Hurricane season runs June through November, and the part that actually matters around Tampa Bay is roughly the middle of August through October. That is when the water is warmest and when the storms that reach us tend to show up.
Most people prepare for the storm. Very few prepare for the week after it, which is the part that drags on.
The pile sorts itself into two halves
Walk any Tampa Bay street after a real blow and you will see the same thing at every curb: one pile with two completely different kinds of material in it.
The tree half. Palm fronds, oak limbs, broken branches, brush, and whatever came down off the canopy. In older neighborhoods with mature trees this can be enormous.
Everything else. Fence panels laid flat in the yard. Shingles off the roof. Torn soffit and screen from the pool cage. Drywall and insulation that got wet and came out of the wall. Carpet. Patio furniture that ended up two houses down. Whatever was on the garage floor when the water came in.
After a declared storm, local governments across the region generally run some form of debris collection, and in our experience those passes are built around the tree half. Vegetative debris is what the equipment is set up to grind and haul.
The second half is where people get stuck. Construction and demolition material, household contents and appliances tend to fall under different rules or outside the program entirely, and the specifics change by county and by storm. Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk each publish their own guidance and it is worth reading yours rather than assuming.
What we can tell you is what we see: weeks after the trucks have gone through, the fence sections and the shingles are still sitting there.
Sort it now, not later
The single most useful thing you can do in the first day or two is separate the pile into those two halves while you are already out there working.
- Vegetative on one side. Limbs, fronds, brush, nothing man-made mixed in.
- Everything else on the other. Fence, shingles, drywall, carpet, furniture, appliances.
A mixed pile is the worst outcome, because a collection crew set up for vegetation will often leave the whole thing rather than pick through it. Two clean piles get you the free pass on the half that qualifies and leave a tidy, quotable pile for the half that does not.
Sorting is thirty minutes of work on Saturday that decides whether you are still looking at that pile in October.
While you are separating, pull anything hazardous out entirely and set it aside. Gas cans, motor oil, pool chemicals and paint thinner turn up constantly after a flooded garage. None of it can ride in an open trailer, and Hillsborough County runs household hazardous waste drop-off for exactly this. Paint is a separate case: we can take it by special request, but you have to ask first.
What it costs to have the second half hauled
Storm work is priced the same as any other day. That is a deliberate policy and it is the one thing about this we feel strongly about.
- Full-service hauling, where we do the loading, runs from $100 for a single item up to $600 for a full trailer
- A self-load trailer is $400 flat, first ton included, $100 per ton after
No surge rate. No emergency fee. No fuel surcharge. A storm is the worst possible week to find out your hauler prices by desperation, and we would rather be the business that did not do that.
For most Tampa Bay yards, a weekend of storm debris lands somewhere between a third of a trailer and a full one. Heavier roofing material like clay tile is the exception, because it hits the 12 inch stack limit on dense material well before it fills the space.
Which option fits which situation
The self-load trailer tends to win after a storm and it is worth saying why.
Storm cleanup is not a single-afternoon job. It is a chainsaw on Saturday, dragging on Sunday, and finding three more things on Tuesday. A trailer sitting in the driveway for that window matches how the work actually happens, and there is no crew standing around waiting on you.
Full-service is the better call when the debris is heavy, awkward or wet. Soaked drywall, a fence run that needs pulling, and waterlogged furniture are all genuinely miserable to move by hand, and that is the job worth handing off.
If you are not sure, describe the pile on the phone. We will tell you which one is cheaper for your situation even when it is the one we make less on.
Call early
The real constraint after a storm is not price. It is the calendar.
Ready 1 Dump Trailers is one owner with two trailers. When a storm hits the whole metro at once, the schedule fills in the order the phone rings, and there is no version where everybody goes first.
So call while you are still sorting the pile rather than after you have waited three weeks hoping the county pass will take it. You will get a real date, and if that date is further out than you want, you will at least know it early enough to make another plan.
More on how we handle storm work is on the storm debris cleanup page.