What kind of dirt do you accept at dump sites?

Clean fill dirt, clay, topsoil, sand, and most uncontaminated excavation material. If you're unsure, your dispatcher will ask for a photo and confirm whether your material qualifies before you haul.

What if there's no dump site near my job?

We're actively expanding real dump site coverage across DFW and Denver metro. Check the live map at dumpsite.io/dfw or dumpsite.io/denver to see exactly what's open right now — if nothing's close enough yet, your dispatcher will find the best alternative and let you know before you commit.

What makes DumpSite different from other dump site options?

Two things nobody else offers: a real dispatcher who tailors the match to your project — material type, yardage, truck access, and location — instead of handing you a generic list, and a live public map (dumpsite.io/dfw and dumpsite.io/denver) showing exactly which sites are open right now. Use either path — text a dispatcher for a custom match, or check the map yourself.

How does the savings guarantee work?

If you don't save more on disposal costs than your membership fee in your first month, we refund your subscription in full AND give you the next month free. We track your loads, so the math is simple.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. Month-to-month, cancel anytime, no contracts, no cancellation fees. We keep you because the service works, not because of fine print.

I'm a driver, not a contractor. Do I have to pay?

No. Drivers never pay. Our driver network is completely free. If you're a driver looking for dump sites or paid hauling work, visit our driver page or just reach out — we'll get you set up at no cost.

How fast can you get trucks to my site?

Average dispatch time is under 1 hour. Members with priority access often see trucks within 30 minutes. Your dispatcher will give you a real ETA before you commit to anything.

Dirt by project type/Foundation and Pad-Site Excavation: What to Do With the Extra Dirt

Foundation and Pad-Site Excavation: What to Do With the Extra Dirt

Foundation and pad-site cuts are the cleanest, most predictable dirt on any job site — but the pile sits exactly where framing crews need to work next. Here's the real yardage math for residential and commercial pads, and how to get it matched to an approved site before it holds up the schedule.

Every excavator who has cut a foundation or brought a commercial pad to grade knows the feeling: there's a pile of dirt sitting on the lot, framing is scheduled for next week, and nobody wants to think about it until it's a problem. Foundation and pad-site spoil is some of the most predictable material in the business — and also some of the most time-sensitive. Here's how to think about it, and how to get it moved without holding up the next trade.

The one pile on the job site you don't have to guess about

Most excavation spoil comes with a question mark attached. Trench spoil might have backfill sand mixed in from a prior utility repair. Grading cuts on an older lot can turn up buried construction debris nobody documented. Foundation and pad-site spoil doesn't have that problem, because it's the simplest kind of material there is: it's the soil the site already had, cut down to bring the pad to grade, and set aside. Nothing has been added to it and nothing has been hauled in from somewhere else. Whatever the native soil was before anyone showed up with an excavator — clay, sandy loam, caliche, whatever mix of structural fill spoils the geotech report called for — that's what's in the pile.

That's exactly why this material lines up so well with an approved clean-fill site. Sites don't have to guess at composition or worry about tracing an unknown source. It's a known quantity, moved a short distance, which is the easiest kind of load to match.

The one thing that puts a dent in that clean status isn't the soil — it's what ends up in the pile after the cut. Form boards, rebar offcuts, snapped stakes, sonotube scraps, and chunks of concrete knocked loose while stripping forms have an uncanny way of landing in the spoil pile instead of the dumpster. None of that is a big deal to pull out before loading. It is a big deal if it rides along in the truck bed, because a single scrap of lumber or a length of rebar buried in an otherwise clean load can get the whole truck turned away at the site. Walk the pile before you load it, not after.

Why the pile can't just sit there

This is the part that's specific to foundation and pad work, and it's the part that trips up people who are used to other kinds of dirt jobs. A landscaping cut can sit in a corner of the yard for a month with nobody caring. Foundation spoil sits in the one spot on the lot that the next three trades need. Framing crews need a clear, level approach to the slab. Concrete trucks need room to position for flatwork and stem walls. Utility crews trenching for service lines don't want to route around a dirt pile that's technically supposed to be gone already.

