How to Choose a Trash Can Cleaning Company in Broward County

The bin count is the first thing to ask, because it decides whether two quotes can be compared at all. A low headline price often covers a single can, while most Broward homes put out at least two carts — garbage and recycling — so the real cost only shows once both are priced.

Ask for the per-visit price at your number of bins, not the starting price. At The BinFather every plan covers two bins and each additional bin is $10, so a monthly visit is $30 for two carts and $40 for three. The full list is on the pricing page, with a calculator that does the arithmetic for your own count.

Then ask one follow-up: is the figure per visit or per month? On a quarterly plan those are very different numbers.

Yes — a trash can cleaning company should wash with heated water it carries on its own truck or trailer. Grease and the film that bonds to the base of a cart in South Florida heat come off with heat and pressure; cold water from a garden hose mostly moves them around.

The second half of that answer matters as much as the first: their water, not yours. Some outfits run a hose from your outdoor tap, which puts the water on your bill and the runoff on your driveway. We bring our own water and tidy the area before we leave.

A trash can cleaning company should come on your collection day, after the truck has emptied the cart, because that is when your cart is empty. A cart cannot be properly cleaned with a week of bags still in it, and a company that comes on a random day is either cleaning around your trash or asking you to empty it.

In Broward, each city sets its own collection days, so the company has to know yours. If you are not sure of it, our guide to finding your Broward County collection day walks through it city by city. Timing it to pickup also means you do not need to be home: the cart is already at the curb.

City rules shape this too. The City of Fort Lauderdale, for example, asks residents to bring carts back from the curb the same day as collection, so a cleaning crew that turns up the next morning may find the cart already back behind the house. Ask how they handle it.

A trash can cleaning should include every surface that touches waste, not just the inside walls. The places that make the smell are the underside of the lid and the base channel at the bottom of the cart, where liquid collects and sits — a clean that skips them will smell again within days.

Ask them to list what is cleaned on each visit. A complete answer sounds like this:

1. 01The interior walls.
2. 02The base, where liquid collects.
3. 03The rim and the underside of the lid.
4. 04The outside shell.
5. 05Deodorising, as part of the clean — not a paid add-on.

If sanitising or the lid is a separate tier, you are being sold the job in pieces.

Some trash can cleaning companies require a contract and some do not, so ask before you pay — and ask how cancelling works, not just whether you can. A good answer names the steps and any charge in one breath.

Ours is no contract: recurring service runs until you stop it, and you can pause it, switch the interval or cancel with no fee. The monthly plan is paid month by month, or the year up front at 10% off ($324 instead of $360); every 3 months is paid each visit, or the year up front at 5% off ($190 instead of $200). If you want a trial before any schedule, the one-time clean is $65 for two bins and rolls into nothing.

If the first visit is promotional, the question to ask is what the second visit costs. A cheap first clean followed by a rate you have to phone someone to stop is a different deal from the one advertised.

A trash can cleaning company should come back on its next pass rather than charge you for a cleaning it could not do. Collection trucks miss carts, and a missed pickup is not the customer's fault — so how a company handles it shows how it treats you on an ordinary bad day.

At The BinFather we send a reminder the day before. If the cart is not out or is still full when we arrive, we come back on the next pass and do not charge for that visit.

Yes. A trash can cleaning company only works for you if your street is on its route, and in Broward that is a city-by-city question rather than a county-wide one. Check the company's service list for your city by name instead of assuming "Broward" means everywhere.

We cover Broward cities including Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pembroke Pines, Coral Springs, Weston and Pompano Beach, along with parts of Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County. The full list is on the bin cleaning page. Businesses and condominiums with dumpsters or cart banks need a different service — that is commercial dumpster cleaning, priced by how many containers there are.