin Sizes Page and visualise if it's right for the amount of waste that you have.

Would the Bin Fit On My Driveway

Most of the bins can fit on standard driveways, however there are some areas of Melbourne, which have particularly narrow driveways, such as Richmond, Footscray, Fitzroy, Melbourne CBD, Carlton, Albert Park, Clifton Hill, Cremorne, Burnley, Kew, Prahran, Toorak, South Yarra among many others.  It is alwasy best to check with us by calling us on 1300 605 624, so that we can look at your property in Google Maps and see whether access is suitable for one of our trucks.

As a general rule, a truck requires 3m width to enter the driveway and 4-5m height clearance for the truck lifter with a bin, therefore apart from the width of your driveway, we need to consider any overhanging tree branches or low hanging power lines.  In a case of any restrictions to access, we recommend to place a bin on a road and we will organise a council permit on your behalf, thus avoiding any issues with damaging any tree branches or our scratching our trucks, trying to squeeze through entrances, which are not suitable for truck access.

Placing Bins in Properties with Complicated Access

If your property or a building site is located on a busy road, such as Ormond Esplanade in Elwood, Warrigal Road or other arterial roads or you might have more than 1 entrance or other complications, we strongly recommend to provide a site contact for us, who can assist the driver with bin placement.  Various assistance might be required, such as traffic management, to ensure truck can block the road and reverse into your driveway or on large properties, such as sporting fields or rural properties, the driver needs exact placement instructions as the property might be too big.

Can the Skip Bin Damage my Driveway

While every effort is being made to ensure that there is no damage to customer's driveway, we would like to discuss scenarious, in which the bin can damage a driveway and if your situation sounds similar, we suggest to pay for council permit, instead of risking any damage to your driveway.

• If the bin is filled with heavy material, such as: bricks, tiles, concrete, soil and similar combinations, any size from 6 cubic meters could potentially be too heavy for your driveway.  In particular, the vulnarability will be created during a pickup of the bin, as you need to add the weight of the truck to the weight of the full bin with a heavy material.  If your driveway doesn't have a precedent of withstanding heavy weight on it, we recommend to not risk it and opt for the road placement instead.
• If you Driveway is made from a fragile material, such as mozaics, exposed aggregate or a polished concrete or is a brand new driveway - we strongly recommend to place the bin on a road instead.  The logic behind is simple: it will cost under $200 to obtain a council permit, in some case under $100, while it will cost thousands to repair your brand new driveway.
• If your driveway is very narrow and has nice vegetation planted on either side, plus electronic or other gates, we recommend again to not risk all the hard work you've done to beautify your entrance and opt to place the bin on the road.

In all other circumstances, our drivers place timbers under a skip bin on your driveway, to create some space between the bin and the surface and do everything we can to prevent damage.  Some customers prefer to place cardboard under the bin or other layers, to ensure no direct contact of a bin with a driveway.  For any questions, please call us on 1300 605 624 to discuss your specific situation or check out our FAQ Page.

How Long Can I Keep The Skip Bin

While at different times of year we might increase the standard amount of days for bin hire, such as in winter, to allow for rainy weather and give our customers sufficient time to fill the bin, our standard bin hire is 7 days with no extra charges.  Our builders and construction industry customers, who are working on continuous projects, can keep the bins for longer, depending on the requirements of their project. If your bin is placed on a council land, such as a road or a nature strip then when extending your bin hire, you need to consider the cost of also extending a council permit.

We invite you to discuss your specific project with us and should your project be on going, with multiple bin change overs, we will be flexible in allowing longer bin hire.

How Far In Advance Do I Need To Order A Skip Bin

We recommend to order it as soon as you know that you need it, at least 3-4 days in advance, particularly if you are placing it on a road, as some councils, such as City of Monash, or Hume City Council, require 2-3 days minimum to assess and process a permit application.  If you are booking a bin online, you can book via our website a day before, subject to stock availability.

We understand that sometimes you need a bin urgently and we have instances where customers call us at 7am in the morning to order the bin for the same day.  If we are not fully booked, we can still accept same day orders, however the bin will only arrive sometime in the afternoon as we have to first fulfill all the advanced orders.

In summary - if you have a project, which is time sensitive, with labourers, machinery or a team of people ready to load the bin, we strongly recommend to order a bin well in advance, to ensure that you will secure the right size bin, at the required time of the day.  Any last minute orders run the risk of being delivered much later in a day and are subject to stock availability.

Check out our recent blog post on comparing ordering skip bins directly vs price comparison websites.

Where Can I Place A Skip Bin

While for most residential customers, the most common placement is a driveway, for reasons already outlined above, bins can also be placed on a council land, such as road or a nature strip.

Depending on your city council, some councils only allow a road placement, not nature strip, such as: City of Melbourne, City of Yarra, City of Port Phillip, City of Boroondara and a few others.

If you are a commercial business, such as offices, childcare, schools, warehouses - you might have your own car park, in which case your will not require a Council Permit.

If you have a factory or a warehouse and wish to place a skip bin inside of your premises or in a shopping centre car park, it is important to ensure that our trucks have access of at least 3 meters in width and 4-6 meters in height, to allow for the height of the bin, sitting on top of the truck.

In summary, we hope that we've demystified the process of hiring a skp bin, however we would be delighted to discuss your specific situation and bin placement, we are only a phone call away on 1300 605 624 and look forward to speaking to you soon.