The words on a rubbish quote, translated
Rubbish removal writes its quotes in trade shorthand: van loads, dock windows, tip fees, hard rubbish. None of it is difficult, it's just never been translated. Here is every word likely to land on a sheet with a Gladesville address on it, in plain English, so you can read any operator's quote. Ours included.
Written for reading any quote, not just ours. If a sheet can't survive translation, it wasn't a quote, it was a guess.
A dictionary from the crew that quotes in writing
Our whole model is one figure in writing before anything is lifted. But a written figure only protects you if you can read every word sitting around it, because that's where quotes go wrong: not in the number, in the vocabulary. "Plus tip fees" changes what the number means. "From" changes whether it's a number at all.
So here's the trade's working vocabulary, defined straight. Each entry stands on its own and uses the words the way the whole Sydney trade uses them, not some private Upfront dialect. Where Gladesville bends a meaning, and it does: two councils, and more than half the suburb living in unit blocks with rules about lifts and docks, the entry says so.
How to use this page
Skim the sample sheet below to see where each word sits, then jump to the ones on the quote in front of you. Every definition is self-contained on purpose: quote it, screenshot it, read it down the phone to the other operator. We won't mind.
The words, where they sit on a sheet
A filled-in sample of our own quote sheet for a familiar Gladesville job. Every dotted word is translated on this page; tap one to jump to it.
Sample only
A sample, not a real quote. The words are the point, and the one thing missing is the figure, which gets set by looking at the actual job, then written down while saying no still costs you nothing.
Find your word
How the size of a load gets written
Nobody weighs your pile at the front door. The trade sizes it by eye, in these units, so it pays to speak them.
- Cubic metre
- The trade's ruler: a block of space one metre long, one metre wide and one metre high. About four full wheelie bins, and a standard box trailer holds roughly one and a half. It's the unit council cleanups are capped in and the unit most per-volume pricing is written in, so nearly every other size word on a quote is really a stack of these.
- Van load
- The smallest common measure on a rubbish quote: what fits in a standard cargo van, roughly two to three cubic metres. A couch and a few boxes, one balcony's worth, the aftermath of a decent declutter. If your pile is a van load, say so when you enquire. It can be the difference between sending a van and sending a truck, and the figure should reflect which one turned up.
- Half truck
- A load that fills about half of a standard caged rubbish truck, somewhere around four to six cubic metres depending on the truck. One room's contents, or a small garage's worth of accumulation. This is the size where quote wording starts to earn its keep, because a pile that looks "about half" from the doorway can measure more once it's carried into daylight, and the sheet should already say what happens then. Ours does: a re-quote, named before the extra goes on the truck.
- Full truck
- The whole tray or box filled, usually eight to ten cubic metres depending on the truck. A full unit clearout or a garage holding decades tends to land here. Past a full truck the honest phrase is "more than one run", and it should be said before the first load leaves, not discovered after it.
- Truck and two also: man and van
- Crew shorthand: one truck and two people doing the lifting. Its smaller sibling, man and van, is one person and a van, priced for small pickups. The crew shape matters more than it looks on paper. A fridge down three flights of a walk-up is a two-person carry, no matter how cheap the one-person line reads.
The money words
The words that decide what you actually pay, and when you find out.
- Fixed quote also: fixed price
- One figure for the whole job, agreed before work starts: the carrying, the truck time, the tip fees, the sweep-out. Written down, it's the strongest sentence on any quote, because it moves the risk of a misjudged load from you to the operator. It's the only way we price. The figure goes on the sheet, in writing, before anything is lifted, and it doesn't move unless the job does.
- Hourly rate also: by the hour
- Pricing the time instead of the job: the meter runs until the truck is loaded. Not dishonest, but not comparable with a fixed figure until you know the hours, and you generally learn the hours after they've happened. If a quote is hourly, ask what the same job costs if it runs long, and whether travel and unloading are on the clock. The answer to that is the real quote.
