The Wilson County Landfill and Its Seven Convenience Centers, by the Numbers

Last reviewed 2026-10-08. Journalists, researchers, and community groups are welcome to cite any figure on this page with attribution and a link.

The Wilson County landfill, at 378 Dump Road in Lebanon, is open Monday to Friday from 7 am to 3 pm, checks in loads until 30 minutes before closing and charges $18 per cubic yard for construction and demolition waste, at rates effective November 1, 2022. The County's seven convenience centers, its staffed drop-off sites for residents, open daily from 7:00 am to 4:30 pm and take a fixed allowance per visit. This page sets out both in the County's own words, works the landfill rates through for common loads, and adds the Census, building permit, storm and climate figures behind the volume of junk and debris around Mt. Juliet.

Every figure names its source, among them Wilson County's Convenience Centers and Landfill / Solid Wastes pages, its facility pages and news items, TDEC, the Census Bureau, the National Weather Service, FEMA, TEMA and NOAA. Mt. Juliet is its own city in Wilson County, and Suggs Creek, on Stewarts Ferry Pike, is the only center with a Mt. Juliet address. Hermitage, Old Hickory and Donelson sit across the line in Davidson County, where Metro Nashville's convenience centers ask for a Tennessee driver's license showing a Davidson County address. For what hauling costs nationally, see our junk removal cost page; for where refused items can go, see the Mt. Juliet trash and bulk disposal guide.

The seven Wilson County convenience centers and their hours

Wilson County's Solid Waste Department manages the landfill and seven convenience centers, staffed drop-off sites for County residents. The County's Convenience Centers page says they are "open daily from 7:00AM-4:30PM," and a County news item posted September 21, 2026 adds that they close on federal holidays. None of the seven facility pages prints its own hours. Suggs Creek, at 3519 Stewarts Ferry Pike, is the only center with a Mt. Juliet address; three use a Lebanon address, two Watertown and one Norene. The County lists addresses but no distances, so pick the nearest by address. Staff may also send a load on to the landfill: "You may be instructed to carry your load to the Landfill."

Hours from the County's Convenience Centers page (no date shown); closed on federal holidays, per the County's news item of September 21, 2026. Addresses and towns as the County's facility pages print them.

What one visit allows, and what the centers refuse

Wilson County's page lists its rules in this order: residents only, with a Wilson County vehicle tag; no box trucks or rental moving trucks; no enclosed trailers; no partial loads; no commercial loads; no scavenging; one visit per day. It does not define a partial load. Each visit allows ten bags of household garbage "And One of the Following:" item groups, separated on the page by "OR", so one visit covers two pieces of furniture or two appliances, not both. Refrigerators and freezers are also on the centers' recycling list, with cardboard, aluminum, tin, metal, batteries, carpet padding, and loose milk jugs and soda bottles (types 1 and 2).

Most refused items have another route. The landfill takes oil-based paint from residents twice a calendar year and refuses latex paint, which the County says can be dried out and thrown away with regular trash. TDEC lists the Wilson County landfill as the County's waste tire site. Small residential yard waste goes to the landfill at $5 per cubic yard, and inside the City of Mt. Juliet, Public Works chips brush that single-family homes on public streets set within 10 feet of the road. Household hazardous waste went to TDEC's mobile collection at the James E. Ward Ag Center on October 3, 2026, the County's only date on TDEC's 2026 schedule. If a refrigerator or washer will not fit a visit, our appliance removal page covers the refrigerant rules for hauling it.

Word for word from the County's Convenience Centers page, under "Allowed items:" and "Unacceptable Items:" (no date shown). One allowance per visit, and "One Visit Per Day".

The Wilson County landfill: hours, check-in, fees and payment

The Wilson County landfill opens Monday to Friday, 7 am to 3 pm, and its page prints no weekend hours. "All loads must be checked into the scale house 30 minutes prior to closing," which puts the last check-in at 2:30 pm, and everyone must be out by 3 pm for scheduled maintenance. The County's rates, effective November 1, 2022, are $18 per cubic yard for construction and demolition waste, $100 per ton for shingles and $5 per cubic yard for residential yard waste labeled "(small)", a word the page does not define. Payment is "Cash or local check only". "All loads entering the landfill must be tarped," and "Loads that are not tarped will be turned away."

The landfill page also covers oil-based paint (residents only, twice a calendar year, up to one 5 gallon container, five one-gallon containers or twenty one-quart containers) and electronic waste such as televisions, old computers and microwaves, with no fee printed for electronics. It prints no rate for household garbage, tires, mattresses, furniture, appliances, concrete or stumps. The table works the County's rates through for common loads; it is our arithmetic from the County's fees, Ford's box volumes, EPA's 731 pounds per cubic yard for asphalt roofing and NIST's 27 cubic feet per cubic yard, and the scale house bills by its own measure. Remodel loads are covered on our construction debris removal page. Neither the landfill page nor the centers' page mentions mattresses, so whether the Wilson County dump takes them is not published; our mattress disposal page sets out the rules that are.

