Home › Alleys & Permits

Alleys & City Permits

Private property needs nothing. The public way needs a permit, and in Chicago that permit is ours to hold rather than yours to chase.

(619) 658-9555We handle the city paperwork

The rule

Chicago reverses the usual arrangement

Everywhere else we have worked, the permit for a container on the street is issued to the property owner or the contractor, and the hauler just turns up. The City of Chicago does the opposite, and it changes what you have to do.

Municipal Code 10-28-799

Since 1 January 2001, companies providing dumpsters that occupy the public way have been required to obtain a dumpster permit. The permit is administered by the Chicago Department of Transportation through its Public Way Permits Division, and applications are submitted through the city's online permit portal rather than over a counter.

Permits are classed by container size. Class A is a container of 30 cubic yards or less; Class B is anything larger. Placement within the Central Business District is handled on a separate footing from the rest of the city, and the location type — alley, curb lane, parkway or sidewalk — is part of the application.

Chicago Municipal Code 10-28-799 · CDOT Public Way Permits Division

What that means for you is short: if the container is going anywhere public, you do not apply for anything. We do. If a company asks you to go and pull a city dumpster permit yourself for a Chicago placement, they are either not a city operator or they are asking you to do something that is not yours to do.

Three placements

Where a container can actually go

Private property

A bungalow driveway, a side drive, a parking pad, a private lot. No public way permit, no application, no waiting. This is most of Jefferson Park, Garfield Ridge, Beverly and Norwood Park, and a fair share of the Bungalow Belt.

What still matters is the surface and the width. The strip beside a Chicago bungalow is frequently narrower than a container is wide.

The alley

Public way, so a permit, and the most common placement in the dense neighbourhoods. Width is what decides it — and whether your neighbours can still reach their garages while it is there.

We will ask about poles, corrals, overhead lines and the condition of the surface, because all four stop deliveries.

The street

Also public way, also a permit, and the answer wherever there is no usable alley or the alley is impossible. Expect a conversation about the parking lane, the hydrant, and in winter whether the block is a posted route.

Alley width

What the truck physically needs back there

A roll-off is delivered by backing in and sliding the container off a set of rails, then winching it back on at collection. That is a straight-line operation, and an alley either gives you the room for it or it does not.

Roughly 60 feet of straight run to get the container off and on. Alley dog-legs and corner garages are the usual obstacle.
About 23 feet of vertical clearance. Chicago alleys carry overhead electric and cable, and the sag mid-span is lower than it looks from the ground.
Width to pass. A container along one side of a standard alley leaves room for a car. In a narrow alley it does not, and that is a neighbour conversation before it is a delivery.
A surface that will take it. Chicago alley paving varies from good concrete to broken asphalt over brick to unpaved. We will tell you what we can see and what we cannot.

The useful thing you can do before ringing is walk to the back of the property, stand where you want the container, and look up and both ways along the alley. Thirty seconds there saves a rescheduled delivery more often than anything else.

Chicago alley with containers and rear building access

Blocks without alleys

Where the alley simply does not exist

Chicago is an alley city, but not uniformly. Parts of the far north lakefront, much of Hyde Park, and scattered blocks elsewhere were platted without service alleys or had them built over. On those blocks the rear of the building is somebody's garden or another building, and there is no back way in.

Street placement is then the normal route rather than a fallback, and it carries its own considerations: the parking lane has to be clear on the day, hydrants and crossings have to stay clear throughout, and between December and April you need to know whether the street is a posted overnight route. More on winter placement →

Large buildings add a third party. In a courtyard building, a co-op or a condo, the management company or the board usually has a say in where and when a container can stand, and that conversation runs on their timetable rather than ours. Start it early.

Before the truck comes

What we will ask you

The cross streets, not just the address Chicago is decided block by block. Cross streets tell us the alley, the likely width and whether the block is posted.
Where you want it, and what is overhead Alley, driveway or street. Then poles, lines, trees and corrals.
How long it needs to stay A public way permit has to cover the whole period. Extending afterwards is more work than getting it right at the start.
Whether the work is permitted construction If it is, the city's recycling requirement applies to the project and the documentation falls to the permit holder for the work. What that involves →
Who else uses the space Neighbouring garages, a shared drive, a loading zone, a building's bin corral. Better settled now than at eight in the morning.

Common questions

What people ask when they call

So I genuinely do not apply for anything?

Correct, for the city dumpster permit on the public way — the code puts that on the container provider. If your project has its own building permit, that is separate and remains yours.

How far ahead do you need to know?

For a private driveway, very little notice. For a public way placement, give us a few days where you can, because the application and the placement have to line up with the day you actually want it.

Can the container sit on the sidewalk?

Sidewalk placement is a recognised location type on the permit, but it is the least favoured because pedestrian access has to be maintained. In practice the alley or the curb lane is nearly always the better answer.

What if a hydrant or a pole is in the approved spot?

We amend the location rather than squeeze it in. Blocking a hydrant is not something that gets negotiated, and the city's own process contemplates amending a permit's location when an obstruction is found.

Does the Central Business District work differently?

It is handled separately in the permit structure and placement there is tighter in every respect. Tell us at the start if the job is downtown rather than treating it as an ordinary city address.

My alley is unpaved and rutted.

Then tell us before the day. Some are perfectly workable and some are not, and a truck that cannot get back out of an alley is a much larger problem than a delayed delivery.