Garbage Fees -- What is the going rate?

We are paying $9.33 per lot per month for our 100 lot park. That is for curb side pick up once per week. It would be nice to know what others are paying. What are you paying?

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I’m sure the rates vary quite a bit across the country. Our park in Illinois (34 spaces), we are required to contract with Waste Management and pay $300/month for dumpster service. That’s for 2 days per week pickup. We are also looking at park in Minnesota right now and their curbside pickup for each lot is about $15 per month.

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We pay $18.50/month for weekly pick up of 1 poly cart per home. We re-bill residents $20/month for this.

Your mileage may vary, :wink:

-jl-

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We could maybe re-bill the residents and/or convert to dumpster service; yet with the conditions of our roads (lots of potholes) I think we’d have a revolt; especially since we are planning on our annual lot fee increase letters going out soon. Most people like the curbside pickup and our collectors take just about anything on the curb when they are doing the route. Still the almost $1000 hit each month seems high. Has anyone gone from curbside to dumpsters? How did it go? How did you sell it and implement the switch? Problems with additional trashing areas?

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John,

I think $9.33/lot for curbside pickup is a good rate.

The problem with dumpsters and Waste Managagement are

  • the trucks will beat up your road causing more potholes

  • tenants will start leaving garbage around the outside of the dumpster

  • people who like outside of your park will start filling your dumpster

  • tenants will complain about having to walk down the street to the dumpster and will start leaving bags of trash piling up in their yard.

  • Waste Management will start hitting you with ridiculous fuel surcharge and other made up fees.

  • Waste Managment also plays the game that if you don’t respond via certified mail by a deadline date, you contract automatically renews for 3 years.

Just my experience with dumpsters.

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Sounds like a great deal to me. We pay $13 per bin. Has anyone ever tried having tenants pay the garbage company directly without the park involved? Just curious if that works…

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Regarding having the residents pay directly, that - in our city - would cause the cost per lot to increase significantly; so it is better for everyone if the park pays a bulk rate and then passes the cost through to the residents on a monthly basis. We are changing our policy to do just that in a couple of months. REQUEST: Would someone who has changed from “the park paying for it” to “the park passing the charges through to the residents” please describe their experiences and suggestions for minimizing frustrations by the residents?

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If you are in a city with more than one potential trash service available, I’d recommend you contact Jack Johnson at Refuse Specialists (jack@refusespecialists.com). They work for many of our clients and the feedback I generally here is that they saved them 30% or so in costs simply via their negotiating strength - they handle so much business they get better rates than most of us small guys get. And better yet, if you don’t like them, you can fire them - no long term contracts.

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Hi @MHP_John , is this curb side pick up for both trash and recycle bins? Or just a trash bin per lot?

@nate Nate, $13 per trash bin and $13 per recycle bin? So $26 per lot?

We pay $25 for two days pickup within the week