On a scheduled build, that stacks up fast. A pad that sits cut but not cleared pushes every trade behind it back a day, and on a subdivision running multiple lots on staggered schedules, one stalled lot has a way of throwing off the crews who were supposed to move to the next house. The fix isn't complicated — it's just that the dirt has to actually move, on a timeline, instead of waiting for someone to get around to it. That's the part a real dispatcher is built to solve: you're not searching for somewhere to take a load whenever it's convenient, you're getting matched fast enough that the pile doesn't become the reason framing slips a week.

One house versus a whole subdivision — or one big commercial pad

A standard residential slab

A single-family slab or pier-and-beam pad is about as straightforward as excavation spoil gets: one pile, one lot, one hauling window before the next trade shows up. According to our project-type breakdown, a standard residential pad usually runs in the 20 to 60 cubic yard range, and for most homes, that's the whole job — a few loads, matched to one nearby approved site, done.

Commercial pads and multi-structure lots

Commercial pad work is a different scale of the same problem. A single commercial building pad can easily run past a hundred yards on its own, and it's common for a commercial lot to involve more than one structure, staged excavation, or a pad cut deeper than a typical residential slab to meet the engineered fill spec. That volume, on that kind of timeline, is where Fleet-tier or driver-matched hauling earns its keep — you're not managing one-off loads, you're moving continuous volume off a site that has its own schedule pressure, often bigger than a residential job's.

The math: how much dirt are we actually talking about

The formula doesn't change from job to job — it's length times width times depth, divided by 27 to get cubic yards, or on a pad you've already measured, footprint in square feet times depth in feet, divided by 27. Run it yourself at dumpsite.io/calculator, but here's what it looks like on three real pad sizes:

1,800 sq ft slab, cut 6 inches deep: 1,800 x 0.5 ft ÷ 27 = about 33 cubic yards. Squarely in the standard residential range — a small, predictable pile and usually one or two trucks.
2,800 sq ft slab, cut 8 inches deep: 2,800 x 0.67 ft ÷ 27 = about 69 cubic yards. That's a bigger footprint and a deeper cut — the kind of combination that pushes a single-home job to the top of, or past, the "standard" range. Deeper cuts aren't unusual when a geotech report calls for extra overexcavation on expansive clay.
5,000 sq ft commercial pad, cut 12 inches deep: 5,000 x 1 ft ÷ 27 = about 185 cubic yards. This is squarely commercial territory, and it's where a builder should be thinking Fleet-tier volume rather than a single spot-hauled load.

One honest caveat: those numbers are bank volume — the size of the hole. Once soil is cut, loosened, and loaded into a truck bed, it takes up more room than it did compacted in place; loose (bulked) volume typically runs somewhere in the range of 15 to 30% more than the in-place figure, depending on the soil. That's not something you need to calculate precisely — it's just why it's worth rounding your estimate up a little rather than down when you text it in, and why a dispatcher matching you to a site with real capacity beats guessing at truck counts on your own.

Depth is also regional in a way that's worth knowing. In DFW, high shrink-swell clay from the Eagle Ford and Austin Chalk formations along the Blackland Prairie belt often means deeper overexcavation and select fill than a generic 6-inch slab cut, and clean fill placement in Texas falls under TCEQ rules (30 TAC §330.3). Around Denver, expansive, bentonitic claystone from the Denver Formation and Pierre Shale — plus a winter grading season with freeze-thaw cycles working against you — pushes the same kind of deeper cuts, under CDPHE regulation (6 CCR 1007-2). None of that changes the math above, but it's a big part of why the "standard" range is a range and not a fixed number.