- "From" pricing
- The most load-bearing word in rubbish-removal advertising. A "from" price describes the smallest version of the job anyone has ever booked: the lightest load, the easiest access, ground floor, nothing awkward. It isn't what you'll pay; it's the least anyone could pay. The useful question is what your pile, on your street, up your stairs, actually costs, in writing. If the answer is still a range, you don't have a quote yet.
- Tip fee also: disposal fee
- What a waste facility charges to accept a load at the gate, usually weighed by the tonne. Somebody always pays it. The only question a quote needs to answer is whether it's inside the figure or arrives on top of it later; on a dense load, an on-top tip fee can rival the price written beside it. On our sheet it's inside, listed with the carrying. On any other sheet, ask before the truck is loaded.
- Call-out fee
- A charge just for turning up, sometimes payable even if you don't go ahead with the job. Not every operator charges one, and fair ones tell you either way without being asked. Before anyone comes to look at a pile, ask the plain version: does it cost me anything to say no? A quote from us costs nothing to decline. A figure you don't agree to is just a piece of paper.
- Re-quote
- A revised figure, named when a job turns out bigger than what was priced: the garage's back wall was hiding a second garage. The word that matters is when. A fair re-quote happens before the extra material goes on the truck, while no is still a real answer. A figure that grows after everything is loaded isn't a re-quote, it's a surprise, and you're allowed to mind.
The building words
Unit-block vocabulary. More than half of Gladesville lives in apartments, so more than half our quotes carry at least one of these.
- Strata
- The scheme, and the owners' body behind it, that runs the shared parts of a unit block: the lift, the lobby, the corridors, the loading dock. Rubbish leaving a unit crosses all of them, so strata has rules about when and how it moves, and a quote for unit work should say whose job those rules are. On our sheet that line reads "arranged by us": we deal with the building manager direct.
- Lift booking
- A reserved window in the building's lift, usually the service lift, so furniture and rubbish can travel without competing with residents for the doors. Most managed blocks along Victoria Road and Wharf Road require one, and many want a protective curtain hung inside the car. Booked, the carry is quick and quiet. Unbooked, the job stalls in the lobby with everyone watching.
- Dock window
- The time slot a building assigns for a truck to occupy its loading dock. Arrive inside it and the job flows. Miss it and the truck circles the block while the dock hosts someone else's delivery, which is why a unit quote should talk about timing as well as price, and why we plan the run around Victoria Road's peak rather than into it.
- Storage cage
- The wire enclosure in a unit block's basement that holds whatever never fitted in the apartment. Agents check it at the end of a lease, and it's routinely forgotten until they do. A quote for an end-of-lease clearout that doesn't mention the cage, or the car space beside it, has left a surprise waiting in the basement for inspection day.
- Walk-up
- A block with no lift, common among the older two- and three-storey brick flats around the suburb. Every item travels by stairs, which is honest physical work and belongs in the figure from the start. A fixed price quoted after seeing a walk-up already includes the stairs. An hourly rate discovers them one flight at a time.
Where it goes: the disposal words
The load leaves your place and the words keep going. These are the ones that prove it went somewhere it was allowed to.
- Transfer station
- Where most rubbish loads actually go: a facility that receives, weighs and sorts waste, then sends each stream on for recycling, processing or landfill. When someone in this trade says "the tip", they usually mean a transfer station; very little in Sydney goes straight into a hole in the ground. The gate fee charged here is the tip fee on your quote.
- Council cleanup also: hard rubbish
- The free, pre-booked kerbside collection your rates already pay for, still called hard rubbish by most of Sydney. Free comes with rules: booking lead times, volume caps and refusal lists, and in Gladesville the rules depend on which of two councils your street sits in. When the free truck fits your job we'll say so and point you at the portal; the honest side-by-side lives in our council cleanup guide.
