How to Place Your Cart at the Curb

Good Cart Placement

Example of Good Cart Placement: Wheels facing the home, carts are not close together, and carts are placed away from the mailbox

We’ve created this simple guide to properly place your garbage cart at the curb for pick up. Taking out the trash each week is simple. But, there are a few best practices to ensure your waste and recycling is efficiently removed each week. It’s our goal to accurately serve your home each week. A missed service pick up during the day can be frustrating for homeowners. This guide to container placement will ensure your containers are ready each service day.

Most garbage service with Homewood Disposal includes a 96 gallon wheeled cart. Many households also have a recycling cart or yard waste cart as part of their weekly service. These wheeled carts make it easy to bring waste, recycling, and heavy yard waste to the curb each week. These big carts hold larger volumes of material than the smaller trash cans of the past. These large carts can be quite heavy and are built to be lifted with a mechanical arm or “helper arms” attached to the garbage truck. Proper cart placement on pick up day becomes essential when mechanical helpers are used.

Cart Placement Guidelines

Place your cart at the curb the night before your service day or by 6 am on your service day.
Place cart within two feet of the curb.
Avoid placing the cart near low hanging tree branches.
Place the cart at least two feet away from permanent structures like mailboxes, walls, lamp posts, utility boxes, vehicles, etc.
Place your cart two feet from other carts.

Place your cart on a level surface prior to pick up.
Make sure nothing is in between your cart and the street.
A good place for your cart is in the driveway.
When at the curb, cart wheels should be closest to the house.
Placement instructions are also on the lid of your cart.

Common Garbage Can Placement Problems

Your containers should be placed at the curb side by side. Stacked containers can cause delays and missed pick ups.

The wheels on your cart should face the home. The front of your container has a metal bar that needs to face the street and be accessed by the garbage truck.

Your containers should be approximately 2 feet apart for driver access. The space also allows for the mechanical arms on our trucks to reach between the containers.