Serving King & Pierce County contractors since 2020
A roof comes off faster than almost anything else on a job site. A crew that starts at seven can have the whole thing on the ground by midday, which means the container is either the right size before the first shingle moves or it is a problem for the rest of the day. What decides the size is not the square footage — it is what the roof is made of, and whether the decking is coming off with it.
Tell us the roof type and whether you are resheeting. That is enough for us to size it.
Roof type drives this more than roof area does, because the materials do not behave alike. Composition shingles stack flat and dense. Cedar shake is bulky and takes far more room at the same roof area. Tile weighs a great deal and takes almost none.
Composition tear-off, residential. The 20-yard roll-off is the common case and it is what most of these jobs book. Strip the shingles, load them, done.
Small roofs and tight sites. The 15-yard container is the short box on a smaller truck. It suits a garage, a small detached structure, or a house where the only place to set a box is a driveway that will not take anything longer.
Tear-off plus resheet. A 30-yard, and the reason is arithmetic rather than caution — see below.
Cedar shake and metal. Both want the 30 as a minimum. Shake because it does not compact the way composition does and fills a box long before the weight becomes interesting; metal because panels and flashing are awkward, springy, and do not lie flat however carefully the crew stacks them.
Commercial. A 30 or a 40-yard, depending on how the debris comes down. Where a machine or a chute is feeding the box, the 40 earns its place; where it is hand-loaded off a roof edge, the 30 with its lower walls is easier to work into.
Tile is its own answer, and it is the one that catches people out. The size guide sets the dimensions out side by side if you want to compare before you book.
This is the single most useful thing on this page, and it reads wrong the first time: concrete and clay tile go in the 10-yard rock box — the smallest container we run.
It is the same rule that governs concrete, brick, dirt and asphalt. The 10-yard rock box is the only container rated to carry dense material, and tile is dense material that happens to have been on a roof. A tile roof does not produce much volume. It produces weight, and weight is what fills the box.
Order a 20-yard for a tile tear-off — which is the natural thing to do, because a 20 is what a roof usually takes — and the load gets refused at pickup. The container is not rated for what is in it. That leaves a full box on your site, a crew that cannot finish, and somebody offloading tile by hand into the right container. It is an entirely avoidable day, and the only thing standing between a roofer and it is knowing the rule before the order goes in.
So tell us it is tile when you book. That one word changes the container.
A resheet is not a bigger tear-off. It is two tear-offs happening at once: the roofing comes off, and then the decking underneath it comes off too. Plywood is bulky and it goes into the same container as everything already stripped, which is why a job that would comfortably have been a 20 turns into a 30 the moment the decking is in scope. Nothing about the roof area changed. The amount of material leaving the building did.
On a tile resheet, order two containers. The rock box takes the tile. A roll-off takes the decking, underlayment, fasteners and the rest of the debris. Two boxes, one delivery, planned at booking.
The reason is not tidiness. Clean tile kept separate is recoverable material; tile buried under plywood and felt is not, and a mixed load also puts dense material into a container with no rating to carry it. You lose the recovery and you inherit the refusal, from one decision made on the morning rather than at the booking.
This is a conversation worth having when you order, and it takes about a minute. Tell us the roof is tile and the decking is coming off, and both containers land together.
Rather talk it through? Call the King County office and you will get someone who knows the routes.
(425) 522-3717Roofs are unlike almost every other scope in one respect: they do not come off gradually. A crew works a roof in a single push, and the debris arrives on the ground in hours rather than over days. There is no natural pause in the middle where a full container can quietly be exchanged.
Which means the failure mode is specific. A box that turns out to be one size too small fills partway through the strip, and everything stops — not because the work is hard but because there is nowhere to put what is already coming off the roof. The crew stands down, or the shingles go on the ground and get handled twice.
An exchange fixes it and we will run one whenever it is needed. It is simply a worse outcome than ordering the next size up in the first place, because the exchange costs a slot in the day and the crew waits for it. Where a job sits genuinely on the line between two sizes, take the larger one. The difference between the 30 and the 40 is wall height — six feet against eight, on the same footprint — so a bigger box does not need a bigger space to sit in.
Same-day delivery when the schedule allows, and on a roof it is worth booking ahead where you can. Tear-off dates move with the weather, so tell us what your window looks like rather than a single fixed date.
The sizing above holds everywhere — a cedar shake roof fills a container the same way on either side of the county line. What changes city to city is the site: where the box can sit, whether the street is involved, and what the permit position is. Those pages carry the local half:
Roofing volume is heaviest in the cities where the housing stock went up in a concentrated stretch and is now coming due together — that is the whole story in Maple Valley, Covington and Federal Way, where re-roofs arrive in waves rather than one at a time.
Everywhere else we run is on the county pages: King County and Pierce County.
For a straightforward residential composition tear-off, the 20-yard is the usual answer and covers most of what we send out. Go up to the 30 if the decking is coming off with the shingles, if the roof is cedar shake, or if it is metal. Tile is the exception to all of it and goes in the 10-yard rock box. Commercial work runs 30 or 40 depending on how the debris comes down.
Because tile is heavy, and weight rather than volume is what fills a container carrying it. Concrete and clay tile follow the same rule as concrete, brick and asphalt: the 10-yard rock box is the only container rated to carry that material. Order a 20 for a tile tear-off and the load gets refused at pickup, which leaves a full box sitting on your site until somebody offloads it by hand.
Yes, and it is worth saying at booking rather than on the day. A resheet means the plywood comes off on top of the shingles that were already coming off, which roughly doubles what ends up in the container. A job that would have been a 20 becomes a 30. On a tile resheet you want two containers: the rock box for the tile and a roll-off for the decking and underlayment.
Better not to, and on a tile job we will ask about it when you book. Clean tile kept separate is recoverable; tile mixed with underlayment, plywood and fasteners is not, and the mixed load also puts dense material in a box not rated for it. Two containers ordered together and delivered together costs you a conversation. Finding out at pickup costs you a trip.
