Jacksonville Landfill, Dump & Recycling — Hours, Fees & What They Take

Disposal sites in Jacksonville

Jacksonville landfill hours

Trail Ridge runs Monday to Friday, 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. — a thirteen-hour day, long by any landfill's standard.

That matters more than it sounds. A 7 p.m. close means you can load after work and still make it out to Baldwin on a weekday, which many landfills don't allow.

Saturday is 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., closed Sunday. The Saturday window is shorter, but it's also the day the $1 rate applies — so it's the busy one.

What it costs to dump in Jacksonville

From the City of Jacksonville Solid Waste Division's published disposal operations schedule. Confirm on (904) 748-6015 before a large or unusual load.

$30.30 a ton makes Jacksonville the cheapest major metro in the state. Here's how it sits against the rest of Florida:

• Furniture removal in Jacksonville
• Jacksonville — $30.30/ton
• West Palm Beach — $42.00
• Pensacola — $45.06
• Lakeland — $46.00
• Clearwater — $58.86
• Fort Myers — $69.83
• Fort Lauderdale — $100.00

A ton of debris that costs $100 in Broward costs $30.30 here. See the full picture in our guide to what it costs to dump in Florida.

The $1 Saturday load — how to use it

This is the single best deal on this website. On Saturdays, Jacksonville residents pay $1 for the first 500 pounds at Trail Ridge. Not $1 a hundredweight — one dollar, for the load, up to 500 lbs.

Five hundred pounds is more than it sounds:

• A car trunk and back seat filled with bagged household clutter — comfortably under.
• A small sofa and an armchair — typically 150–250 lbs together. Under.
• A half-full pickup bed of general household junk — usually around 400–600 lbs. Borderline.
• A pickup bed of concrete, tile or wet soil — well over. That's the one to watch; dense material hits 500 lbs in a fraction of the space.

Above 500 lbs you simply pay the normal $30.30 a ton on the excess, so there's no penalty for guessing wrong — but splitting a big clear-out across two Saturdays genuinely costs $2 instead of $30-odd.

The catch is the clock: Saturday closes at 1:00 p.m., and it's the busiest day at the scale. Baldwin is a drive from most of Jacksonville. Leave earlier than feels necessary.

Declare your tires and appliances

Jacksonville's most expensive avoidable mistake isn't a surcharge for an uncovered load or a late arrival. It's failing to mention what's in the truck.

Tires and appliances must be declared at the scale house. Declare a passenger car tire and it's $1.50. Don't, and discard it on the hill instead, and it's $13.50 — nine times the price for the same tire. The city also states plainly that undeclared appliances and tires attract an additional surcharge on top of the rate.

The declared rates are cheap by any standard. $1.50 a tire compares with $3.90 in Escambia County, and Jacksonville has no household cap where Escambia stops at five. Appliances are a flat $20.00 at the scale house — simple, and no separate Freon penalty like Polk County's.

So: mention them on the way in. It takes a sentence and saves twelve dollars a tire. More in our tire disposal guide and appliance guide.

Haul it yourself, or hire junk removal? — Jacksonville

With $1 Saturdays and 13-hour weekdays, self-hauling in Jacksonville is about as cheap and convenient as it gets in Florida. The argument for paying someone else is the drive and the lifting, not the fee:

• Haul it yourself — cheapest by a long way if you have a vehicle and can lift it. The gate rates above are the whole cost.
• Junk-removal crew — they carry it out and haul it off. The usual call for estate clearances, upstairs apartments and anything on a closing deadline.

For a single Saturday carload, though, nothing will beat driving it yourself for a dollar.