Dumpster Rental Prices by State

What each size costs

Every size on one scale, drawn from the quartiles rather than a single number, so the spread within a size is as visible as the gap between sizes.

Bar is the middle half of published prices, tick is the median. Sizes with fewer than 8 observations are not shown.

What the price usually includes

• 7-day rental is the most common period (1803 observations)
• 2 tons is the median weight allowance (930)
• $76 per ton is the median overage charge beyond that (845)

Overage is where most surprise charges come from: the listed price covers the container and a fixed weight, and everything above it is billed by the ton.

Work out your own number — the cost calculator starts from the published prices on this page and adds the two charges that move a bill most, weight over the allowance and days over the rental.

The state median is the weaker half of the answer

Every table on this page is organised by state, which makes it look as though the state is what sets your bill. Across the 33 states where at least twelve companies publish a 20-yard rate, the middle half of state medians spans 15% of the national median, while the middle half of company prices inside a typical state spans 22% of that state's own median.

So the state figure is worth having as a sanity check and not much more. The number that decides what you pay is which of the companies within range of you happens to answer, which is why every state page below lists them individually and why the statistics behind this are published in full.

What moves your quote

Six things change the number, and only one of them is the size on the container.

1. Where the landfill is. Haulers pay the tip by the ton and tipping fees are local, which is why the same 20-yard swings by hundreds of dollars between states. This is the single biggest variable and it is the one you cannot negotiate.
2. What you are throwing out. Volume fills the box; weight sets the bill. Roofing, concrete, tile and dirt hit the allowance long before the container looks full.
3. How long you keep it. 7 days is the most common included period, and extra days run a median $16. A weekend often costs what a week costs, so take the week.
4. Distance from their yard. Not from you to them. The truck runs out and back, and a yard 40 miles away prices that in whether or not it says so.
5. When you book. Spring and early summer are the busy season for roofing and remodels. The same hauler quotes differently in March than in January.
6. Placement. A tight driveway, soft ground, or a long carry means more time on site, and some haulers price that in rather than turn the job down.

Five ways to pay less

1. Get two quotes, not one. 1,395 companies publish a price on their own website. The spread between the 25th and 75th percentile on a 20-yard is $350 to $490, and that is the same size in the same country.
2. Say what the debris is when you call. A hauler who knows it is a roof will quote the right allowance up front instead of billing you for it afterwards.
3. Take the bigger size if you are between two. The gap between neighboring sizes is smaller than a second haul, and an overfilled container that cannot be tarped is not collected.
4. Ask what the overage rate is before you book. The median is $76 a ton. It is the number that turns a known price into an unknown one, and it is rarely on the website.
5. Book off-peak where you can. Same hauler, same box, quieter month.

By state

Full figures for every size. States with at least 8 published prices at a given size.

Dumpster prices by city

Median published 20-yard price, most expensive first, in the 120 towns with the deepest samples. Every town we cover is listed on its state page, and the other 749 are reachable from there.

Towns with fewer than three published 20-yard prices are left out rather than filled in from the state figure. Every town we publish has its own page with the full local list, including the ones not shown here.

What a rental period and the fees add

A published price is the starting point rather than the bill. Two separate pages break down what sits on top: how long a rental runs and what an extra day costs, and the weight allowance, the overage rate and the fees nobody publishes.

Questions about the Index

Where do these prices come from?

From the dumpster companies' own websites. Our crawler reads published rate pages and records the price, the size, the included tonnage and the rental period, giving 3,536 observations from 1,395 companies. We do not call for quotes and we never estimate a missing figure.

Why is the median used instead of the average?

Because a handful of very high or very low listings would drag an average somewhere no real customer pays. The median is the price in the middle of the market, and the 25th to 75th percentile range shown alongside it says how tightly companies cluster around that number.

Will I pay the median?

Treat it as the starting point rather than the bill. It is a published base rate, before weight over the allowance, extra days, a street permit or surcharges for mattresses and tyres. What you pay depends most on how heavy your load turns out to be.

How often is the Index updated?

Continuously, with the corpus re-crawled and the figures recomputed on a rolling basis. The index refreshes regularly. Every dataset download carries the edition its numbers were taken so you can tell how fresh a figure is.