Anyone ever go to a home building site, get permission to leave a scrap wood trailer? Just thought about this, seems like not too bad of an idea, that is if you can secure your trailer, be able to pick it up once or so a week. Unload it at your place, take it back, and keep doing this. Just a thought.
Might be easier to simply ask if you can take the scrap pile. That way you can leave whatever you don’t want like pressure treated wood, electrical wires, scrap bricks. You’d probably end up with all sorts of junk in your trailer.
never thought of that. Seems like a good idea if you have the time. Although builders dont seem to care what they throw into dumpsters. Youll end up with plywood/osb/lvl beams etc. All non burnables. I used to raid construction dumpsters of their scrap wood many years ago.
This. I had messaged someone about some cut offs used in building and they came around to dumping it out in the field area. Well come to find out they put a ridiculous amount of wood scrap that was painted eave trim and osb. I messaged them to ask before about how much OSB or painted pieces saying there would be a “little bit” of them.shoot I had to fill the trailer full of OSB alone to dump it out. Not happening again. If you can, supervise the trailer loading.Then you can say no. Just be careful about this as it may backfire as someone’s attempt to use your trailer as their free dump.
I'm sure this is what would happen. I don't even know if they would allow you on site picking up scrap wood due to the possibility of you injuring yourself.
Commercial jobs probably not. Way too much safety and liability stuff going on, Houses, yeah they don’t care too much unless they can tell your an idiot before getting out of the truck. If they’re wearing hard hats on the job don’t bother asking would be my litmus test.
very true. Years back i did a roof on a new house (a rarity for me). During my breaks i would grab scrap wood and load my truck. I had a partial 5 gallon bucket of roofing cement (tar) i left next to the dumpster as i needed room for the scrap. Next day i needed some of it. I opened it and found one of the carpenters had used it for a dump ster.
Been there done that. As a mason we scoffed up all the Sheetrock compound buckets we could. Seeing as we were usually done before the taping commenced it wasn’t often. Gotta be wary of the ones the tapers put the lids back on Dang if that carpenter had lost his balance that would have been a real mess LOL
True. He wouldve gotten tarred but not feathered! For me it was good excuse to go get a coffee! I knew where every Dunkin Donuts was in my county!
^^^^^^^ This. Most sites here have a dumpster in what will become the driveway and all the scraps and garbage go in it. Starting a year or so ago they were supposed to have a separate container for sheetrock as it was supposed to all be recycled. Dunno how that's working out. Asking for all the two bys to put in another dumpster probably won't go over well. A lot of trim work is primed/painted these days.
Permission to dumpster dive, sure. Leave a container? No way. Just like any profession, there are good and bad people in it. And I’ve worked with some honorable ones. But my personal experience is I don’t trust a contractor or a logger unless I’ve got a 12 gauge in one hand and a Rottweiler in the other and I can supervise 24/7. If you have a good working relationship with someone and he’s shown himself to be trustworthy, treat him like gold. But even then, on many if not most residential construction jobs, you’ve got day laborers. That’s a wild card in the mix. Never know what’s going to end up in there besides burnable wood. And in all fairness, these guys are trying to earn a living and don’t have time to mess around sorting wood. They want to throw everything in a dumpster and get back to it. Time is money.
You might have better luck at a cabinet maker. They might let you pick through scraps. There's still that liability question.
Lots of good comments on leaving a trailer. #1 it would be just small jobs, housing mostly, nothing that big. That way i could have a 1 on 1 with the builder, most of them around here are pretty good guys. And, would appreciate some one coming though and taking a small trailer load out of their way off and on. I was on a pretty good sized bridge job one time. When we got close to the end of the job, the boss come around, told me to start banding all the wood up , every thing down to 6ft long. Well i did that, had a LOT of wood banded up. Then he came around again, ''nothing under 6ft long'', later on it was 8ft or longer, lol. In the end, he said,'' take anything you want'', most was good clean lumber. You should have seen what i ended up having to burn~~ This was in the eastern part of the state where its nice and dry most of the time, cold in the winter , but, dry, boy did i ever have some nice wood, both to burn, and to build things with!!
The area I live in has a decent home building boom...Love the site of a new foundation going in...tells me there will be scrap to be scrounged. I have asked at every job site, and they said take it all. Even had one foreman pay me $50 bucks to haul a scrap pile away. That one I ended up with alot of junk, but also got 4 or 5 full sheets of plywood with damaged corners, and alot of 5 to 7 foot 2x4, 2x6,...etc. I actually built all the shelving in my root cellar and shed with construction site scrap.
Before I was married I lived in a small house that I heated, in part, with a Pot Bellied stove. I worked at a truss and panel company and got truck loads of mill drops for free, all 2x4 through 2x8. Some were quite small others needed to be cut in half. Very good fuel for a pot belly. A nearby truss and panel plant would be a good place to check although I imagine they would charge a delivery fee nowadays. Back than they delivered for free within a certain radius and of course you could load your own truck. It solved their disposal problems!
There is a cabinet maker near me that occasionally puts out garbage bags labeled "Free Kindling" . Out of curiosity I brought one home and it was full of cut-offs. Various finishing hard woods (oak, etc) and 6" to 12" pieces of 2x2, 2x3, & 2x4 framing. All clean & not painted or stained. KaptJaq
