01The short answer
A 10 to 20 yard roll-off delivered anywhere in Tampa from $425, no distance charge, seven days a week between 9 AM and 6 PM. On your own driveway you need nothing. In the street you need a City of Tampa right-of-way permit, and unlike everywhere else we work, it is a real fee with a real queue.
Plan around that lead time and Tampa is straightforward. Ignore it and you can get a stop-work order on a job that had nothing wrong with it except where the can was parked.
02The right-of-way permit is real, priced, and slow
Tampa City Code Sec. 22-8(a) makes it unlawful to place “in or upon any place, street, sidewalk, alley…any article or thing without a permit”, and the city can remove an obstruction at the owner's expense. Sec. 22-60 adds that it is unlawful to work in city right-of-way without one.
The city's fee schedule has a line item for exactly this — “Temporary Structure in ROW (Dumpster, Trailer, PODS)”:
| Item | City fee |
|---|---|
| Temporary structure in ROW — base | $50 |
| Permit fee | $100 |
| Sidewalk closure | $100 |
| Residential driveway | $100 |
The city's own page puts right-of-way review and approval at 12 to 15 business days. That is three weeks of calendar time. If your job needs a street placement, the permit application is the first thing you do, not the last. Transportation Services, 306 E. Jackson Street, (813) 274-3104.
The placement rules, once you have it
- At least 10 feet of traffic lane has to stay clear.
- 36 inches clear all round any fire hydrant.
- Construction Services can issue a stop-work order over an obstruction, not just over the building work.
Most of our Tampa jobs are driveway drops and none of this applies. We will tell you which one you are.
03Brick streets, and why we will not put a can on one
Tampa's Pavement and Right-of-Way Restoration Standard is unusually specific about brick. Work that disturbs a street listed as a historical street has to be restored with the original bricks, and any brick that comes up must be palletised and delivered to the city's Mobility Department. Restoration has to meet or exceed existing conditions and the permittee stays liable for a year.
That is a serious exposure to take on for the sake of a parking spot. Ybor's 7th Avenue finished its second phase of re-bricking in April 2026; Hyde Park residents have fought publicly to stop their brick streets being paved over. These are streets the city and the neighbourhood both care about.
So the policy is simple: in Ybor, Hyde Park, Seminole Heights and Tampa Heights, the can goes on the driveway or the job gets a different plan. Narrow streets, alley access and permanent kerbside parking make most of those placements impractical anyway.
Those four are also Tampa's local historic districts — Hyde Park, Seminole Heights and Tampa Heights under the Architectural Review Commission, Ybor under the Barrio Latino Commission. Whether a temporary container triggers a Certificate of Appropriateness is not something the published guidelines answer either way, so if your job includes demolition or a permanent exterior change, ask Historic Preservation before you start rather than after.
04Sorting the load is worth real money here
Hillsborough is the one county we work where getting the load wrong is charged as a penalty rather than a rate.
| Facility / material | Gate rate |
|---|---|
| McKay Bay, processible and non-processible | $115 a ton |
| County commercial, processable | $141 a ton |
| County commercial, non-processable | $104 a ton |
| Yard and wood waste | $65 a ton |
| Asbestos, pre-approved only | $239 a ton |
| Mixed loads | Double the posted rate |
| Waste originating outside the county | Double at McKay Bay |
Two consequences you should know about. A clean yard-waste load tips at well under half the rate of a mixed one, so if you are clearing a lot and a yard on the same job, two cans beat one more often than people expect. And the Southeast County Landfill does not accept construction and demolition debris at all — C&D routes to private processors, which is part of why the rate card prices tonnage the way it does.
05Old houses, and the asbestos rule nobody mentions
Seminole Heights, Tampa Heights and Ybor are full of pre-war housing stock — lath and plaster, old flooring, old pipe insulation. That puts a real regulation in play that does not apply to a 2019 build in Davenport.
The Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County — not the city, not the state — enforces the federal asbestos NESHAP rule. Demolition and renovation work needs an asbestos survey and notification at least 10 working days in advance. It applies to commercial buildings, to more than one single-family home, and to residential buildings over four units. Filing fees run $310 to $360.
We are a hauling company, not an abatement contractor, and we will not knowingly take asbestos in a roll-off. If your renovation is in an old Tampa house and nobody has done a survey, that conversation needs to happen with EPC before we bring a can — for your sake more than ours.
06What cannot go in the can
Hillsborough refuses construction and demolition debris, concrete, asphalt, liquid waste, yard waste, hazardous materials, containerised waste, biohazardous waste, PCBs and radioactive material at the Southeast County Landfill. Asbestos and animal carcasses need pre-approval.
McKay Bay's scale house also turns away wet drywall, bricks, rocks, dirt, tires, electronics, hazardous material and liquids.
Tires, appliances, scrap metal, electronics, paint and batteries go to the county's Community Collection Centers — Alderman's Ford, Hillsborough Heights, Northwest, South County and Wimauma. Household hazardous waste runs on a Saturday rotation: Sheldon Road first Saturday, South County second, Hillsborough Heights third, 8 AM to 2 PM.
Tell us what is in the pile before we bring the can. It is a two-minute conversation that saves a rejected load and a return trip.
More towns we cover: Plant City, Auburndale and Thonotosassa.
Not sure which size you need? Drag the handle on the size guide and the can grows with you. Also worth two minutes: do you need a permit? and what can’t go in the can. More reading: what a dumpster costs, roofing dumpsters, junk removal, hurricane debris pickup and all our guides.