Tire Disposal in Chicopee, MA

Tires are one of the oldest items on the Massachusetts disposal ban list. Whole tires have been banned from landfills since 31 December 1991 and from transfer facilities since 1 April 2000, under 310 CMR 19.017.

The reason is physical rather than chemical. A whole tire traps air, so buried in a landfill it works its way back to the surface over time and breaks the cap. They also collect water and breed mosquitoes, and a tire fire is close to impossible to put out. So the rule is that they have to be shredded before any landfill disposal, which means processing, which means a fee.

Expect roughly $5 to $20 a tire around here. Rims on rather than off usually costs more, because the steel has to be separated at the processor. A set of four off the rims is a small charge added to another job. A pile of thirty in a garage is its own trip.

Where they end up

Shredded, then either burned as tire derived fuel in industrial boilers or ground into crumb rubber. Crumb rubber goes into playground surfaces, running tracks, athletic fields and asphalt rubber road surfacing. It is one of the better recycling stories on the ban list, because the end market is real rather than theoretical.

Why there is usually a pile

Tires accumulate because there is no easy way to get rid of one. A tire shop will take your old ones when they fit new ones, usually for a small fee built into the price. But a set you took off yourself, or a set that came with a used car, or the ones the previous owner left in the garage, have nowhere obvious to go.

That is why the classic call is a garage or barn cleanout where tires are part of a bigger pile. It is worth counting them and saying the number, because they are priced per tire on top of the load rather than by the space they take up.

Farm and equipment tires are a different conversation entirely. A tractor tire is enormous, filled with fluid in many cases, and processors charge a great deal more for them. In the rural parts of Franklin County and the hilltowns this comes up more than you would expect, and it needs a specific quote.

Check your town first

Some transfer stations in this region accept a small number of tires from residents for a per tire fee, often lower than a hauler would charge. If you have four and a car and a transfer station sticker, that is the cheaper route and we would rather say so. If you have thirty, or no way to move them, that is when a truck makes sense.