Ghost Listings: 422 Dumpster Map Pins That Fail Our Checks

We pulled every dumpster rental business Google Maps lists in the United States, 21,042 of them, and checked each against two published tests. 422 fail at least one. They span 47 states and 204 websites, and 51% have never received a single review. Failing a test is not proof a company is fake, and we say below exactly where the tests are weak.

Scanned and rescanned regularly. Method below. The underlying company data is published in full.

What counts as a ghost listing

A ghost listing is a Google Business Profile for a company that does not operate where it says it does. Someone registers a pin in a town they have no yard in, takes the call, and either sells the job on to a real hauler or quotes a price they have no way of honouring. The listing looks identical to a real one in the map pack.

Two tests, and both are deliberately conservative:

Where these tests are weak

Being listed here means a pin failed a test, and that is all it means. Of the 422 flagged, 207 have at least one review somewhere, and a handful have hundreds. Reviews are the strongest evidence that somebody is genuinely being served, so treat those entries as a pattern we noticed rather than a company we are calling fake. The strict reading of the first test, one website across three or more states with no reviews anywhere, holds for a much smaller set than the headline number.

If your business is on this list and should not be, write to hello@dumpsterpriceindex.com and we will recheck it and remove it if we got it wrong.

One signal we tested and threw out: a phone number appearing on dozens of listings. It looks damning and it is not; the worst offenders are Waste Management and Rumpke call centres, which is exactly what a national hauler's listings should look like. Counting it would have inflated this number by an order of magnitude.

The usa*.top cluster

The clearest case is a set of 193 domains registered on the .top and .store extensions, all following one naming template:

• usacommerx.top16 in 15 states
• usabiznova.top12 in 11 states
• usametrox.top10 in 8 states
• usavendory.top8 in 8 states
• usacommetix.top8 in 7 states
• usabrandly.top7 in 6 states
• usaglobaly.top6 in 6 states
• yoyohomeservices.store6 in 5 states
• usavistalab.top6 in 5 states

The business names attached to them are generated too: Rebel Rig Dumpster Rental, BinBuddy Rentals, BinBlitz Solutions, Buster Bins Dums Dumpster Rental, and most carry no reviews. One operator, one template, 278 pins scattered across the country.

The largest networks

Which states have the most

Texas, Florida and Colorado carry the most, which tracks with market size rather than anything regional. At 2.0% of all listings nationally, the odds of hitting one on any single search are low, but they cluster in exactly the towns where a real hauler is hard to find, which is where being wrong costs you most.

How to spot one before you call

1. Check the review count. 51% of the listings we flagged have none. A dumpster company that has been trading a year has reviews.
2. Look at the domain. If it ends in .top, .store or .xyz, it is not a hauler.
3. Search the phone number. If it answers for six different company names in six states, you have found a broker, not a yard.
4. Ask where the truck is coming from. A real operator names the town without hesitating.