For a roof tear-off you want the 14-yard, not the bigger dumpster, and the reason catches people out every time. Shingles are heavy. A tear-off is the one job where the load hits the truck's legal road weight long before it fills the walls, so the taller dumpster buys you headroom you physically cannot use.
Roofers measure in squares, and a square is a hundred square feet of finished roof. Architectural shingles run somewhere around 250 pounds a square. A typical house around Springfield lands between 20 and 40 squares. One layer of tear-off, then, runs somewhere between two and a half and five tons before anything else goes in. That is the number that matters, and it is why we ask for your square count and your layer count when you call rather than asking how big the pile looks.
Layers are the part that surprises homeowners. Plenty of houses in the older parts of town have a second layer nobody knew about, sitting under the first, and finding it doubles the debris in an afternoon. If your roofer opens the roof and finds one, that is a phone call, not a disaster. We would much rather add a second dumpster mid-job than have you try to bury the extra in the first one.
What else comes off the roof adds up quietly. Felt, old flashing, drip edge, ridge cap, and any decking that turns out to be rotted all ride along with the shingles. None of it weighs what the shingles weigh, but it takes room. Mention it on the call so the dumpster is sized for the whole job, not just the headline number.
Where the dumpster sits matters more on a tear-off than on almost any other job. Your crew is throwing debris down, so every foot between the eave and the dumpster is a foot somebody carries a loaded tarp. We deliver on a trailer behind a pickup with a hydraulic lift, which means we can usually put the dumpster closer to the house than a full-size roll-off truck could manage.
Both our dumpsters stand on the same 14 by 7 foot footprint, so the choice between them is never about driveway space. Move the cars, leave the truck a straight run to back in, and check overhead for limbs and service wires where the dumpster is going to land.
If the driveway is stamped or decorative concrete, ask about boards under the wheels when you book. They are available on request and they go under the dumpster anyway on grass or gravel.
Metal roofs are a different job. The panels come off in long sheets, and a sheet laid in at an angle wastes most of the dumpster. Cut them down, lay them flat, and the same 14-yard that would have taken three trips takes one.
Nails come with a tear-off. Any roofer worth hiring runs a magnetic sweep across the driveway and the yard before they pull out, so ask yours to confirm they do it. That is not our job, but it is the difference between a finished job and a month of flat tires.
On price, the 14-yard starts at $249 and comes with a three-day rental period, which covers most tear-offs with a day to spare. Extra days are $20 each if the weather turns and the crew loses a day. That's a normal call to make partway through, not something to sort out in advance.
Weight is billed after pickup, once the load has crossed a scale. Kyle goes over how that works on the phone before anything is scheduled. On a shingle job, that's the part worth understanding up front. There is more detail on the roofing dumpster page and the full rate breakdown on the pricing page.
Call (417) 766-2029 with your square count and how many layers you are expecting, and we will tell you which dumpster to take.