The most annoying item to dispose of: tires

[Ari Bachrach]

I bought a terrible house in a good neighborhood about a month ago. No one else wanted this house so I was able to get it for a great price. The house is a gut rehab, but even more than that, there's one thing that scared off a lot of buyers: tires. The house was filled with tires (and also crack pipes, but that's another story). Tires are considered a hazardous substance by the state of Maryland and cannot be put in a dumpster. You need a special tire hauler's license just to transport them. I called my regular dumpster company and several others and none of them would take them. Eventually, I found a junk place that said they could take them for $5 each. However, the day they were supposed to come out they called to say they had double-checked and their tire hauling license had expired and hadn't been renewed yet by the state, so they couldn't come. The tire recycling place in Baltimore would take them, but wouldn't send a truck to a residential neighborhood to pick them up. I contemplated renting a truck, but I don't have a tire hauling license, and I'd need a very big truck. I found the state licensing office and got a list of everyone who had a tire hauling license in the state. I just went down the list and started calling until I found someone who could take them. I just had to get them out of the house and help load them into his truck. 

I knew the basement was filled with tires, but it's a medium sized house (1200 sqft). I estimated there were 200 tires in the basement. Boy was I wrong. It took a team of four (me and three people) about 4 hours to get all the tires out. The basement was full - every inch of the basement was filled floor to ceiling with tires. When we finally finished we had 642 tires stacked in the driveway to dispose of. I think of all the rehabs I've done, my happiest moment was watching that truck with all the tires in it pull out of the driveway.

[Pat L.]

We have a number of dairy farms near us that use tires to hold down the massive silage covers. So we can usually drop them off at their rural curb.

However, we recently sold an old 1830's home that had about 30 tires stored in the basement. The new owners then discovered that the town will take them all if you are the new owner. So he trucked them to their dump site no fees.