Yard Waste & Tree Limbs in a Roll-Off Dumpster: Texas Rules

Yard work generates more debris than most homeowners expect. A few hours of pruning produces a brush pile that fills the bed of a pickup. A storm cleanup or major tree job can fill a 15 yard easily.

Here’s what you can put in a roll-off for yard waste in Texas, what to think about for weight, and how to load efficiently.

What’s accepted

The list is generous:

• Branches and limbs of any species
• Brush, shrubs, and hedges
• Leaves, needles, and pine straw
• Grass clippings (preferably bagged)
• Sod and turf (heavy)
• Small stumps (under about 18 inches across the cut face)
• Tree trunks in manageable pieces
• Untreated outdoor lumber — fence boards, deck boards
• Mulch and old wood chips
• Garden plants and flowers
• Bagged dirt (heavy)
• Small amounts of rock and gravel

Both untreated and pressure-treated outdoor lumber are accepted. Old fence pickets, deck boards, garden bed timbers — fine.

Weight is the watch-out

This is where yard work surprises people. A pickup-truck-bed full of branches feels light. A pickup of fresh-cut wood weighs more than you’d guess. And dirt, sod, and stones are dramatically heavy.

Approximate weights:

• Loose dry branches — about 200 lb per cubic yard
• Cut wood (logs, trunks) — about 600 lb per cubic yard
• Wet leaves and grass clippings — about 600 lb per cubic yard
• Mulch (older, wet) — about 800 lb per cubic yard
• Sod with soil — about 2,500 lb per cubic yard
• Loose dirt or topsoil — about 2,500 lb per cubic yard
• Gravel or small rock — about 2,800 lb per cubic yard

A 15 yard packed with branches and brush typically weighs 1.5–2 tons — comfortably under any weight allowance. A 15 yard packed with sod, dirt, or stone hits the road weight limit at well under half full.

If your project is mostly dirt or rock, talk to us first. Sometimes the right answer is a 15 yard hauled twice, not a 30 once.

Stumps: a specific note

Stumps are accepted, but with caveats:

• Small stumps (residential trees, under 18 inches at the cut) are fine
• Medium stumps (18–30 inches) usually fine, sometimes with a surcharge at the landfill
• Large stumps (over 30 inches, mature oak, pecan, cypress) frequently refused or heavily surcharged

If you have a huge stump, the better path is often a stump grinder rental. Grinding turns it into mulch on site, which can either stay on site or go in the roll-off as mulch (much lighter, much less troublesome).

Loading yard waste efficiently

Yard waste packs poorly without intent. Three habits:

Cut to length. Branches over 4 ft should be cut down. Long branches stick up out of the box, can prevent the tarp from going on for haul, and waste vertical space.

Stack, don’t pile. A pile of brush has 70% air. Stacking branches in the same direction reduces that to about 40%. Run them parallel along the long axis of the box.

Bag the small stuff. Leaves, grass clippings, small brush — all of this loads at three times the density when bagged. Contractor bags are cheap, and a few bags of leaves take up a fraction of what loose leaves do.

Stumps go in last. Large round objects don’t pack with anything. Save stump space for the top of the load.

Texas-specific yard situations

A few patterns specific to our area:

Cedar clearing in the Hill Country

A common project in Boerne, Bulverde, Comfort, and across the Hill Country: clearing mountain cedar (juniper). Cedar takes up enormous volume because of its branching habit, but the wood itself is light. A single mature cedar can fill a quarter of a 15 yard if not cut down.

Cut into manageable lengths and stacked, cedar loads efficiently. We see plenty of property owners do this themselves and it’s straightforward roll-off work.

Live oak limbs and storm damage

After Hill Country storms, live oak limbs are the most common cleanup material. They’re heavier than cedar — significantly so — but cut to 4 ft and stacked, they load fine.

Watch for oak wilt protocols. Some Hill Country counties have seasonal restrictions on oak limb disposal during oak wilt risk windows (roughly Feb through June). The rules don’t typically affect roll-off use specifically, but some homeowners choose to delay non-urgent oak work outside that window.

Northeast Texas pine

Around Mount Vernon, Pittsburg, and Sulphur Springs, pine is the dominant tree. Pine logs are lighter than oak per cubic foot but produce massive amounts of needles, branches, and bark.

For pine cleanup, the bagged-leaves rule is huge — pine straw bagged is a fraction of the volume of pine straw loose.

Mesquite and brush

For working ranchland with brush clearing, the volumes get serious. We’ve delivered 30s for ongoing brush clearing on small properties. The wood is dense, so weight is the constraint, not volume.

Hauling vs roll-off

The break-even between “I’ll just take it to the dump myself” and renting a roll-off is around three pickup loads of yard waste, in our experience. Less than that, hauling makes sense. More than that, the roll-off saves time, your truck, and your back.

Three pickup loads is a single-tree job for a mature shade tree. A real yard cleanup is usually 5–8 loads. A whole-property clearing project is double or triple that. The arithmetic almost always favors the rental once the volume is past one tree’s worth.

What to keep out

The roll-off rules still apply for yard work:

• Liquid pesticides or herbicides — even residue in spray containers
• Treated wood debris in industrial quantities (residential is fine)
• Tires (sometimes used as planters; still no)
• Plastic pots in commercial volumes (fine in residential)
• Burn-pile ash when still warm — let it fully cool first

Bagged grass clippings, leaves, branches, and brush are all fine.

If you’re planning a major yard project across Boerne or Mount Vernon and want to gut-check the size, give us a holler at (903) 806-4181 or book online. Yard volume is harder to estimate than household volume because so much of it is air, and we’ve seen enough yard jobs to give you a useful answer in two minutes.