Bin size guide
Bin size guide
What each roll-off size actually holds, and which jobs suit which. Big Bin runs 14, 30 and 40 yard bins — and where a size is one we do not have, you get told so and pointed at the nearest one that exists.
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Quick answer
What bin sizes are there, and which one do I need?
Roll-off bins are sold by volume in cubic yards, and the common sizes run from about 4 yards to 40. Big Bin — our company — runs three of them: 14, 30 and 40 yard. Every size in the table below carries a plain yes or no against that fleet, and where the answer is no it names the nearest size that does exist. So a job wanting a 10 or a 20 yard bin gets a straight answer rather than a pitch for the size we happen to own. The free weight estimator does the same for one load: put the size of the pile in and it names the bin that holds it.
Bin sizes: the facts
- What a bin size means
- Its volume in cubic yards. Not its footprint, and not a weight limit
- Sizes Big Bin runs
- 14 yard · 30 yard · 40 yard
- Sizes Big Bin does not run
- Everything else, including the 10 and 20 yard bins people search for most. The table below routes each one
- What decides the choice on heavy material
- Weight, not volume. A small bin of concrete or soil reaches a truck’s legal road weight while it still looks half empty
- The three Big Bin sizes, measured
- 14 yard, 4'1" × 11'6" × 7'6". 30 yard, 5'4" × 20' × 7'6". 40 yard, 7' × 20' × 7'6". Height, then length, then width — the container, not the room a truck needs around it
- What to check before ordering
- The footprint and door height of the actual bin, and — on a mixed load — what weight is included in the price
What does a "yard" mean on a bin?
A yard on a bin is a cubic yard of volume. It is not a length, not a footprint, and not a weight limit — which is the single most common misunderstanding about bin sizes.
One cubic yard is 27 cubic feet: a cube three feet long, three feet wide and three feet high. Picture a washing machine with a little room to spare and you are close enough.
So a 20 yard bin holds twenty of those. The number tells you how much material fits inside, and nothing else about the container.
That distinction is why two 20 yard bins from different suppliers can be different shapes. Both hold twenty cubic yards. One might be longer and lower, the other shorter and deeper, and both are honestly described. The section further down on why dimensions vary is about exactly this.
It is also why volume alone does not tell you whether a load can be carried. Twenty cubic yards of packaging and twenty cubic yards of broken concrete fill the same box and weigh nothing like the same. What does your debris weigh? turns the volume into tonnes, and Roll-off bins explained covers how the container gets on and off the truck.
What will your load weigh?
Volume is only half the question, and the half a size chart cannot answer. Two bins of the same size can differ several times over in what they weigh, and weight is what decides whether a truck may legally carry the load at all. The estimator settles that half.
Every common bin size, and whether Big Bin has one
Eighteen sizes turn up in what people search for, and Big Bin runs three of them: 14, 30 and 40 yard. The table below takes each of the eighteen in turn, including the fifteen we do not have.
One more thing about the vocabulary: these sizes get searched under two different nouns. Dumpster rental sets out why a dumpster and a bin are the same container.
Three of those sizes are not roll-off bins at all. The 2, 4 and 6 yard containers are normally front-load bins, which belong to a weekly collection contract rather than to a rental.
The 20 yard bin deserves its own note, because it is the most searched size of all and one Big Bin does not have. For bulky light material a 30 yard bin does the same job with room to spare. For clean concrete or clean fill the question does not arise: those go in the 14 yard and in nothing else.
Where the table points at a different size, treat it as a real answer rather than a brush-off. If only the size you searched for will do, book it from whoever stocks it. Otherwise Roll-off bin rental sets out what a rental here covers, and Get a quote starts one.
| Size | What it typically suits | Big Bin runs it | Nearest size if not |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yard | Not a bin size in practice — usually somebody asking what a cubic yard is | No | 14 yard |
| 2 yard | A lidded container behind a shop or restaurant, emptied on a route | No | Usually a front-load container, not a roll-off. Nearest roll-off: 14 yard |
| 3 yard | The same kind of container, one size up | No | Usually a front-load container, not a roll-off. Nearest roll-off: 14 yard |
| 4 yard | Small commercial waste on a collection contract | No | Usually a front-load container, not a roll-off. Nearest roll-off: 14 yard |
| 5 yard | A single room stripped out, or a small clear-out | No | 14 yard |
| 6 yard | Heavy material in small volumes, where a supplier offers it | No | Usually a front-load container, not a roll-off. Nearest roll-off: 14 yard |
| 8 yard | A bathroom, a small deck, a modest garden clearance | No | 14 yard |
| 9 yard | A kitchen strip-out, or a garage that has filled up over years | No | 14 yard |
| 10 yard | A kitchen or bathroom renovation, a small roof, a garage clear-out | No | 14 yard |
| 12 yard | A larger single-room renovation, or a mid-size clear-out | No | 14 yard |
| 14 yard | A bathroom or kitchen strip-out, a garage clear-out, a small tear-out of heavy material | Yes | — |
| 15 yard | A whole-floor renovation, or a large clear-out | No | 14 yard |
| 16 yard | The same again — a size some suppliers run in place of a 15 | No | 14 yard |
| 20 yard | A full house renovation, a roof, a large clear-out. The most searched size of all | No | 14 yard |
| 25 yard | Sustained renovation work, or a mid-size demolition | No | 30 yard |
| 30 yard | A full renovation, a roof, a house clear-out, a mid-size demolition | Yes | — |
| 40 yard | Whole-house renovations, commercial fit-outs, sustained site work. Bulky light material | Yes | — |
| 60 yard | Beyond a standard roll-off — a job for specialist equipment | No | 40 yard |
Which size does your job need?
