Roll-Off Dumpster Rental in Rochester

A roll-off is the container that arrives on a truck, rolls off the rails onto your ground and rolls back on when you are finished. We run five of them: 10, 15, 20, 30 and 40 yard. The 10 is the weight box — concrete, brick, plaster and lath, rubble foundation spoil. The 15 is one bounded job, a single room or one unit of a two-family turnover. The 20 is the Rochester default, because a full basement and attic clear-out is the Rochester default job. The 30 is a whole two-family emptied, or a large remodel. The 40 is airy bulk only. Everything else on this page is detail hanging off those five sentences, and the full dimensions are on the container sizes page. If you would rather not read any of it, call the yard, describe the pile, and we will tell you which container the material wants.

The thing that decides whether a container can be set is the approach, and in Rochester the approach is more often blocked overhead than on the ground. We want roughly 60 feet of straight run for the truck to line up and back, about ten and a half feet of working width, and 20 feet or more of vertical clearance so the hoist can stand the container up as it comes off the rails. That last figure is the one that fails. This city has a mature street canopy, particularly in Park Avenue, the South Wedge, Browncroft, Corn Hill and the older parts of Brighton and Irondequoit, and running underneath it from the pole to the house is the electrical service drop. A truck can drive under a wire it cannot lift a container under. Walk out to the curb, look up, and tell us what is over the set point. A photograph from the street is even better and takes thirty seconds.

Ground conditions here are their own conversation. Monroe County sits on glacial till and lacustrine silt, and the dominant driveway soils are silt loams — Collamer, which is moderately well drained, and Niagara, which is somewhat poorly drained. Neither of those is expansive clay and neither of them is a desert caliche. What they are is wet in spring. A loaded 20 yard puts several tons on a small footprint, and in March and April, when frost is coming out of the ground, an asphalt driveway over those soils is at its softest of the year. That is why we lay plywood under every wheel and under the rails on every driveway placement, and why we photograph the approach on arrival. It is also why a March delivery sometimes gets a different plan from the same delivery in July. The reasoning is set out in driveway protection.

Where the container sits decides whether you need a permit. A container placed entirely on your own driveway or private property is generally outside the City’s right-of-way permit requirement under City Code § 104-24. If any part of the container or its placement touches the sidewalk, the tree lawn or the street, you need a permit in writing from the City Engineer. Section 104-24(A) is explicit that no person shall place or suffer to remain materials of any kind in the right-of-way without a permit in writing from the City Engineer, except while actively loading or unloading. Section 104-24(C) requires the obstruction to be enclosed with barriers and lit at night. On a Rochester street in December, sunset is before five o’clock, so that lighting requirement is a real one and we put reflective marking on every street placement. Contact the Department of Environmental Services for current fees. Our permit guide walks through it.

Rochester’s on-street environment is unusually restrictive in general. The City limits any vehicle to 12 hours in one spot under § 111-16, and under § 111-73(A), when the Commissioner of Environmental Services advises that plowing will be prevented by parked vehicles, the Mayor may declare an emergency and prohibit parking along designated snow routes, publicised by announcement over not less than two radio or television stations. A container in the street is governed separately, by the right-of-way obstruction permit at § 104-24 with its own conditions and time limit. Out in the towns, most of Monroe County bans overnight on-street parking through the winter, with the months and the hours differing town by town. All of which is a long way of saying the same thing: we would rather put the container on your driveway and bring the plywood. See where we run for the towns we cover.

The Five Sizes And What Each One Is For

Choosing Between Two Sizes

When you are honestly between two sizes, the question is what the material is made of. If the load is dense — masonry, plaster, tile in a mortar bed, soil, wet contents — take the smaller container and plan a swap, because the larger one will reach payload while it still looks empty and then it cannot lawfully leave your driveway. If the load is bulky and light — furniture, cabinetry, framing, partitions, packaging — take the larger one, because you are paying to move air either way and a swap costs more than the extra capacity. The second question is footprint. A 15 is around sixteen feet long and a 20 is around twenty-two, and on a narrow city lot with a porch on one side those six feet decide whether the container goes in at all. Measure the usable ground before you call, or send a photograph from the curb, and we will tell you straight whether it will fit. The sizing guide works through worked examples.

Delivery, Access And What We Bring

Every delivery gets the same routine. The driver walks the approach before backing, sets plywood under the wheels and under the rails, photographs the ground on arrival, and puts the container square with the door on the side you asked for. We want roughly 60 feet of straight approach, about ten and a half feet of width and 20 feet or more of overhead. On placement we hold five feet clear of combustible walls, openings and combustible roof eave lines, under the Fire Code of New York State at 19 NYCRR Part 1225. The size threshold that triggers that rule tightened in the 2025 code cycle, so check the current figure locally; the five feet has not changed and it is what we work to. In winter we ask you to clear the set point of snow where you can, because a container set on packed snow moves when the snow goes. And keep the tarp on. This county averages 102 inches of snow a year, and every inch of it that lands in an open container is weight you pay to haul.