We hire out skips, so there is an obvious answer we could give to this and it would not always be the right one. Skip or bulk bag is a fair question, the two things suit quite different jobs, and telling somebody to book a container for a job that wants a bag is a good way of never hearing from them again. Our Parbold skip hire service covers the village and the surrounding lanes, and this is how we would think it through.
What a bulk bag actually is
A bulk bag is a woven polypropylene sack, usually holding about a cubic yard, that you buy empty, fill at your own pace and then have collected. Collection is by a lorry with a crane or grab arm that lifts the bag from the kerb or the drive.
The appeal is obvious. No hire period ticking away, no permit for a bag sitting on your own ground, and you can fill it over a month if that suits you. For somebody doing a job in evenings and weekends, that flexibility is real.
Where the bag really wins
Small quantities. If a job is producing less than a couple of cubic yards, a bag is usually the sensible answer and a skip is overkill.
Jobs with no fixed timescale. Clearing a garage slowly across several weekends suits a bag far better than a hire period you are watching the clock on. Our flexible skip hire options narrow that gap, but a bag still wins on a truly open ended job.
Very tight access. Some of the older properties around Parbold and along the lanes have driveways where a skip lorry simply cannot manoeuvre. A crane lorry needs a different kind of access, and sometimes it can reach where we cannot.
Where the bag loses badly
Weight. This is the big one and it is the source of most disappointment. A bulk bag has a weight limit like everything else, and a bag full of soil, rubble, tile or concrete will exceed it long before it is full.
People fill a bag with rubble, ring for collection, and find the crane cannot lift it. At that point you have a bag of rubble on your drive that has to be emptied by hand into something else, which is the worst possible position. A skip taken away by a lorry designed to carry that weight avoids the problem entirely.
So for anything heavy and inert, a skip is the answer, and our page on skip size versus weight limits explains the mechanics that apply to both.
Volume is the other one. Once a job is producing more than two or three bags’ worth, the arithmetic tips decisively. A 4 tonne midi skip holds considerably more than a bag and costs less than the equivalent number of collections.
Crane access is the third. A crane lorry needs to get alongside the bag with room to swing, and it needs overhead clearance for the lift. On a lane with trees over it, or a drive with a low gateway, that is a harder requirement to satisfy than a skip drop rather than an easier one.
The honest rule of thumb
Under two cubic yards and light, take the bag. Anything heavy, take the skip whatever the volume. Anything above about three cubic yards, take the skip. Open ended timescale with a small light load, take the bag.
For most of the jobs we get asked about around here, a house clearance, a garden reclamation, a bathroom, a shed and base, the skip is the right tool and it is not close. For a single weekend of clearing out one cupboard, it is not.
The thing that is the same either way
Whoever takes your waste away must be a registered waste carrier, and you should end up with documentation showing where it went. That applies to a bag collection exactly as it applies to a skip, and it is worth checking rather than assuming, particularly where a bag is being collected by whoever happens to be advertising locally.
Our skip hire duty of care guide explains why that matters and what should exist. If waste from your property is later found dumped, the trail comes back to you, and a bag is no different from a skip in that respect.
The other thing that is the same is what cannot go in either. Chemicals, gas bottles, fridges, electrical items and anything hazardous are excluded from both, and our guide to what you can put in a skip covers the list.
What happens to it afterwards
This is where we would make the case for us specifically rather than for skips generally. Everything we collect comes back to our own recycling centre rather than being handed to a third party, so we can tell you what happened to your load rather than passing the question on. Our environmental and recycling page sets out how the sorting works.
Local coverage
We cover the village and the lanes around it regularly, running Appley Bridge skip hire and Skelmersdale skip hire jobs alongside Parbold, and our drivers know which of the older accesses are workable and which are not.
Ring us on 01695 769123 and describe the job. If a bag is the better answer we will tell you so. Our contact page is there if you would rather write it down.