What actually disqualifies foundation spoil

The soil itself is almost never the problem. What gets a load rejected is what's mixed into it. Clean fill dirt, clay, structural fill spoils, topsoil, and sandy soil are all accepted without question. Crushed concrete with no rebar, asphalt fragments, small amounts of grubbed vegetation, and wet-but-not-standing-water soil generally depend on the specific site, which is exactly the kind of thing worth confirming with a dispatcher rather than assuming either way. Construction and demolition debris, treated or painted wood, and any contaminated soil are never accepted — and a load doesn't have to be mostly debris to get turned away, it just has to have any of it mixed in. Sort at the pile, not at the site.

One homeowner's lot versus a builder's entire subdivision

A single homeowner or a GC with one lot has a one-time problem: move this pile, once, before framing shows up. A production builder running a subdivision has a recurring version of the exact same problem, times however many lots are cutting foundations that month. That's the difference dispatcher matching is actually built around. Instead of a superintendent re-solving the same "where does this go" question on every new lot, a builder can set up a standing relationship where each pad's spoil gets matched as it's cut — the same way, every time, without reinventing the process per house.

Membership scales with that. A single homeowner-adjacent job or occasional pad usually fits comfortably under Pickup ($99/mo, up to 50 yards/month). A builder running several lots at once, or a commercial job with real volume, tends to land in Tandem ($299/mo, up to 300 yards/month, priority site access). A builder actively working an entire subdivision, or a GC juggling multiple commercial pads, is the natural fit for Fleet ($599/mo, unlimited yardage, guaranteed availability) — volume and availability stop being something you have to plan around. And regardless of tier, the first load at any approved site is free, and drivers who haul loads are never charged.

Where it actually goes

We don't publish exact site addresses — not because it's complicated, but because matching is the point. A dispatcher looks at your material, your yardage, your truck and access details, and matches you to a specific approved site with room for it, which is a different thing than handing out a list of locations and hoping one works out. If you'd rather see for yourself what's currently open before you commit to a plan, the live maps at dumpsite.io/dfw and dumpsite.io/denver show real-time site status across DFW, Denver metro, Waco, Tyler, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins/Greeley.

Either way, the fastest path on a foundation or pad-site cut is the same one: sort the pile, run the yardage, and text a dispatcher at (214) 753-8096 before the framing crew is standing on the lot wondering why there's still a dirt pile in the way.

Common questions

Is dirt from a foundation or pad-site excavation automatically considered "clean fill"?

Usually, yes — it's the site's own native soil, which is exactly what approved sites are built to take. The catch is what gets mixed into the pile after the cut: form boards, rebar offcuts, stakes, and broken concrete from stripping forms are common contaminants that have nothing to do with the soil itself. Pull those out before loading, since even one piece can get a load turned away.

How much dirt actually comes out of a typical foundation cut?

It depends on footprint and depth, but a standard residential pad usually runs 20 to 60 cubic yards. As an example, an 1,800 sq ft slab cut 6 inches deep works out to about 33 cubic yards, while a larger 2,800 sq ft slab cut 8 inches deep runs closer to 69 cubic yards. Run your own numbers at dumpsite.io/calculator, and round up slightly since loose, loaded soil takes up more space than it did in the ground.

The excavation turned up wet or muddy soil — can that still get dumped?

Usually, if it's genuinely wet soil and not standing water sitting on top of it. This is one of the site-specific calls that depends on the individual approved site, so text a dispatcher with the details (including a photo) before you haul, rather than assuming it will or won't be accepted.

I'm a builder cutting foundations across a whole subdivision — is there a way to set this up once instead of calling in every lot separately?

Yes — that's exactly what the dispatcher-matching model is built for. Instead of solving the "where does this go" question fresh on every house, you can run each lot's spoil through the same standing process as it's cut. Tandem (up to 300 yards/month with priority site access) or Fleet (unlimited yardage, guaranteed availability) are the tiers built for that kind of recurring, multi-lot volume, rather than a single one-off pile.

Ready to get this matched?

Text your dispatcher the material and yardage — they'll take it from here.

Text (214) 753-8096 →

All project types →Calculate your volume →Check if your material qualifies →Large-volume / subdivision-scale? →DFW live map →Denver live map →