Locally Owned Dumpster Rental in Scranton Since 2011

Mike Zaleski grew up in the Providence section, third generation in a city his family came to for the mines. He went to work for a demolition outfit out of school and spent most of his twenties stripping out row homes and double blocks across the valley, watching the same problem repeat itself. The container never came when it was supposed to. When it did, the invoice had grown. And nobody would tell a homeowner that the plaster coming off their walls weighed three times what they thought it did — they just billed the overage afterwards.

In 2011 he bought a used roll-off truck and four cans, parked it on 840 Providence Rd, and started answering the phone himself. The first job was a flooded basement in Olyphant for a woman whose previous hauler had cancelled on her twice. She still calls us, and she still tells the story.

Word moved the way it does in a town this size — through contractors, through neighbours, through the guy at the counter who mentions that the dumpster people actually showed up. We added trucks as the calls came in rather than borrowing against volume we did not have yet. 15 years on we run a small fleet, we still dispatch out of Scranton, and the phone still rings at a desk with somebody local behind it.

Why we care about getting the quote right

The dumpster industry has a reputation problem and it is largely self-inflicted. Low teaser rates, a tonnage allowance buried in the fine print, then a bill with an overage charge nobody explained. We priced against that from day one. When you call, we ask what you are throwing away, what it weighs, how long you need it and where it is going. Then we give you a number that includes delivery, pickup, the rental window and disposal. If we think you are about to order the wrong size, we say so — even when the wrong size is the more expensive one.

What being local actually buys you

It is not a slogan. It means our dispatcher knows which one-way streets a roll-off truck cannot turn around on, which hillside blocks are a bad idea after an ice storm, which alleys behind the double blocks have a service drop hanging too low for the hoist, and roughly what a 1920s four-square is going to produce when you gut the second floor. It means that when the river comes up and half of Lackawanna County needs a container in the same week, our trucks are already here.

We have seen the mistakes so you do not have to

The three that cost people the most money, in order: ordering by volume when the debris is heavy, forgetting that a second layer of shingles doubles the tonnage, and putting a container on a driveway poured three weeks ago. Every one of those is avoidable with one honest conversation before delivery.

We have hauled out of century-old double blocks taken back to the studs, flooded basements in the Flats, restaurant kitchens mid-refit on Lackawanna Avenue, student rentals turning over in May, parish hall renovations, coal-cellar clear-outs nobody had opened since the furnace was converted, and more ice-storm backyards than we would like. Every one of those loads behaves differently at the scale house, and knowing that in advance is most of the job.

Credentials and cover

• Licensed to haul solid waste in Pennsylvania
• Full commercial general liability and auto cover — certificates available on request for GCs and property managers
• Workers’ compensation cover for every driver on the road
• Material taken only to permitted, licensed transfer and disposal facilities
• Compliance with Pennsylvania landfill disposal bans on every load

Contractors and property managers: ask for our COI when you set up an account. We can usually have it emailed the same day.