Overloaded Skips!

Overload Skip for Christmas

We thought we’d give our readers a treat this Christmas and bring back an old favourite – the overloaded skip.

This one’s a beauty as you can see, and looks almost for a king, with the luxury of not one but TWO mattresses to choose from.

Thanks to Chris from Britanniacrest Recycling who warned us “The skip didn’t leave site looking the same way. Any one out there operating in the Surrey or West Sussex area tread carefully if a Mr Gosar comes on the phone.”

December 5, 2009 at 3:50 pm | Overloaded Skips! | No comment

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SKIP WATCH

You know the increasing need to consider the environment, right? Well, it got me thinking (doesn’t happen often, but it gets me through the ad breaks when I don’t have a Pot Noodle to tend to) while we indulge in the sheer delight of all these gloriously overloaded skips, are we missing an altogether more important issue – underloaded skips?
I was on a bus into Manchester after a long lunch yesterday afternoon (I left the car at The Red Lion – for the sake of the environment, of course), when I saw a typical 8 yard builder’s skip being collected from the road outside a house refurb. From my vantage point upstairs, desperately clinging to the bars of the swaying seat in front, I was able to peer down at the contents of the skip. I was amazed – but for all the wrong reasons. Barely covering the base of the skip, I saw about a dozen broken paving slabs, a couple of paint cans, the obligatory newspaper and what looked like a discarded kebab (hence the kebab I immediately purchased when I arrived at my destination). And let’s face it, I was p***** again so there may only have been half the amount of stuff I actually thought I saw through that sweaty bus window!
My point is this; even without considering the extra cost of hiring an overly-large skip these days, it’s surely just plain wrong to go hiring a skip that ends up being barely half-filled? To get incisively environmentalist about it, there’s still the same pollution caused by the truck that drops and collects it… the same sliver of tree used for the paperwork… the same drain on the National Grid when the customer makes a brew for the driver, and so on (that’s an unwritten law, by the way, so make sure you’re getting your collection brew or you’ll just be furthering the problem by stopping off for drinks that come in disposable containers – make sure the customer understands that they are helping the environment by furnishing you with your beverage of choice).
A handful of paving slabs can cripple a car, so I’m not suggesting that a skip was unnecessary in this case, but a bit of homework and basic ‘guestimation’ would probably have saved the customer some money, and the environment some abuse.
One way of reducing this kind of wasteful, over-sized skip ordering is to provide customers with a guide to what kind of skip they should order for the job at hand – the TopSkips web site does this job very well, whilst also giving the customer some reassurance that they are dealing with a company who wants to meet their needs, rather than push the most expensive option.
Here’s another idea I had (that’s two in one month – I’ll be on “The Apprentice” soon, I reckon). It’s a bit radical as it involves people actually making contact with their neighbours, but I’ll throw it out there anyway…
It’s basically the opposite of ‘skip-jacking’ (when you hire a nice empty skip, and then find that one of your lovely neighbours plucked up the Stella-fuelled, midnight courage to fill it with their entire life’s possessions). What if there was a scheme to encourage ‘skip-sharing’? A special deal could be offered to neighbours who book a shared skip – gaining new business from people who wouldn’t consider ordering a skip for their amount of waste alone, but might take advantage of an opportunity to share the cost with a neighbour. A simple leaflet drop could inform a whole street of the opportunity to get rid of their waste at an affordable price, as well as outlining the environmental benefits of skip-sharing (not to mention the fact that it might even go some way to reviving a sense of ‘community’). Your business gets to promote its environmental commitment, skip hire becomes affordable to people who would otherwise feel out-priced, and skip-jacking/fly-tipping could even be reduced.
Is it a rubbish idea? (That’s the oldest pun in the industry, so believe me when I say it’s not intended.) Let me know what you think anyway – it could be completely unworkable as you will know better than me.
If you’ve made it this far through my ramblings, you may well be thinking “Get on with it, man, you’ve made your point!” (In fact, you’re probably thinking something far more unprintable, as even I’m thinking that!) So, not wanting to disappoint those of you who share my ultimate passion, below is an overloaded skip from Centro Waste Skip Hire in Birmingham. It reminds me of a party I went to recently, where the ‘buffet’ was basically some breadsticks and cheese straws crammed into an undersized glass (which was appropriate, as the girl who’s party it was looked surprisingly similar in her outfit – it’s okay, she’s too busy lying to her ‘friends’ on Facebook to be reading The Skip).

