I have had both wonderful and terrible experiences with offcuts/ construction/ deomolition stuff. Amazingly, both with one company.
After we built our garage (and got gouged horribly on it) the man who did it offered to give us some firewood. That went a long way towards making me feel better toward him for the gouging- 3 years of heat is pretty nice.
So I met his wife at the bank last week, and she asked if we wanted any more wood. We just finished burning the last of the three year supply, so I said sure, that would be great. Drop it off anytime.
I for some reason assumed it would be similar to the last drop off, which was bundles of arm-thickness branches, and some logs.
On Thursday as my family was having breakfast, a guy in a construction helmet tapped on my window and peered into my house. Why? I have a front door, doorbell, and it is not easy to get around to that window...
So I went out my door, greeted him, and we went down to where they unload the wood. The big truck was full of those giant sandbag/construction debris woven poly bags. He said the wood was in the bags, and he would use the crane to unload them. Not ideal, but the "free wood" mentality, I agreed. After he unloaded 10 bags, he said "I'll be back with more." I said, no thanks, can't store any more than that. He said just a couple more, he had already lined them up to be loaded and all... I caved in and said fine, but just one more load.
I had to leave then for errands and such.
I was gone quite a while...
And when I returned...
Oh what a sight to my wondering eyes should appear,
but 36 bags of garbage stacked all along my property...
like this, but many, many more...
I looked in them.
The first one was full of branch ends. None larger than a finger in width, and all tangled up.
The second was splintered, painted plywood...
The third was apparently a demolition site garbage bag. Cans, bottles, a few splintered 2x4s, bento boxes...
Another looked like 20-30 cm pieces of 2x2 offcuts. But that was only the top 20 cm or so. Under that was cedar forest floor compost/soil, so a kinda score on that one?
And so on.
I turned the fiber optic telephone cable blue when I called the guy.
As a result, I now have 10 bags of fairly useful wood, (Chunks of old house beams, roundwood and tree trunks, fairly clean offcuts) the other 26 having been taken back. My sons and I are sorting them out and burning the rejects (painted, ply, etc..) in a big bonfire.
So be careful what you have delivered is the moral of my story.