Waste hauling is one of the largest controllable operating expenses at apartment complexes. Yet it’s also one of the least audited.
Most property managers either inherit the contract from whoever held the role before them. And even if they originally negotiated the agreement themselves, they just set the invoice up to autopay and never look at it again.
But that’s exactly what waste haulers count on.
And your waste hauling costs just continue to climb slowly but steadily year after year. Before you know it, you’re paying double or triple what you were a few years ago at the exact same property.
Once you dive deeper into your statements, there are typically 15-40% in recoverable savings hiding in plain sight. I’ll show you how to find them.
Why Apartment Complexes Overpay for Waste Hauling
First, it’s important to understand why apartment complexes and multifamily properties are disproportionately affected by rising waste hauling costs compared to other businesses.
Right off the bat, your industry puts you at a disadvantage for several reasons:
- Contracts are usually long (5-7 years is the standard) with built-in increases and auto-renewals.
- Staff turnover at each property means the person who signed the original contract is rarely the same person reviewing it.
- Surcharges stack on top of the base rates every year.
- Container sizing gets set once and forgotten, even as occupancy, tenant mix, and recycling habits change over time.
- You can be penalized by how your tenants discard waste (contaminated recycling, oversized items in bins, etc.).
There are so many moving parts here that make it difficult for property managers and apartment landlords to control. A single property could have 300 units and ten buildings, each with its own container. And that’s just one of the dozens of properties you’re managing.
Other properties could be a single building with 50 units and a completely different waste stream. Yet the same person is responsible for managing the costs and waste hauling relationship at every property.
The deck is already stacked against you before the hauler starts applying aggressive billing tactics designed to extract even more money from your account.
Start With Your Invoices (Not the Contract)
This is one of the most common mistakes that we see with property managers attempting to get control over their waste hauling costs. They pull out an old contract that’s become irrelevant to what’s happening today.
Your contract is what you agreed to pay. Whereas your latest invoices will tell you what you’re actually paying right now.
And believe it or not, those numbers are rarely the same.
Start by pulling the last three months of waste hauling invoices and scrutinize every single line item. You’re looking for:
- The base service rate per container, per pickup
- Fuel surcharges (usually a percentage of the base)
- Environmental or sustainability fees
- Administrative or regulatory recovery fees
- Container rental or maintenance charges
- Overage and contamination fees
- Any line item you can’t immediately explain
Add the surcharges to the base rate to calculate your effective rate. This is the number that tells you what you’re really paying per pickup.
If your contract is old, I can practically guarantee that the effective rate is at least 30% to 50% above the contract base rate. This gap will become the starting point for every conversation that follows.
Make Sure You Have the Right Container Sizes and Pickup Frequency
Assessing your containers requires a bit of on-site effort. But this makes a massive impact, as your findings can immediately tell you whether you’re overpaying on waste removal from multiple angles.
Run an audit for at least two weeks. Four of five weeks is even better and can account for fluctuations. Here’s the easiest approach.
Have your maintenance staff take a picture of every single dumpster on the morning of each scheduled pickup. And assign a value to every photo: underfilled, overflowing, or at capacity.
- If containers are consistently under 75% full at pickup, you’re paying for a capacity and frequency you don’t need.
- If dumpsters are overflowing, you’re paying extra for overflow fees.
The math here moves fast.
Simply dropping from four pickups per week to three weekly pickups on an eight-yard container can save thousands per year. And that’s thousands per dumpster. Multiply that across every container, and even modestly-sized properties could be saving tens of thousands on waste hauling.
And that’s just for pulling this one lever.
Get Ahead of Move-Outs
This is an expensive problem that the average business doesn’t have.
When people move out, they start throwing couches in dumpsters or have furniture block dumpsters. That’s in addition to the excess trash they’re throwing away, which skews your average container sizes.
Once you start throwing in contamination fees, extra volume charges, and extra handling for loose debris, a single week of move-outs can erase an entire quarter of savings elsewhere.
