Solid postwar homes on good-sized blocks, many with fruit trees, vegetable gardens and hedges that have been growing for decades.
Not a franchisee or a truck driver from a booking system. The bloke who quotes it is the bloke who loads it.
No bags to fill, no skip to load. Leave it in a pile and he loads it, sweeps up and takes it away.
Not a bin size. A heap beside the driveway and one at the bottom of a steep yard are different jobs and get different prices.
Standing tree, asbestos, or more rubbish than garden — he tells you before he starts, not after.
A pruning pile hauled away and a few bags of leaf litter collected is the usual combination on a Dandenong North block.
Piles of prunings, branches, hedge trimmings, leaves and weeds that won't fit in the green bin. Ross backs the trailer in, loads it himself and takes it away to be recycled — you don't lift a thing.
Fruit tree and vine prunings from home gardens.
Doing a big garden clean-up — overgrown beds, a back corner nobody has touched in years, a rental between tenants or a property being tidied for sale? Pile it all up and Ross collects the lot in one visit.
Long-held yards cleared before a subdivision or sale.
Fallen limbs, shed bark, leaf litter and dry prunings gathered up from around the house — the fine fuel that matters most in a grassfire or ember attack. Collected and taken away before the Fire Danger Period starts.
Dry grass and litter along the back fence.
A gum has dropped a limb across the driveway, or a windy night has left the yard covered. Ross collects what's come down and hauls it away. Standing trees and hung-up limbs are an arborist's job — once they've dropped it, Ross can take it away.
Branches from old yard and street trees.
Dandenong North was mostly built between the fifties and seventies, and many of its homes still sit on the original blocks. Those back yards were made for growing things: lemon trees, figs, grapevines, a vegetable patch along the fence and a hedge out the front. Plenty of families have looked after them for decades.
A productive garden like that makes a lot of green waste, particularly at pruning time. Other homes in the area are being sold or subdivided, and the garden has to be cleared before anything can happen. Either way, Ross will load it and take it off for recycling.
Winter is pruning season for fruit trees and grapevines, and a well-established yard in Dandenong North can produce a trailer-load from just a few trees. Old vegetable beds cleared at the end of the season add more.
Ross takes prunings, spent plants, vine cuttings and fallen fruit. Timber stakes, wire and netting should be pulled out first so the load stays clean.
Dandenong North has seen plenty of older homes sold and blocks subdivided for units. Before a sale, or before a builder starts, the garden usually needs clearing — hedges, shrubs, overgrown trees and years of growth.
Ross can clear the green waste component of that job. Anything else — sheds, fencing, concrete, rubbish — needs a separate service. If there are trees to remove, check with Greater Dandenong City Council about permits first.
Most Dandenong North homes have a straight driveway down the side of the house, which makes access easy. Where the driveway has been built over or a unit sits at the back, the green waste has to come out through a gate.
Let Ross know when you book. He loads by hand, so it just changes the time it takes.
July and August are when the fruit trees and vines get cut back, and the piles build up quickly. Booking a pickup for straight after the prune means the cuttings do not sit around the yard until spring.
Suburb, roughly how much there is, and what the access is like. A photo saves a lot of back and forth.
Ross comes back with a number. On big or awkward jobs he has a look first rather than guessing.
Loaded by hand, driveway swept, and off for proper green waste disposal.
Ross runs this on his own. He quotes the job, he turns up, he loads the trailer and he takes it away — the same bloke every visit. There is no office in between, no skip company, and no franchise cut coming out of what you pay.
It also means he will tell you when something isn't his job — a standing tree that needs an arborist, or a pile that is more rubbish than garden — rather than taking the money and leaving you with half a problem.
The suburb, roughly how much there is, and how easy it is to get a trailer to it is enough to work with. A photo of the pile gets you a price fastest.
Prefer to talk? Call or text Ross on 0416 030 925. Monday to Saturday, daylight hours — weather permitting.
Get a price on your pile. Takes a minute — Ross reads them himself.
Thanks — that's gone through to Ross. Spring is his busiest time, so if it's close to fire season he may take a day or two.
