Serving King & Pierce County contractors since 2020
Most people searching for the Tacoma landfill are looking for the Tacoma Recovery & Transfer Center at 3510 S. Mullen Street. It is the city's self-haul facility, and it is where a truckload of material from a remodel, a tear-off, or a site cleanout ends up if you are taking it yourself.
This page is published for public reference. We are not affiliated with the facility and we do not operate it. Hours, rates, and accepted materials are set by the City of Tacoma and change from time to time — call ahead or check the city's site before you load a truck.
Verified against tacoma.gov, August 2026.
Tacoma Recovery & Transfer Center
3510 S. Mullen Street, Tacoma, WA 98409
(253) 502-2100
Open daily, 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Closed four days a year: the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.
The Tacoma Recycle Center is on the same site and keeps the same hours. The Solid Waste administration lobby is separate — Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. — so if you need to talk to someone about an account rather than drop something off, that is a weekday errand.
From I-5: take exit 132 and merge onto SR-16, then exit 1C for Fircrest/Center Street. At the light, continue straight onto South Mullen Street and follow it to the facility.
From Orchard Street: head east on South Center Street, then turn right onto South Mullen Street.
Fees are charged by weight and by material type, and City of Tacoma residents pay less than people coming from unincorporated Pierce County or elsewhere. Bring proof of residency if you have it.
We do not publish rates for a facility we do not operate — they change, and a number that is wrong is worse than no number. The city publishes current rates on its own site.
Cover the load. An open truck bed or trailer needs to be tarped or strapped. This is standard at transfer stations across the region and it is worth doing regardless of what the gate charges for it.
Know roughly what you have. Fees run by weight and material, so a load of clean yard debris and a load of mixed construction debris are not priced the same way.
Separate what you can. Cardboard, scrap metal, and yard debris are handled separately from general material. A sorted load moves faster and often costs less than the same volume mixed together.
Check the item if you are unsure. Some things need an appointment, some are handled at a different facility entirely, and some are not accepted at all. The facility answers questions at (253) 502-2100 and it is a shorter conversation than a wasted trip.
A crew hauling its own debris is paying for it twice: once at the gate, and once in the hours the truck and the person driving it are not on the job. On a small scope with a trailer already on site, that can pencil out. On anything running more than a day or two, it usually does not.
The arithmetic that matters is not the gate fee. It is that every run takes someone off the work for the better part of an hour each way, plus the load and the wait, and it takes the truck with them. Two runs a day is most of a person.
There is also what happens between runs. Material that cannot leave immediately gets stacked somewhere — a corner of the lot, the driveway, the side yard — and then handled twice, once into the pile and once into the truck. A container on site means it goes in once and stays there.
The practical line is roughly this: if the scope produces more than a trailer load a day, or if the debris has nowhere to sit while it waits, the container is doing work the truck cannot. Below that, self-hauling is a fair call.
Sizing depends on the material more than the volume — a tear-off, a slab, and a strip-out of the same square footage do not fill the same box. What actually drives the cost of a container in Tacoma covers the variables, and our container size guide puts the dimensions and typical scopes side by side. For work in the city, Tacoma roll-off rental covers what we deliver and where.
The Tacoma Recovery & Transfer Center is open daily, 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. It closes four days a year: the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. The Tacoma Recycle Center is on the same site and keeps the same hours. The Solid Waste administration lobby is separate and runs Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., so account questions are a weekday errand.
Most people searching for the Tacoma landfill are looking for the Tacoma Recovery & Transfer Center at 3510 S. Mullen Street, Tacoma, WA 98409. From I-5, take exit 132 and merge onto SR-16, then exit 1C for Fircrest/Center Street; at the light, continue straight onto South Mullen Street and follow it to the facility. From Orchard Street, head east on South Center Street, then turn right onto South Mullen Street.
Fees are charged by weight and by material type, and City of Tacoma residents pay less than people coming from unincorporated Pierce County or elsewhere — bring proof of residency if you have it. We do not publish rates for a facility we do not operate, because they change and a number that is wrong is worse than no number. The city publishes current rates on its own site.
Yes. An open truck bed or trailer needs to be tarped or strapped. That is standard at transfer stations across the region and it is worth doing regardless of what the gate charges for it. It is also worth knowing roughly what you have before you arrive, since fees run by weight and material and a load of clean yard debris is not handled the same way as mixed construction debris.
Roughly when the scope produces more than a trailer load a day, or when the debris has nowhere to sit while it waits. Below that, self-hauling is a fair call. The arithmetic that matters is not the gate fee — every run takes someone off the work for the better part of an hour each way, plus the load and the wait, and it takes the truck with them. Material that cannot leave immediately also gets handled twice: once into a pile, once into the truck.
More local information for the wider area is on our Pierce County service area page.
