Is anything still standing, still hanging, or leaning on a roof? Then a tree service goes first.
The first question after a storm is usually the cheapest one: will the city take it? Charlotte runs a weekly curbside yard-waste collection, and the answer turns almost entirely on how the material is cut and stacked. The dimensions below are not advice. They are the specification the program is built around, and a heap outside them is a heap that gets driven past.
You may have typed storm debris removal charlotte to get here, or tree limb and brush removal charlotte nc. Both name the same driveway: green wood that was a tree on Tuesday, and a trash day that is not going to touch most of it.
Read the sentences together and the shape of the afternoon appears. Five feet is a short limb. Four inches is about a wrist. A limb off a mature willow oak is longer and thicker than both, several times over, and the trunk sections cut to free a driveway are past the log line before they hit the ground. That is not a complaint about the program — a weekly truck with a claw has to be built to some specification. It just means the big half of a storm heap was never inside it.
There is a second rule that catches storm material, and it surprises people because it is not about how much of it there is. It is about when the heap goes to the curb and how it is stacked when it gets there — and after a storm the answer to “when” is usually “the same evening, in the dark, while the adrenaline is still up.”
The City's guidelines page describes this as a “minimum $150 citation.” The controlling instrument does not say minimum. It sets one amount, three separate times, and the subsection everybody quotes is not the one most likely to catch a storm reader.
api.municode.com/CodesContent?jobId=486645&nodeId=PTIICOOR_CH10HESA&productId=19970, HTTP 200), and the City Clerk's copy of the ordinance as adopted: Ordinance No. 9151, September 11, 2017 (charlottenc.gov) — “AN ORDINANCE REPLACING CHAPTER 10 OF THE CITY CODE, ENTITLED HEALTH AND SANITATION,” effective January 1, 2018, with Sec. 10-115 at Ordinance Book 60, Page 015, Exhibit A page 14. Both were read rather than a brochure, because a brochure is not the instrument that sets a penalty. This is a City of Charlotte ordinance and it governs the city's curb, not a county facility. Text checked September 2026. Ordinances change.
For a storm heap, (b) is the one with teeth. Subsection (a) is the early set-out everybody has heard of — the mistake made the night of the storm rather than the night before collection. Subsection (b) is the one that catches the aftermath: material still at the curb at 11:59 p.m. on collection day is the homeowner's again, and after a bad night the truck does not always clear a street in one pass. Subsection (c) names only Solid Waste.
How any of that reads against a particular curb is the City's call and not ours. This page quotes the section and links two copies of it so it can be read whole; it does not apply it. The only practical line on this page is the plain one: stack it the day before your collection day rather than the night of the storm, and clear whatever the truck refused instead of leaving it out. If it has already been refused and it is already out, tell us what's there.
We'll connect you with an independent local hauler. The figures above are City penalties, not prices. For a hired load, see the home page rate card. These are starting prices. Your hauler confirms the final price on-site after reviewing the items, before anything is loaded.
Past the curbside limits there are two ways out: a vehicle of your own and a county gate, or a hired hauler. Here is the gate — and note that this is Mecklenburg County, a different authority from the city rules above, running its own sheet.
Two numbers on that sheet decide most storm heaps. Four inches is where a log stops being a flat fee and starts being a weigh-in — the same four inches the City uses at the curb, reached independently by a different authority for a different reason. Twenty-four inches is where an ordinary center stops taking the log at all. If a mature trunk has already been sectioned in the backyard, those rounds are very likely on the wrong side of both lines, and the family car with the seats folded down is not the vehicle for them.
Send a photo of what is on the ground and we make the referral to a local hauler. Your hauler will get back to you with a rough quote.
This is the part worth reading twice.
This page is about debris that is already down: limbs on the lawn, brush dragged into a heap, rounds somebody has already cut, a fence panel the wind folded, a shed roof out of the bushes, the soaked contents of a garage. Tell us what's there and we'll connect you with a local hauler.
We are not arborists. Taking down a standing tree, freeing a limb hung up in a canopy, sectioning a trunk that is still holding weight, grinding a stump out of a lawn — every one of those is a tree service's work, and it comes first. Ask the tree service whether hauling the wood is part of its quote.
One thing the City's guidelines settle on their own account: “Tree stumps will not be collected.” Read that for what it is — the City saying its curbside truck will not pick up a stump. Get the tree service for the stump. For the rounds, brush and cut wood left lying on the lawn, tell us what's there.
If you are not sure which company you need, ask a tree service first. For what is already on the ground: Text a photo or call (704) 459-5052.
Storms arrive on their own schedule in this county, and the rest of the calendar does not wait for them. You can also send furniture, appliances, mattresses, garage and attic clutter, estate and rental cleanouts, office furniture, sheds and hot tubs, and ordinary household loads with nothing dramatic behind them at all. Debris after a storm is one kind of request.
The full item list and the published rate card are on the home page. If the question is where the material can go once it leaves, that is the Mecklenburg County disposal explainer; if a whole property has to be emptied rather than a yard, start at cleanout services.
Storm heaps collect odd things — a can of two-stroke mix that came out of a flooded shed, a split bag of fertilizer — so mention them when you reach out.
The City's dimensions, the ordinance behind the citation, the county's gate price, and the line between a tree service and a hauler.
Some of them. Charlotte's yard-waste guidelines state that “Limbs must be no longer than 5 feet in length and no larger than 4 inches in diameter,” that “Logs must be under 4 inches in diameter,” and that limb piles should be “no longer than 5 feet long and 3 feet high” with “2 feet in between each pile.” A storm heap normally contains material on both sides of those limits: the small stuff is inside the program and the trunk sections generally are not. The source is the City's collection guidelines page.
The City's guidelines page uses the word minimum. The ordinance does not. Charlotte City Code Sec. 10-115 sets a civil penalty “in the amount of $150.00” in each of its three subsections — for setting material out more than one day before the scheduled collection, for failing to clear the curb by 11:59 p.m. on the day of scheduled collection, and for failing to properly prepare or containerize. This page quotes the ordinance because the ordinance is the instrument that sets a penalty, and two published copies of it were read. How it applies to any particular curb is the City's call, not ours.
On Mecklenburg County's FY July 2026 – June 2027 residential sheet, under five 32-gallon bags of yard waste is No Charge; more than five bags of grass, leaves or brush is $8.00/unit; and once the load is weighed, limbs and brush are $42.00/ton with an $8.00 load minimum. Logs up to 4 inches in diameter are a flat $8.00/unit under one cubic yard, larger logs are weighed at $42.00/ton, and loads of logs over 24 inches in diameter have to go to Compost Central or Foxhole. Those are county drop-off prices at a county facility — they are not a City of Charlotte collection charge. The source is the county's published fee PDF.
No. This page is about what is already on the ground. Felling a standing tree, cutting a hung-up limb out of a canopy and grinding a stump are a tree service's work, and they come first. Ask the tree service whether hauling the wood is part of its quote.
Ask when you send the details, and tell us what is actually out there. If anything is still standing, still hanging in a canopy, or resting on a structure, get a tree service in first.
No. You can also send furniture, appliances, mattresses, garage and attic clutter, estate and rental cleanouts, sheds, hot tubs and office furniture, plus ordinary household loads. Storm debris is one kind of request. The rate card and item list are on the home page.
Text a picture of what is on the ground, or just describe it. We pass it along to a local hauler.