Overloaded Skips!

SKIP WATCH

It turns out that America isn’t all just homicides and j-walking; after I’d finished laughing about Britney Spears crashing her Mercedes whilst putting on make up last month (hit me baby one more time!), I happened upon a heart-warming tale of human decency from our friends across the pond…
A solid waste transfer station inspector, working in Montgomery County, Maryland, received a call on his radio from the ‘trash bays’ in the public unloading area one morning, informing him that a member of the public had reported hearing a cat meowing in the number 13 trailer.
The inspector ordered the trailer to be pulled to the tipping floor inside the transfer station building, where it became the job of two unfortunate contractors to climb in and empty the entire trailer by hand.
After 35 minutes of sifting merrily through filth, no cat was found. With hopes of finding the kitten rapidly dwindling, the inspector received another call informing him that the cat was still meowing near trailer bay 13. The search was moved back to the trailer area, but still no moggy…
Feeling there was no more they could do, the men returned to work. But one determined animal lover refused to give up and kept on searching until he found the kitten hidden in the trailer bay. He has now given the kitten a home and named it ‘Lucky’! Aaaah, it makes you feel all warm inside… and then a bit pukey.
Speaking of fluffy felines; never mind the expression ‘not enough room to swing a cat’ – you couldn’t fit a cat in this month’s artfully overloaded skip if you passed it through a blender first (please don’t try this – trust me, it’s true).

This gem, sent in by TDB Morris Environmental Ltd, scores double points. It’s obligatory for any self-respecting overloaded skip to feature either a matress or an old sofa – but this has both!
Can anyone beat this for quality? Email your overloaded skip photos to pr@theskip.net or post them to – The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

May 16, 2008 at 4:24 pm | Overloaded Skips! | No comment

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SKIP WATCH

Here’s a particularly unusual overloaded skip story we heard this month: a Birmingham skip hire company have been fined because of a freakish incident in which a monsoon type downpour filled one of their skips with so much water that it exceeded it’s maximum permitted load weight!
The 7.5-tonne lorry, belonging to Need-A-Skip Ltd of Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield, was carrying two skips when the unlikely storm struck – adding several inches of water to the load during transit.
The skip truck was legally loaded when the journey began, but the sheer volume of rainfall caused the load to be 410kg overweight by the time the driver was pulled over for a routine inspection off the M5 at Quinton.
The company had little choice but to admit responsibility for the offence at Solihull Magistrates Court where, fortunately, the unusual circumstances were taken into account. Because of this, the fine was kept down to £200 plus £209 costs.
As we all know, it’s hard enough trying to keep thoughtless neighbours from illegally overloading skips with their midnight fly-tipping antics, so being slapped with a fine for what is generally described as an ‘act of God’ is quite a harsh blow!

Fortunately for us, there’s still plenty of more traditionally overloaded skips knocking about out there for our amusement. The above picture comes complete with the lovely finishing touch of a couple of paint tubs, optimistically placed in the vicinity of the skip and the bin – in the hope that somebody will deal with them…

This skip, spotted by Helen Roberts in Copley, is so overloaded with garden waste, it appears to have morphed into an existing tree, making it difficult to tell where the skip ends and the garden begins! (Or is it just one of those rare ‘skip trees’
in full bloom?)
Please keep your overloaded skip photos coming. Email them to pr@theskip.net or you can post them to – The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

April 13, 2008 at 5:44 pm | Overloaded Skips! | No comment

Tags: overloaded skip, skip hire, waste management

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SKIP WATCH

I’ve been pondering the recent discussion taking place on our web site about the possibility of traffic wardens issuing fines to law-breaking skips (View skip hire discussion)! I started wondering where it might lead – it’d be pretty hard to clamp a skip, so if the fine was ignored would they tow it away for you? If they then impounded it, wouldn’t they need a waste management license to store it??
Anyway, enough pondering. This month’s cracking pair of overloaded skips come courtesy of Carr & Bircher in Saffron Walden. The delightful contrast between the two pictures made me wonder (which is not technically ‘pondering’) what a nature expert might have to say about them. So, it’s time for…
WHAT WOULD DAVID ATTENBOROUGH SAY?

over loaded skip
“The chameleon skip really is a remarkable species. Take these two pictures here, for example. You can see quite clearly from the markings on the shell of the creature that it is in fact the same animal. And yet, when placed in a different environment, it has an incredible ability to blend in by adapting the appearance of it’s upper body. In the first picture, we see cold, clean industrial lines when the skip becomes cornered within a building. Then, when the skip is back outdoors, it reverts it’s bodily form to reflect the green, luscious surroundings of it’s natural habitat. Absolutely wonderful.”
Please keep your overloaded skip photos coming. Email them through or post them to – The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

March 18, 2008 at 2:08 pm | Overloaded Skips! | No comment

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SKIP WATCH

Get the hankies out, folks – former guardian of this column, Branston Cowdell, has sadly left us to travel this vast globe in search of ‘himself’ (we bought him a nice mirror as a leaving present, but apparently this didn’t help). We had a fitting party here at the office to see him off though – ‘overloaded’ cocktails, ‘dumpster diving‘ sandwiches, scantily clad skip chicks… all his old faves.
But fear not, bulging waste fans – Skip Watch lives on and it seems the world is still rife with overloaded skips. Your snaps continue to be the source of many a giggle here at The Skip – please do keep them coming.

The first photo, above, is one I spotted myself in the car park of a Tameside pub (I was there strictly for business reasons, of course). It was such a work of art that it could almost have been mistaken for one of Kevin Harman’s sculptures (as featured in this very edition of “The Skip“). The subtle use of doors as ‘greedy boards’ was holding in a colourful array of waste, nestling snugly beneath a couple of cosy duvets, all topped off beautifully with an upturned wheelbarrow to finish. A few more beers, and I might have been tempted to crawl in for a snooze.
overloaded skip 01
However, I’ve rarely seen such an extravagant example of ‘greedy boarding’ as this month’s winning picture, which comes courtesy of Des from Doncaster. Thanks Des – it’s simply a-door-able!
Can you beat it? Get snapping those overloaded skips while you’re out and about. Email your entries through to at us

or post them to -
The Skip Magazine
Unit 5 Baxall Business Centre
Adswood Road
Stockport
SK3 8LF