The 7 Secrets to Successful Skip Hire
By Mark Attwood

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Our research suggests that there are over 17 million skips hired in the UK every year for domestic use alone! That’s a lot of skips and if you’ve ever looked in Yellow Pages you’ll see that there are a lot of skip companies out there to choose from with no real way of knowing what kind of service you’re going to get before it turns up!

If, like us, you’ve ever hired a skip, chances are you will have had a good experience with a professional, licensed waste collector with no hassles or grief.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. If you called more than one company before you actually hired a skip you may have found that some of them:

- won’t quote prices over the phone
- won’t tell you what time it will be dropped off, or picked up
- will only accept cash payments to the driver

You might have even had a bad experience where the driver has refused to take away your skip without throwing some of the rubbish back in your garden, demanded more money before taking it away, damaged your property by bad handling of their wagon and the skip…

This guide is for you: It answers all the most common questions associated with skip hire so that you know exactly what you’re getting into when you hire a skip and understand the whys and wherefores involved in skip hire so you never have a bad experience…EVER!

1. How can I tell which skip companies in the Yellow Pages are the good ones?

Unless you personally know the company, you can’t. Any fool with a wagon and a skip can get an advert designed and printed to entice you to call them, but mainly it’s a lottery not just in terms of prices and service, but also in terms of what actually happens to your waste – something that depressingly few of us actually think, or even care about.

Skip companies are not actually regulated at the time of writing. The good ones operate their own licensed waste transfer stations (regulated by the Environment Agency) and are members of the Institute of Wastes Management (a professional body that promotes education and raising standards in waste management).

The bad ones are just cowboys that often fly-tip your waste and therefore add to your council tax bill - cos the council are the ones who have to clean it up! (Flytipping is now costing local councils over £2.5 million a year! That’s our tax money!) Did you know? “Every 35 seconds, somebody, somewhere is fly-tipping in the UK”

2. Why do skips cost so much money?

No-one is pretending skip hire is cheap, but think about the overheads involved:

Skip Wagon £35,000+
Skips £500/each for standard builderskip
Vehicle Insurance £2000/year per vehicle
Public Liability £1250/year per vehicle
Employer’s Liability £1250/year per vehicle
Skip Wagon driver £25,000/year
Fuel £20,000/year
Office staff £18,000/year per member of staff
Landfill taxes £18/ton increasing by £3 every year until 2010 where it will stand at £35/ton
Recycling costs Cost of buying shredders, trommels, weighbridges, picking stations etc - £millions

Soon adds up doesn’t it? Getting rid of waste is not a cheap business, but it has to go somewhere!

3. Why isn’t my skip dropped off and picked up when I ask for it?

This isn’t always the skip company’s fault – too many people don’t understand that hiring a skip is not like calling a taxi. Just think about what goes into the average skip lorry driver’s day – it’s heavy haulage we’re talking about here, and lots of things can go wrong on a pick-up or drop off that will slow down the whole day’s schedule, such as a customer putting toxic waste in a skip, overfilling it, or the driver being given incorrect drop off details by a customer.

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