Plenty of guides will tell you how to hire a skip. This one is different, because these seven tips come from the people who actually deliver them, our drivers, who between them have placed skips on every kind of drive, lane and street this region has to offer. Follow their advice and your hire runs smoothly from the first phone call to the final lift, whatever size you choose from our range of skip sizes.
One, Think Like the Lorry
The most common delivery-day surprise is a spot the customer loves and the lorry cannot reach. A skip wagon needs width to get in, room to swing its lifting arms, and crucially, clear air above, because the arms rise well over the cab height when loading and unloading. Overhanging branches, telephone wires and low cables rule out spots that look perfect from the ground. Choose somewhere flat and stable, move the cars before we arrive, and if you are in any doubt, describe the access when you book and the driver will know before setting off whether your street needs the smaller wagon.
Two, Keep Hazardous Waste Out
Petrol, oil, paint tins with paint still in them, batteries, gas bottles and chemicals cannot travel in a skip, full stop. It is not company fussiness but waste law, and a hazardous item discovered in a load can hold up the collection and the disposal behind it. Our guide to hazardous waste and why it cannot go in a skip explains the reasoning, and the practical route for these items is the council’s hazardous collection points, which handle them safely and usually free for householders.
Three, Load It the Way the Driver Will Lift It
A skip is lifted on chains at an angle, which is why loading matters more than people think. Heavy, flat items go in first and the weight spreads evenly across the base, because a load piled high on one side shifts when the skip leaves the ground, and a shifting load is exactly what a driver does not want above a customer’s wall. Fill level with the rim and no higher, since an overfilled skip cannot be sheeted or transported legally, and our guide on can a skip be too full covers what happens when one is. A well-loaded skip lifts clean in two minutes. A badly loaded one can mean unloading the top layer while the wagon waits.
Four, Size It by the Job, Not the Guess
Too small means a second hire, too big means paying for air, and the cure for both is describing the project rather than guessing the volume. For most household jobs, a clearout, a garden tidy, a single room refurbished, our 4 tonne midi skip is the answer, with the builders skip stepping in for renovation rubble and bigger strip-outs. Tell us the rooms and the materials and we will match the size, and if the job sits on the boundary, one size up always beats a second skip later.
Five, Let the Council Take Its Share
Some items are better off never entering the skip at all. Fridges and freezers cannot go in one anyway, and mattresses, carpets and similar bulky single items are often collected by the council’s bulky waste service for a modest booked fee, or taken free at the recycling centre if you have the means to transport them. Using those routes for the awkward items saves your skip space for the waste that has no other home, which is the cheapest capacity upgrade there is.
Six, Settle the Public-or-Private Question Early
A skip on your own driveway or land needs no permission from anyone. A skip on the road or pavement needs a council permit before it can be delivered, without exception, and an unpermitted roadside skip risks fines and removal. We arrange the permit as part of your booking, and our skip hire permit questions answered guide covers the common questions, including the lead time to allow, which is the reason to settle this point at the start of the week rather than the end of it.
Seven, Once It Is Down, Leave It Down
The final tip is the one our drivers feel most strongly about. Never try to move a delivered skip yourself, not with a crowbar, not with rollers, not with a tow rope and good intentions. Even an empty skip weighs several hundred kilograms, a part-loaded one far more, and dragging one damages driveways, walls and backs in roughly that order. If the position needs adjusting, ring us and the wagon will reposition it properly. The same call books your collection, after which the load comes back to our own facility to be sorted and recycled, as our environmental and recycling page explains.
Local Knowledge on Every Round
These tips come from rounds our drivers run every day, from the new estates served by Skelmersdale skip hire to the busy streets covered by Bamber Bridge skip hire, and after more than a century there are few drives in this region a Martlands wagon has not seen.
Put the seven tips to work and your hire will be the easy kind. Call us on 01704 779345 or send the details through our contact page and the driver who arrives will already know everything needed to make delivery day simple.
