Skip hire or man and van? What each really costs in Birmingham

20 October 2026 · 4 min read

If you have a garage, a loft or a house to empty, the first question is usually whether to hire a skip or book a man and van. Both work. The right one depends on what you are throwing away and who is going to do the lifting.

What a skip costs

Skip hire on our site runs from £279 to £512 depending on the size, with the skip delivered and collected by a licensed skip company we work with. That price is for the skip and nothing else: you fill it, and you carry everything out to it yourself.

If the skip cannot sit on your own drive and has to go on the road, it needs a council permit. On our skip page that is quoted separately once we know the address, so it is not in the headline price.

What a man and van costs

Our van service is £65 to attend plus £25 for every cubic yard your items take up, or a fixed price per item, whichever comes out lower, with a £69 minimum. Six cubic yards, which is roughly half a van, comes to £215 with two of us doing all the carrying, sweeping up and taking it away. You never need a permit because nothing is left on the street.

Which to pick

• Choose a skip if you are doing a long job, such as a renovation, that produces waste for days, and you have somewhere off-road to put it. Skips take heavy waste like rubble and soil, which our van service does not.
• Choose a van if it is a one-off clear-out, if you cannot lift it yourself, or if you have nowhere to put a skip. Furniture, bags, appliances and general household waste are what the van is for.
• Mixed job? You can use both: a skip for the building rubble and a van for the furniture on the day it comes out.

The honest comparison

On our own price lists, the same volume costs less by van. A 4-yard skip is £279 against £165 for 4 cubic yards by van, and a 14-yard skip is £512 against £415 by van. The skip price also leaves out the permit, your own time, and the carrying. Where a skip wins is on the type of job: heavy waste the van does not take, and slow jobs where waste builds up over days. Use the instant quote to price the van side in about a minute, and compare it with the skip sizes on the skip page.