Start from the job rather than from the number, because the number means nothing until you know what is going in it.
A single room stripped back to the studs — one bathroom, one small bedroom — is an 8 to 14 yard job. A full kitchen with cabinetry, counters, flooring and packaging usually wants 14 to 20. A whole-house renovation or a commercial fit-out runs to 30 or 40.
Ordinary renovation debris is what makes those larger sizes sensible. Wood, drywall, cabinets and packaging are bulky and light: the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency puts the middle half of real loads between 323 and 838 pounds per cubic yard. Room runs out well before weight does, which is why one large haul beats two small ones on this material.
A roof is its own case, and it catches people out. The US EPA puts asphalt roof shingles at 731 pounds per cubic yard. They stack flat, so a tear-off fills less space than expected and weighs more.
On heavy material the whole rule inverts. Broken concrete, brick and excavated soil run out of allowable weight long before they run out of room. Neither clean concrete nor clean fill is offered above the 14 yard at all. Commercial bin and dumpster rental works through where that ceiling comes from.
None of which is the top of the box. A container is loaded to a painted line rather than to its rim — eighteen inches down, on all three — so on each of the three in this fleet the last foot and a half is headroom rather than capacity. 31" off the floor in the 14 yard, 66" in the 40. That is a loading rule and not a weight limit: above the line a load cannot be secured, so the truck will not take it however light it is.
Whether we come to you at all is a separate question, and Bin rental near you answers it. A build changes what it needs as it goes, which is covered on Construction bin rental. For anything dense, put the dimensions into What does your debris weigh? before choosing, so the tonnes are known before the size is.
Work out the weight, then pick the size
The estimator turns what you are clearing into tonnes, and its own table gives the weight of a full bin of each material. Pick a size from that rather than from the volume alone. No email address is wanted at any stage.
What our customers say
From our Google Business Profile, read on 2026-09-16
I would like to shout out these guys! Finding a waste disposal company that handles heavy materials like concrete without a bunch of hidden fees or headaches is usually very difficult but Big Bin made the process very easy. Pricing was great and the team was very professional. I would genuinely recommend them for any big project!
Ayman Khaled On time, quick and easy to communicate with, and great service all around
Eldin Malkic Amazing work ! Very good time that takes good care of you !
Evgeny Litvinenko
Why bin dimensions vary between suppliers
Volume is exact and footprint is not, and that is the thing to know before trusting any dimensions chart you find.
A bin sold as 20 yards holds twenty cubic yards. How it achieves that is up to whoever built it. One container reaches the volume by being long and shallow; another by being shorter with higher walls. Both are 20 yard bins and neither is mislabelled.
So a dimensions chart describes the containers that company owns. It does not describe the bin that will arrive on your driveway from a different supplier, and a chart found on a US rental marketplace may not describe a Canadian container at all.
This matters in the two places where it actually costs something. A driveway with a gate or a narrow side return is a length-and-width question, not a volume one. And a bin you have to lift material over the side of is a wall-height question — the difference between walking a wheelbarrow up a ramp and lifting every piece by hand.
The useful move is to ask rather than to look it up. Ask the supplier for the footprint of the specific bin, the wall height, and whether it has a door at the back that opens. Those three answers decide whether a size works on your site, and no general chart can give them.
Which is the argument for publishing our own rather than a general chart, so here they are. The 14 yard measures 4'1" × 11'6" × 7'6", the 30 measures 5'4" × 20' × 7'6" and the 40 measures 7' × 20' × 7'6" — height first, then length, then width. Those are the containers Big Bin owns and nobody else's.
One caution about reading them, because it is the mistake that costs money. A container’s own outline is not the space a delivery needs. The truck has to get alongside, lift its bed to roughly the height of the box standing on end, and roll the thing off in a straight line — so the room required is longer and taller than the numbers above, and by how much is a question about the vehicle rather than the bin.
To ask about a specific bin before booking, Contact Big Bin. How a truck places one, and what it needs overhead, is on Roll-off bins explained.
What each size costs, and how a rental runs
A bigger bin costs more, but not in proportion to its volume, and the reason is worth knowing before comparing quotes.