There needs to be clear communication from the lease department to maintenance ahead of move-outs. Especially if you have a high volume of leases expiring around the same time.
It’s generally cheaper to rent extra dumpsters during these surges or temporarily increase your pickup frequency. Those added costs end up being cheaper than penalties assessed for mattresses and bulky dressers blocking your dumpsters.
You should also communicate with tenants on proper disposal, with clear instructions on how to remove bulk items. Do this weeks ahead of their move-out date.
Cut Down on Contamination and Overage Fees
Contamination fees are a big problem at apartment complexes because you’re relying on tenants to comply. If a recycling bin contains garbage, the hauler can reclassify the entire pickup as trash (charged at a higher rate) and then add a contamination penalty on top of it.
But there are few practical fixes that you can apply:
- Bin Placement: If one dumpster is closer to a building than the other, contamination is almost guaranteed. So try putting both side-by-side.
- Clear Signage: Nobody is going to read long paragraphs on a standard piece of paper. Print giant signs and make it obvious which dumpster is for recycling and which is for trash.
- Protocol for Bulky Items: Have a designated area for mattresses, electronics, and furniture that’s completely separate from your standard dumpsters. Then you can make on-demand arrangements with junk haulers, separate from your standard waste hauling.
Again, a lot of this relies on tenant compliance, which is never guaranteed.
Though you can definitely make things easier. Even something as simple as placing security cameras around your dumpster areas can discourage people from breaking the rules.
Assess Your Recycling Needs
This is one of the trickiest areas to assess because laws, regulations, and enforcement vary widely between states, cities, and counties.
For example, certain states have mandatory recycling laws while others have virtually nothing in place. And these laws can vary by property size, too.
On top of that, you have hundreds or thousands of tenants throwing items away with no oversight. Yet you foot the bill for their actions.
The key here is to just look at your recycling honestly. Is it actually a money-saver?
Find out how many of your recycling hauls are contaminated. Because if you can’t run a clean stream, you need to ask yourself why you’re paying for one.
Negotiate Ahead of Auto Renewals
To be clear: it’s probably not in your best interest to switch waste haulers.
You already have dumpsters in place, an established infrastructure for their setup, and there are lots of other costs with switching that usually get overlooked. Sticking with your current hauler is almost always the cheapest option and in your best interest.
That said, you should still run a competitive bid.
Get at least three other haulers to quote you for the same service. Same container count, container size, pickup frequency, and additional services.
Then use this as leverage to negotiate with your current provider.
You can do this at any time. Not just when your contract is up. But always do it ahead of auto-renewals when you have more leverage.
Watch Out For Common Contract Traps
Even though you might be able to renegotiate better rates with your hauler, there are several things you should look for in your contract before you sign.
Every hauler is different, but most will apply at least some of these contract/billing tactics designed to work against you and get you to spend more money without realizing it. Examples include:
- Teaser rates that start low and escalate significantly after the first year.
- Evergreen auto-renewal with narrow cancellation windows, locking you into terms at whatever rate your hauler decides to set.
- Liquidated damages on early termination to ensure you pay a high penalty if you want to cancel your contract.
- Right of first refusal clauses, which ultimately disincentivizes competitors from bidding on your account.
All of this stuff is negotiable and can be stricken before you sign.
It’s worth fighting for because it gives you more leverage for the duration of your contract and helps you push back against rising rates down the road.
When to Bring in Outside Help
It’s not always realistic for property managers or owners managing a large portfolio of apartment complexes to run internal waste audits. You have more responsibilities on your plate, and there isn’t enough time in the day to fully dig through every line item and negotiate your hauler.
So if you don’t have time or just feel like you’re being stonewalled by your hauler, you can bring in a cost reduction firm to help you out.
Unlike a waste broker that acts as a middleman between you and the hauler, a waste reduction consultant works directly for you. This relationship is designed to align their best interest with yours, sharing a percentage of the savings they recover with no fee if you don’t save money.
That’s exactly what we do here at the Cost Guards. So if you’re considering outside help, get a free audit from a firm who has your back.