The Arithmetic of Keeping a Trailer on Site

For a small contractor the question is usually whether to keep a trailer on site or to run material to the transfer station as it accumulates. The arithmetic is more one-sided than people expect.

What a dump run actually costs

• A person, off the job, for the round trip
• A truck, and the fuel and wear on it
• Loading time at the job and unloading time at the facility
• The tipping fee, which you pay either way
• Queue time at the scale, which is unpredictable
• The productivity of everybody left on site while material piles up

Two or three of those a week on a job of any size adds up to a substantial number, and none of it is billable to the customer as work.

What a trailer on site costs

A rental rate and the discipline of loading it properly. The tipping fee is in there either way.

The workflow it enables

1. 1Debris goes into the trailer as it is generated rather than accumulating in a pile.
2. 2The site stays clean, which is faster and safer to work on.
3. 3Nobody leaves the job to make a run.
4. 4The customer sees a tidy site, which matters more to how the work is judged than most trades credit.
5. 5One pickup at the end rather than repeated trips.

Scheduling

For contractors running consecutive jobs we can work to a schedule — a trailer on site for a defined window, swapped or collected on a set day. Tell us how the job actually runs and we will fit around it rather than the other way round.