Our arithmetic, not County figures. Inputs: Wilson County's rates (effective November 1, 2022); Ford's 2026 F-150 box volumes; one dump trailer maker's bed size; one national hauler's chart for a pickup load (2.5 cubic yards); EPA's 731 pounds per cubic yard for composition roofing (April 2016); NIST's 27 cubic feet per cubic yard and 2,000 pounds per ton. The County does not define "(small)".

Mt. Juliet and Wilson County in numbers: people, homes, permits

Mt. Juliet's population went from a 2010 Census count of 23,671 to 39,289 in 2020, a 66.0 percent rise, and the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimate for July 1, 2025 is 45,172. Wilson County went from 113,993 to 147,737 over the same decade and to an estimated 175,033 in 2025. The housing is young: in the American Community Survey's 2020-2024 estimates, 6,735 of the city's 16,952 housing units, 39.7 percent, were built in 2010 or later, and the median year built is 2006, against 2000 for the County. Of the city's 15,960 occupied units, 11,505 are owner-occupied, and 5,183 (32.5 percent of all occupied units) hold households that moved in during 2020 or later.

Building permits show the County still adding housing faster than the state. Wilson County authorized 1,982 housing units by building permit in 2025, the Census Bureau's QuickFacts shows; by our arithmetic that is 4.6 percent of Tennessee's 43,374, while the County holds 2.4 percent of the state's people. That is 11.3 housing units per 1,000 residents, against 5.9 for the state. The yearly counts in the table are the Census Bureau's series as republished by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; since 2010 the low was 677 in 2011 and the high 2,371 in 2021. The permit rows cover the whole County, and the ACS figures are sample estimates with margins of error, not counts.

Census Bureau: 2010 Census (Summary File 1), 2020 Census (Demographic and Housing Characteristics), QuickFacts Vintage 2025, and American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates. Permits: the Census Bureau's annual Wilson County series as republished by FRED (BPPRIV047189); the 2025 figure matches QuickFacts. Permit rows are County totals.

Storms, weather and debris: tornadoes, ice and the monthly normals

The March 3, 2020 tornado set the scale for storm debris in Mt. Juliet. The National Weather Service rated it EF-3, with peak winds of 165 mph along a 60.13 mile path from western Davidson County into Smith County, and counted three deaths in Mt. Juliet, the first tornado deaths in Wilson County since April 11, 1944. FEMA approved a $1,199,686 Public Assistance grant, through the State, to repay the City for removing more than 114,000 cubic yards of debris from public roads, property and rights-of-way. On December 11, 2021, an EF-1 tornado with 105 mph winds ran 7.67 miles from Davidson County into north Mt. Juliet, and after that night's tornadoes Wilson County Emergency Management reported 163 homes damaged in the County.

Ice is the other debris maker. In the January 24-25, 2026 ice storm, the National Weather Service's Nashville office reported widespread ice totals across its region of 0.25 to 0.75 of an inch, with nearly an inch in some areas, and FEMA approved Public Assistance for more than 15 Middle Tennessee counties, Wilson among them. After a disaster, FEMA's guidance asks residents to sort debris into six curbside piles: electronics, appliances, hazardous material, vegetative material, construction material and household garbage. The normals in the table come from NOAA's OLD HICKORY WFO station, in Wilson County near Green Hill rather than inside the city: 54.85 inches of precipitation and 4.6 inches of snow a year, May the wettest month, and normal lows below freezing from December through February. Brush and limbs are covered on our yard waste removal page.

NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals, station OLD HICKORY WFO (USC00406806), the National Weather Service Nashville office's station, about 4.3 miles northwest of the Census Bureau's point for Mt. Juliet. Normal low is the monthly normal minimum temperature.

Sources & Methodology

Every figure above was taken from the primary sources below (accessed 2026-10-08). Where a number is derived (arithmetic on published figures) or covers a broader period or area, the text says so.

1. Wilson County, Convenience Centers page (Landfill / Solid Wastes department; no date shown)
2. Wilson County, Landfill / Solid Wastes page (rates effective November 1, 2022; oil based paint program effective February 1, 2023)
3. Wilson County, news item from the Solid Waste Department, posted September 21, 2026 — The seven convenience centers' own facility pages are listed on the County's Facilities page.
4. Wilson County Connection newsletter, July 2018 (older figures, for comparison only)
5. Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), Waste Tire Program
6. TDEC, 2026 Household Hazardous Waste collection event schedule
7. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Volume-to-Weight Conversion Factors (April 2016)
8. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Handbook 44 (2026), Appendix C
9. Ford, 2026 F-150 technical specifications (bed sizes)
10. PJ Trailers, D5 utility dump trailer page (bed size)
11. U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts for Mount Juliet city, Tennessee (Vintage 2025 estimates) — The 2010 Census (Summary File 1), the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year tables are on data.census.gov.
12. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), series BPPRIV047189, the Census Bureau's building permit counts for Wilson County
13. National Weather Service, Nashville office: the March 2-3, 2020 tornado page — The December 11, 2021 tornado page and the office's Significant Events 2026 StoryMap are cited in the text.
14. FEMA, disaster declaration DR-4476 (Tennessee severe storms, tornadoes, straight-line winds and flooding)
15. Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, FEMA's release on Mt. Juliet's tornado debris removal grant, September 8, 2020
16. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, OLD HICKORY WFO station (USC00406806), Wilson County