Two of the three things you are paying for do not change with size. The truck drives out once to deliver and once to collect, whatever is on the back of it. What changes is the container itself and the disposal.
So the jump from a 14 to a 30 is much smaller than doubling. On bulky light material that usually makes the larger bin the cheaper way to move the same job, because one haul beats two.
What moves a bill further than size does is the material, because the two are not billed the same way. A mixed load includes a quantity of weight and charges per tonne above it. Clean concrete and clean fill include none, and are sold as one flat haul with a fill line instead. How each is assembled is on What a bin costs, and Get a quote prices the size you have landed on.
01
Tell us about the job
Call or email with what you are clearing, where a container can stand, and when you need it.
02
The bin arrives
A truck sets the container where you asked. Nothing is tipped on site: you or your crew fill it, on your own schedule.
03
It leaves full
The truck takes the whole container away, and the load crosses a scale at the receiving site.
When a roll-off bin is the wrong answer entirely
Sometimes the honest answer is that none of these sizes is what you want, and there are three versions of that.
The first is a container that stays at a building and is emptied on a fixed day — the 2, 4 and 6 yard sizes above. That is a collection contract rather than a rental, Big Bin does not run one, and Commercial bin and dumpster rental explains how the two services differ.
The second is a single carload. If everything you are getting rid of fits in a pickup or a trailer and you are willing to drive it, a transfer station will take it. You pay by weight at the gate, which means on the facility’s own scale rather than by the load. That is cheaper than any bin.
The third is a job where somebody has to be paid to carry the material out. That is junk removal, priced on labour and volume rather than on a container. If a crew is already on site and will fill it, a bin is almost always the cheaper half — and Get a quote starts one.
That third one has a page of its own: Bin rental or junk removal? sets out which jobs suit a crew and which suit a container.
None of those three is a lost cause. They are different purchases, and knowing which one you are making before you call is worth more than a size chart.
Questions about bin sizes
How big is a 20 yard bin?
Twenty cubic yards of volume — that is the only part of the answer that is exact. A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, so a 20 yard bin holds about 540 cubic feet of material. Its footprint is a different question, and there is no general answer to it. Containers of the same volume are built to different patterns, so one supplier’s 20 yard bin can be longer and lower than another’s. Ask whoever is delivering it for the length, width and wall height of the actual bin — the way Big Bin publishes its own three, at 4'1" × 11'6" × 7'6", 5'4" × 20' × 7'6" and 7' × 20' × 7'6", read as height by length by width. Big Bin does not run a 20 yard bin; the nearest sizes here are 14 and 30 yard.
What is the difference between a 10 yard and a 20 yard bin?
Twice the volume, and much less than twice the footprint — the extra usually comes from higher walls and some added length rather than from a container twice the size. In practice a 10 yard bin suits a kitchen or bathroom renovation, a small roof or a garage clear-out, while a 20 yard suits a full house renovation or a large clear-out. On heavy material the difference matters less than it looks, because both reach a truck’s legal road weight long before they are full. Big Bin runs neither size: the nearest are 14 and 30 yard.
Does Big Bin have a 10 yard bin?
No. The fleet is three sizes — 14, 30 and 40 yard — and a 10 yard bin is not one of them. For most jobs people are thinking of when they search for a 10 yard, the 14 yard bin is the closest and holds a little more. If a job genuinely needs a 10 yard container and nothing else will do, book it from a supplier who stocks one.
How many cubic yards is a pickup truck load?
A full-size pickup bed filled level holds roughly two to three cubic yards, and a smaller truck rather less. Loaded above the sides it is more, but that is where it stops being a safe load. The useful comparison is that even the smallest roll-off bin here holds several pickup loads: at 14 yards the box is around five or six level bed-loads, and you fill it to the painted line rather than to the rim. If your whole job fits in one or two truck loads, driving it to a transfer station yourself is usually cheaper than any bin.
Is a bigger bin always more expensive?
More expensive, but not in proportion to the volume, and sometimes cheaper overall. Two of the three things a rental price covers do not change with size: the truck drives out once to deliver and once to collect whatever is on the back of it. So the step up from one size to the next is much smaller than the jump in capacity. On bulky light material, one larger bin usually beats two smaller hauls. What moves a bill further than size does is the material: a mixed load carries a weight allowance and charges per tonne above it, while clean concrete and clean fill carry no weight charge and are sold as one flat haul.
Sources
Every fact on this page that is not simply how renting a bin works, and the public document it came from.
Source 1
Volume-to-Weight Conversions (document w-sw2-08)
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency — September 2021
Source 2
Volume-to-Weight Conversion Factors
United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery — April 2016
Reviewed August 2026Kenan Sljoka
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Not sure which size fits?
Tell us what you are clearing and roughly how much of it there is. We will tell you which of the three sizes holds it, or say plainly if the job wants a size we do not run. Get a quote runs without an email address, and every way to reach the business is on Contact Big Bin.