Roll-off containers for Pensacola storm cleanup: soaked drywall, carpet, insulation, fencing and limbs, out of the house and off the curb without waiting weeks for a collection pass.
Call (448) 216-5186Upfront pricing · No obligation · Local Escambia County hauler
Six boxes, about thirty seconds. You pick when to be called back, and that is when the phone rings.
Or call (448) 216-5186Pensacola has had two hard lessons in storm debris in six years. After Hurricane Sally in September 2020, city sanitation crews and contractors collected 540,330 cubic yards of debris inside city limits between late September and mid-November, and Escambia County's contractors hauled more than 4.2 million cubic yards across the county. In October 2026 Hurricane Isaias came ashore near Destin, blew the roof off a hotel in Pensacola, and left the city collecting debris again, 3,236 loads of vegetation in its first week alone, with a first pass expected to take four to five weeks.
City storm collection is built for volume. Crews start where the tree canopy is heaviest, clear hazards to drivers and pedestrians first, and fill each truck's remaining weight capacity with smaller debris, which means a pile can be taken in part and the rest left for the next pass. Residents are asked to separate vegetative debris, limbs and leaves, from construction and demolition debris such as building materials, fencing, carpet, furniture and plumbing. That works for the yard. It does not work for the inside of a house that took water.
Carpet and pad that sat in floodwater, drywall soaked from the floor up, insulation, baseboard and the bottom cabinets of a kitchen all start to smell within days in Gulf Coast heat and humidity, and they hold moisture against the framing while they sit. Piling them in the garage or the side yard for a month while the curb crews work through their passes leaves the house damp and the pile growing. A container on the driveway lets the material leave the building the same day it is cut out.
Before anything goes in the box, photograph every room, the waterline on the walls, and each damaged item, with something in the frame to show scale. Keep a list of what was thrown away. Insurance adjusters ask for exactly that, and once the carpet is under four feet of drywall in a dumpster it cannot be photographed again.
A single room with carpet out and drywall cut two to four feet up fits a small box. A flooded first floor of a typical house fills a twenty, and a house that lost its roof, its ceilings and its flooring together can need a thirty or several hauls. Wet debris is much heavier than the same material dry, so a box that looks half full can already be near its weight allowance. Say the material is wet when you call, and expect the allowance to matter more than the volume.
Trees, limbs and leaves belong at the curb for the city's vegetative pass, not in a paid box where they eat up the weight allowance. Hazardous items, including paint, pool chemicals, fuel cans, batteries and anything that holds refrigerant, stay out of the box entirely. Residents can take household hazardous waste to the county's Perdido Landfill drop-off with no fee. Appliances and electronics follow their own rules at the county facilities.
Every hauler on the coast fills up in the same week after a storm. Rental windows shrink, and one Pensacola hauler's own price page carries a storm notice cutting its standard seven days to three. Call early, have the debris cut out and staged when the box arrives, load it in a day or two, and call for the haul as soon as it is full so the box can go to the next house on the list.
Driveways are the usual spot, and a hard surface matters more than ever when the yard is saturated. Fallen limbs and low wires over the drive have to be cleared before the truck can tip the box off. If the box must sit in a city street, check with the City of Pensacola first, and inside city limits make sure the hauler holds a city franchise.
Local list prices for the common sizes, and the per-ton charge that applies when wet debris runs past the allowance, are laid out on the pricing page with their sources, alongside the county's posted landfill rates.
Storm Debris Dumpster Rental in Pensacola. Call (448) 216-5186 and a hauler is dispatched with the right truck. You get the price before the hook goes on.
Call (448) 216-5186Under Chapter 4-3 of the City of Pensacola code, it is unlawful for any person, firm or entity to engage in the business of collecting and disposing of solid waste generated by others without a franchise granted by the city. The mayor grants the franchises, which are non-exclusive. Applicants pay a $200 application fee, and franchisees pay the city $1.50 per cubic yard of container capacity each time a container is collected, or $3.00 per cubic yard for compaction containers, reported quarterly with an independently attested audit. Construction sites that use a solid waste provider other than a city franchisee are subject to an immediate stop work order from the city building official. Tree trimmings and construction debris that the generator removes itself are exempt.
Why it matters: A roll-off box on a job site inside Pensacola has to come from a city franchisee, or the building official can stop the work. The per-yard fee is a cost every in-city hauler carries on each collection, and it is part of what the quote covers.
Source: cityofpensacola.com
Escambia County's schedule of rates for the Perdido Landfill in Cantonment sets solid waste at $45.06 per ton and yard trash at $27.62 per ton, each with an $11.64 minimum. Clean fill, clean dirt and clean concrete, meaning concrete with no rebar and no welded wire, are accepted with no fee. Asbestos is $235.47 per ton and, like all special waste, must be reviewed, approved and scheduled in advance. Uncovered loads pay $35.12 per commercial load. The county's Palafox Transfer Station charges $57.90 per ton. The landfill is open 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, and closed Sunday.
Why it matters: Weight is the part of a dumpster bill that moves, and the county's per-ton gate rate sits underneath every overage charge. A box of clean broken concrete costs nothing to tip, so one bag of trash thrown on top turns a free load into a weighed one.
Sources: myescambia.com · myescambia.com
Hurricane Isaias made landfall near Destin on the evening of Friday 9 October 2026, according to the National Hurricane Center as reported by CBS News, and its winds blew the roof off a hotel in Pensacola. The City of Pensacola began debris collection on 13 October. By 19 October the city had collected 3,236 loads of vegetative debris, estimated the cleanup at $16 million, and said the first pass would take four to five weeks with at least two passes. Residents were asked to keep tree limbs and leaves separate from construction and demolition debris such as building materials, fencing, carpet, furniture and plumbing.
Why it matters: City storm collection runs in passes and starts with trees. Soaked drywall and carpet torn out of a house, or a roof stripped by a contractor, cannot wait weeks at the curb, and that is the work a roll-off box takes off the street.
Sources: cityofpensacola.com · cityofpensacola.com · cbsnews.com
After Hurricane Sally in September 2020, City of Pensacola sanitation crews and contractors collected more than 12,530 loads of storm debris totaling 540,330 cubic yards between 21 September and 13 November, with construction debris such as building materials, drywall, lumber, carpet, furniture and plumbing set out separately. Across the county's 875 square miles, Escambia County's contractors finished at 80,485 loads and 4,221,633 cubic yards.
Why it matters: A direct hit here produces debris on a scale that takes months to clear, and every hauler on the coast is booked in the same week. Getting a box early, loading it fast and calling for the haul promptly is what gets a gutted house emptied while curbside crews are still on their first pass.
Sources: cityofpensacola.com · myescambia.com
Upfront pricing · No obligation · Local Escambia County hauler