Despite carrying a Fort Worth service, the Hillshire Drop-off Station - also called the North Service Center - has a Haslet postal address at 301 Hillshire Drive, and it handles the far northern end of the city. Use of it is free, provided you are a Fort Worth household paying the city for sanitation.

The timetable is a short one. Doors are open from 8am to 5pm across Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, then only a morning session on Saturday finishing at twelve. Mondays and Sundays are both closed days, which surprises anyone relying on the older published hours that ran six days a week until 6pm. A further nine dates are lost to city holidays across the year.

Two pieces of identification are required for most waste types. One is a Fort Worth water bill no more than six months old with sanitation charges visible under the Account Activity section; the other is a matching driving licence. Residents of city apartment blocks may instead show just a licence, but that admits them for recycling and household hazardous waste only. There is no way to send somebody in your place - the person on the account has to be there. People living beyond the city boundary cannot use the station, and neither can any business.

Every category carries a ceiling. Remodelling and small repair waste: five cubic yards, once a calendar month. Tyres from passenger cars: four in six months, rims removed beforehand. Televisions and computers: a pair every half year. Household chemical products: twenty gallons per three months. Fluorescent tube lighting: ten per three months. Confidential shredding, which is offered free every day the site is open: three boxes each visit and six across a quarter. A load over the limit is refused in full, not partially accepted.

Accepted materials run to bagged domestic refuse, the contents of a blue recycling cart, scrap metals including guttering, rebar, bed frames, letterboxes, cooking pans and vehicle parts other than engine components, oversized furniture and similar bulk, yard trimmings contained in Kraft paper bags, refrigerators and air conditioners emptied of food, electronics, garden tools once drained of petrol and oil, fire extinguishers, and clean white polystyrene. Rejected outright: any load not tied down or sheeted, unbagged loose material, waste produced by tenants at a rental you own, concrete and rubble alongside soil and ceramic tiles, roof coverings, asbestos products, pressurised tanks of oxygen, butane, helium, carbon dioxide or propane, ordnance, radioactive items including old oilfield pipe, and vehicles that hold a title.

Trailers must run on one axle, measure eight feet or less in length and six or less across, and be loaded to a maximum height of three feet, roughly five cubic yards in total. Trailers on two axles are prohibited, as are box lorries and any vehicle bearing commercial signage. Unloading is your responsibility, though staff will help older or disabled visitors if 311 is called first. Keep young children and pets in the vehicle and do not smoke. Loads the station cannot handle, including roofing and landlord waste, belong at the Southeast Landfill, 6288 Salt Road, Fort Worth 76140, where charges apply. Reach the city on (817) 392-1234.