- Nature strip
- The grass between the footpath and the kerb, which in cleanup terms is a legal location rather than a lawn. Booked material can wait there from the day before collection. Material without a booking is illegal dumping, and councils fine it in the thousands. If a plan involves a pile sitting on the strip "until we sort something out", the plan needs re-reading.
- White goods
- The big appliances: fridges, freezers, washing machines, dryers, ovens. Worth naming separately on any quote because they travel their own path: the metal is recovered, and anything refrigerated must be degassed before it's scrapped. Both local councils treat them differently from general cleanup material too, which is why an unflagged fridge is the item most often left standing on the kerb.
- Degassing
- The licensed removal of refrigerant gas from a fridge, freezer or air conditioner before the unit is scrapped. The gases are potent and regulated, which is why a dead fridge can't simply be crushed with the rest of a load. Done properly it's invisible to you: the fridge leaves your place like everything else and the routing happens at the facility end, inside the one written figure.
- E-waste
- Anything with a plug, a battery or a screen at the end of its life: TVs, computers, phones, the drawer of dead chargers. It doesn't ride the red bin. Screens, batteries and circuit boards carry materials that shouldn't be compacted and buried, so e-waste runs its own regulated route to facilities licensed to receive it. Free drop-off paths exist for a car-boot load, and our e-waste guide maps them before it argues for a pickup.
- Licensed facility
- A site authorised by the NSW EPA to receive a particular class of waste: general solid waste, e-waste, refrigerant-bearing appliances and so on. The licence is the system's proof that a load gets processed rather than disappearing. It's also the honest answer to "where does my stuff actually go?": to a facility licensed to take that kind of thing, with a weighbridge docket to show for it.
- Duty of care
- The NSW rule that waste has to end up somewhere lawfully allowed to receive it, and that the responsibility travels with everyone who handles it, including the household it came from. If a bargain load ends up dumped in the bush, the trail can run back to the kerb it left. It's the strongest reason "cheapest" is the wrong way to sort rubbish quotes: you're buying where the load goes, not just who carries it.
Reading someone else's quote
Get more than one quote; we'd say that even if we weren't one of them. Then hold each sheet up to the same five questions. The words above do the translating.
- Is the figure fixed, or "from", or hourly? Only one of those is a number you can plan around.
- Are tip fees inside it or on top? If the sheet doesn't say, the answer arrives with the invoice.
- What happens if the load measures bigger on the day? The fair answer is a re-quote before the extra is lifted, and it should be on the sheet, not in someone's memory.
- Who handles the building? For any unit job: lift booking, dock window, floor protection. "You sort access" is a cost wearing a disguise.
- Where does the load actually go? An operator who can't name a transfer station or licensed facility is asking you to carry the duty of care for them.
Ask us the same five. Our sheet answers them in writing before we lift, which is the whole point of the sheet.
Asked about the words
Do I need to know any of this before I ring?
No. "A garage full of stuff" and a phone photo is a perfectly good brief; sizing it in cubic metres is our job, not yours. The translation runs the other way: the sheet you get from us is written so you never need this page to read it.
A quote I've been given uses a word that isn't on this page.
Ask the operator to put it in plain words, and to write down whether it changes the figure. A fair one answers without flinching. And if you're getting a price from us anyway, mention the word when you enquire: we'll tell you what it means, whoever's sheet it's on.
You quote fixed. What if I add things once you're here?
Then the job changed, and the figure gets to change with it, honestly: we name the revised figure before the extra goes on the truck, and you say yes or no while it still matters. That's a re-quote, and the definition above is exactly how we run it.
Why does your own sheet use so few of these words?
Because most of this vocabulary exists to describe what a price doesn't include. A fixed figure in writing, with the tip fees and the building arrangements inside it, retires most of the dictionary. The words you're left with are the job, the load and the figure, which is how a quote should read.
A straight answer costs nothing
Tell us what needs to go and where it is. We come back with a plan and a fixed price, in writing, and nothing gets lifted until you have agreed it.
Your enquiry goes straight to the crew, and we ring you back on the number you leave.