How do you bid out your waste service?

Work back from your notice deadline. If your agreement needs notice 90 days before the term ends, you want bids in hand by about 120 days out, which means starting the specification at 150 to 180 days. Find your dates with the renewal window calculator.

Everything a bidder needs to price the same thing:

• Each site's address, access hours, gate or enclosure details, and where the containers sit.
• Each waste stream: trash, cardboard, organics, construction debris.
• Containers: type, size, quantity, and pickups per week, or on-call for roll-offs.
• Current fill levels. Photograph the containers just before pickup for two weeks; half-full containers mean the service is oversized.
• Twelve months of invoices, showing extra charges and fees.

See container sizes and service levels to decide what to ask for.

Because the hauler's standard terms decide much of the real cost: renewal, notice, increases, fees and the exit charge. If you ask for prices only, each bid comes back on different paper. Attach the terms you want (the buyer's contract rider covers them) and ask each bidder to accept them or list its exceptions.

Don't promise the incumbent a chance to match. Maine bars contracts from requiring it for small-container service, for good reason: it makes competitors bid less sharply.^[1]

Line them up on the same basis:

1. Monthly total for the specified service, with every fee as a dollar amount. Run percentage fees through the fee stack calculator.
2. Price protection: fixed months, increase cap, notice.
3. Extra-charge schedule: overage, extra pickup, relocation, roll-off haul and per-ton rates.
4. Exit: renewal length, notice window, liquidated damages formula.
5. Exceptions to your terms.

Published rate sheets give a sense of scale, though they vary several-fold between places; see published rates by container size.

Yes. Tell us about the service and we'll match you with providers who can quote it. Send any notice to your current hauler yourself, in your own name; some haulers' terms refuse to deal with third parties acting for the customer.^[2]