Serving King & Pierce County contractors since 2020
Des Moines is a small waterfront city built across a slope. The marina and the shoreline sit at the bottom, the commercial highway runs along the top, and the residential streets fall away between the two. That shape decides almost everything about a container here — what goes in it on the slope side, and where it can physically sit once it is loaded.
Pick a size and a delivery date. Tell us how the ground falls and we will pick the spot.
The slope decides what matters most here, and the answer is the rock box.
Concrete, dirt, rock, brick and asphalt can only go in the 10-yard container, the one built heavy enough to carry that weight. What makes it unusually common in this city is not driveways — it is everything holding the hillside up. Bulkheads at the bottom, rockery and retaining walls through the middle, stepped patios and stairs cut into the grade, and the block and concrete that goes with all of it. A property on the slope side of Des Moines has more structural masonry per square foot than a flat lot ever needs, and when any of it is replaced the debris is dense.
That catches people out, because it does not look like a concrete job. A crew books a container for a landscape or shoreline project, the rockery and the old wall come out, and suddenly the load is heavy material sitting in the wrong box. The driver refuses the pickup on haul day and the crew offloads it by hand. Tell us at booking that walls or rockery are coming out and the right container turns up the first time — frequently alongside a volume box for the timber, soil-free green waste and general debris.
The city splits along the grade, and the two halves want different things.
The slope and the shoreline. Residential, and the work is renovation rather than replacement — kitchen and bath remodels, decks and stairs, window and siding work, re-roofs, and the shoreline and landscape projects described above. Properties here were built to take advantage of the view and the ground, which means more outdoor structure than an ordinary lot: retaining walls, terraces, stairs, bulkheads.
The highway corridor along the top. Commercial, and much easier to serve. Retail, service businesses, offices and older motel and strip properties along Pacific Highway South, turning over on a landlord's timeline. Interior demolition and fit-out, on flat lots where a truck backs straight in and the box sits wherever you point at.
Which containers that means, in practice:
If you are weighing two of them, see the five sizes with dimensions laid out together.
Rather talk it through? Call the King County office and you will get someone who knows the routes.
(425) 522-3717Grade is the constraint here, and it is a different problem from a narrow street. Room is usually available. Level ground is not.
A loaded container has to sit level and stay level. That is the whole issue in one sentence. On a lot that falls away toward the water, the convenient spot beside the house is frequently the wrong spot, and the workable one is the flat stretch at the top near the street. It is worth identifying before delivery day, because the alternative is a driver arriving and having to make the call for you.
The approach as well as the set. A truck has to get down to the spot and back out again with a loaded box on it, and a steep street that a car takes without thinking is a different proposition under load. Where the street runs down toward the shoreline and ends rather than continuing through, tell us — turning a loaded truck around at the bottom of a dead-end grade is the thing most likely to make a delivery impossible.
Cross-slope on the drop spot. Even where the approach is fine, a driveway or parking pad that tilts sideways can rule out a set. A few feet of genuinely flat ground beats a large area of sloping ground every time.
Up on the corridor none of this applies — those are flat commercial lots and the delivery is routine. It really is two cities from a placement point of view, and knowing which one your site is in answers most of the question. If the level spot you land on turns out to be finished concrete or pavers, say so and we will bring plywood for the rails.
Placement on private property — a driveway, a lot, a fenced job site — needs no permit. On the residential side that covers most of what we deliver.
Where a container has to sit on a public street, a planting strip, or a sidewalk, the City of Des Moines administers that right-of-way and you need its permission before delivery day. It runs its own process, on its own terms. Worth thinking about early on the slope side specifically: if the level ground on your lot turns out not to work, the fallback is the street, and the street needs permission — so the placement question and the permit question are the same question here more often than they are elsewhere.
The boundary note applies here as well: some addresses read as Des Moines without sitting inside the city limits, and those answer to unincorporated King County instead, with a different process and a different office. Nothing about the mailing address tells you which one you are dealing with. Ask us or ask the city before you plan a street placement, because working it out afterwards means the container is already on the ground.
Our routing follows the work rather than the city limit, so containers on two of these sites are one schedule with us:
Des Moines is one stop on our King County service area.
Usually, but the spot is worth agreeing before delivery day rather than on it. A loaded container has to sit level and stay level, so a driveway falling away toward the water often means the box goes at the top near the street rather than down by the house. Tell us how steep it runs and where the flattest stretch is, and we will pick the spot with you instead of the driver working it out on arrival.
The 10-yard rock box, and only that one. Concrete, rock, brick and block are dense enough that any larger container would exceed what a truck can legally haul once loaded. On the slope side of this city it is one of the most common orders we get — bulkheads, rockery, retaining walls and stepped flatwork all come out as heavy material, and none of it can ride in a volume container.
A composition strip on a typical house here is a 20. On a lot that falls away the trade-off is worth knowing: the 15 is the shortest box we run and by far the easiest to find level ground for, but it is sized for the smallest roofs and will fill before a full re-roof is off. If a chimney is coming down with it, that masonry needs a rock box alongside — it cannot ride with the shingles.
Not on a private driveway, lot, or fenced job site. If the container sits on a public street, a planting strip, or a sidewalk, the City of Des Moines administers that right-of-way and you need its permission before delivery day. Some addresses read as Des Moines without sitting inside the city limits, and those fall to unincorporated King County with a different process and a different office.
