A stripped flower bed looks like nothing, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow. In the dumpster it is another story: soil, rocks and sod weigh about one ton per cubic yard — far above a renovation dumpster that fills with wood and drywall. That is why soil never goes into the mixed dry materials box, and why the rental is not billed by volume.
One size goes out: the 20 yard. The price covers 7 tons included, 12 tons maximum; each additional ton is prorated from the disposal facility's weigh ticket — real weight, never rounded. And the box fills three quarters at most (45 inches from the floor): the truck's legal load is reached well before the rim. The rule holds for the whole family — concrete, asphalt, bricks and mortar — and the why behind the separate dumpster is on the blog.
The contaminant that matters most here is not chemical at all: it is Japanese knotweed. In Quebec it reproduces almost entirely from rhizome fragments, and hauling excavated soil is one of its main vectors — a single piece of root is enough. If your property carries it, the government's recommendation is not to reuse that soil: bury it on site at roughly two metres, or send it to an authorized site. Tell us before delivery; it changes where the load goes, not what you pay. Rocks take a different road from concrete and brick: crushed, they become natural aggregate, outside the standard that governs recycled materials.