Serving King & Pierce County contractors since 2020
A loaded rock box is the heaviest thing that will ever sit on your site. In most cities that is a detail. In Tacoma, where the ground tilts and a good deal of the residential concrete work happens on older driveways part-way up a hill, it is the question that decides where the container goes — and it is not the same question as whether it fits.
Tell us the surface and the slope at the set spot. On heavy material that matters more than the dimensions.
Any spot that takes a roll-off takes a rock box — it is the shortest container we run. So on paper the placement gets easier when the material gets heavier, and on flat ground that is broadly true.
Above the tideflats it stops being true, because the weight goes up sharply while the ground gets less forgiving. A driveway that comfortably held a container full of framing and roofing is carrying a fraction of what the same box weighs full of slab. Older residential concrete, thinner pours, and aprons laid over made ground are all common up here, and none of that is visible from the road.
So the useful thing to describe at booking is the surface rather than the dimensions: what the set spot is made of, roughly how old it is if you know, and whether it is something you would rather not mark. Boards under the rails are standard when you tell us. Where the answer is genuinely uncertain, the street is often the better set spot even when the driveway is closer to the work.
The 10-yard rock box page covers what may go in it and why nothing else can take the material. This page is about where it can stand once it arrives.
A container has to sit level and stay level once it is loaded. On a slight pitch that is a judgement call, and the judgement changes with what is going in the box — a placement that would have been fine half full of wood is not fine full of concrete.
Which means the answer in the hillside neighbourhoods is frequently the one nobody wants: the flat patch at the top of the drive rather than the convenient spot near the work. It costs a longer carry and it is the difference between a set that holds and one that does not. Our main Tacoma page covers the city's access constraints generally — grade, street width, overhead lines and alleys — across every kind of job rather than heavy material alone.
Down on the tideflats and along the industrial arterials none of this applies. Flat ground, room to work, surfaces built for truck traffic, and concrete work at a scale the residential side does not produce: flatwork, dock aprons, pads and slab sections coming out of working buildings.
Rather talk it through? Call the Pierce County office and you will get someone who knows the routes.
(253) 753-8183Masonry in the older north and east end. Chimneys coming down, brick and block, front steps, retaining structures and the stone work that came with housing of that age. Small volumes, all of it heavy, all of it a separate order from whatever else the job produces.
Driveway, walkway and patio replacement. The steady residential work, and the reason the surface question above comes up so often — the thing being removed is frequently also the thing the container would otherwise sit on.
Port-adjacent and industrial flatwork. Slab sections, aprons and pads on commercial ground, usually with room to place a container properly and no complications worth describing.
A garage floor, a set of steps or a single walkway all book a rock box even when the pile looks small — heavy material is a rule about what the container is rated for, not a judgement about volume. The size guide sets all five containers side by side if the job produces volume as well as weight.
The other spoke on this city, Tacoma roof tear-off, answers a placement question too, but a different one — reaching the roof face rather than carrying the load. Over the county line in King, Bellevue concrete removal deals with foundations as the forgotten second half of a teardown. Everything else on this side is on our Pierce County service area.
Usually, and it is worth a moment of thought rather than an assumption. A container full of concrete is a different proposition from the same box full of framing, and an older or thinner driveway slab that carries one comfortably may not carry the other. If the surface matters to you, or you are unsure what is under it, say so at booking — boards under the rails are standard and sometimes the better answer is to set on the street instead.
It raises the bar on the set spot. A container has to sit level and stay level, and weight makes a marginal placement worse rather than just awkward — a box that would have been acceptable on a slight pitch when it was half full of wood is not acceptable full of slab. On the hillside neighbourhoods the flat patch at the top of a drive is frequently the right answer even though it is further from the work.
Yes, and that catches people out on smaller jobs. A garage slab is a modest volume of genuinely heavy material, so it books a rock box even though the pile looks like it would disappear into a corner of a bigger box. The same is true of a walkway, a patio, or a set of front steps coming out.