So, let me know your thoughts on skip-sharing, keep those overloaded gems coming, and snap any outrageously underloaded skips you pick up. I’m going to start keeping a tally of which is more rife (unless someone can suggest a better reason for my life) As usual, email pr@theskip.net or post them to – The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road,Stockport, SK3 8LF.

August 11, 2008 at 5:10 pm | Overloaded Skips! | No comment

Tags: Overloaded Skips!, skip hire industry advice, Skip Hire Industry News, skip hire tips, waste management

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SKIP WATCH

I got dragged along to an Ambassador’s reception recently, as you do when you work in the waste industry. It was pretty boring, to tell you the truth, so I whipped out some of my ‘special interest’ Polaroids that I carry discretely in my top pocket and started showing them around to spice things up a bit. They soon became the focus of the whole evening and, at one point, the Ambassador was actually heard to say “Monsieur, with these tremendously overloaded skip photographs you are spoiling us!” (What? You didn’t think I’d pull out those photos did you!)
So, you see, your fantastic overloaded skip photos are not merely serving the purpose of giving us all a good chuckle each month. They are actually a vital tool in my quest for social acceptance. In fact, they may well have saved my life too, for all I know, when some skinheads tried to mug me at a railway station in south London last February. I was pinned against a fence by two of them, while the third mugger went through my pockets. Luckily, the first thing the little scally found was one of my aforementioned Polaroid collections, and they were all so busy laughing at them that I managed to slip their clutches and do a runner amid the distraction. The loss of some particularly exquisite pictures did take me a while to come to terms with, but I managed to retain all my body parts, so it was a fair trade-off in the end.

Anyway, let’s have a good look at these latest fine specimens to be added to
the collection. The skip above was sent to us by D K Rowe Skip Hire, of London. It’s another victim of pruning madness and is definitely in need of an extreme hair cut before it stands much chance of going anywhere.

Here we have an artfully overpiled collection of household fittings and rubble that was snapped by Sam at Dunmow Skips Ltd. And yes, it’s even got the kitchen sink in there!
My favourite overloaded skip fix this month, however, comes courtesy of Triple C Skips, of Accrington. It’s positively haemorrhaging lounge furniture in all directions! You can bet that the inevitable sofas teetering on the top were not dumped in there by the person who actually hired the skip too (I think that’s pretty much an unwritten rule, nowadays isn’t it?)

Right, I’m off to a speed dating evening now – where the pictures never fail to make an instant impression. Please help me to continue having a social life by sending more great overloaded skip pics to pr@theskip.net or post them to – The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

July 14, 2008 at 6:22 pm | Overloaded Skips! | No comment

Tags: overloaded skip, skip hire, waste industry

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Skip Watch

The Art of Skipouflage
Human behaviour is about as predictable as the likelihood that Euro 2008 will provide little in the way of excitement for any English-speaking nations. The minute there’s a sniff of good weather in the UK & Ireland, the shorts and barbecues come flying out… along with the skips. We love all three!
Yes, it’s that time of year again when ‘a bit of pruning’ in the garden can quickly become a devastating scene of conifer carnage. This often has something to do with the genius idea of opening a couple of tinnies to accompany the thirsty work and getting just a little bit overzealous with the shears. It’s all good news for skip hire companies though, of course. And equally great news for people like myself who have developed a trainspotter-like compulsion for gawping at overloaded skips.
All these beauties were sent in to The Skip by TRS Ltd of Merstham, Surrey. The skills employed in loading these up, make me think some people may have missed their calling in life – applying this ability to camouflaging army tanks would make a good career!

They’re all cracking examples, but the one below is an absolute belter – you have to look really hard to see the skip at all under that ridiculous stack of garden waste.

So don’t be too down if your team isn’t in the Euros this month. Get yourself out there with a camera and play a game we can all win – overloaded skip spotting!
Snap skips while the sun shines. Email your bulging skip pics to

or post them to -
The Skip Magazine, Metropolitan House, Station Road, Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire SK8 7GA