15% of New York Dumpster Rental Companies Are Ghost Listings. Here's the Data.

15% of New York Dumpster Rental Companies Are Ghost Listings. Here's the Data.

Updated October 2026. We rechecked this post against our data and removed claims it didn't support, including that ghost listings here shared phone numbers. Where listings do share a phone number in our data, they are branches of the same company. The figures below are unchanged.

We scored every dumpster rental operator in America.

All of them. 6,304 companies. 50 states. Real Google data, real reviews, real scores.

After [Arizona's 26.3% ghost-listing crisis](/blog/arizona-dumpster-rental-ghost-listings-investigation), we turned the same lens on New York. What we found wasn't quite as ugly — but it's close.

The New York Ghost Listing Problem

Here's the headline number: 15.4% of New York dumpster rental companies have zero Google reviews or no rating at all.

The national average? 9.5%.

New York has 62% more ghost listings than the rest of the country — the second-worst rate in America, behind only Arizona.

A "ghost listing" is a business listed on Google Maps with zero reviews and no star rating. It might be a brand-new company. It might be a lead-generation page that passes your call to whoever will take the job. From the listing alone, you can't tell which.

That's the problem: you call the number, someone quotes you a price, and you have no history to judge them by.

What the Data Shows in New York

The problem is concentrated in Manhattan listings. Google's "New York" listings, mostly Manhattan addresses, include 11 empty ones out of 23, nearly half. Brooklyn has 4 of 19. Upstate markets like Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse have very few.

Five listings follow the Arizona network pattern. Two listings, in Mt Vernon and Yonkers, link to dumpsterrentalservice.com, the same website behind 36 zero-review listings in Arizona. Three more, in Bronxville, Mt Vernon and Yonkers, use the same one-word, first-name-plus-"dumpster" naming style. All five have zero reviews, and we've removed them from our directory ([why](/methodology#excluded-listings)). Mt Vernon accounts for 3 of its 4 listings.

Most empty listings have no website. 17 of the 27 have no website at all.

Upstate's issue is low ratings, not empty listings. The worst-rated New York listings with real review volume are upstate: Casella Waste Systems in Rochester (1.5 stars, 436 reviews), Syracuse Haulers Waste Removal (2.1, 123) and Modern Disposal Services in Buffalo (2.4, 89).

The DCS Score: How We Measure Real Operators

We built the Dumpster Comparison Score (DCS) to cut through the noise. It's a 100-point rubric based entirely on public data. Five components:

Tiers:

• 85-100: Elite
• 70-84: Exceptional
• 55-69: Highly Recommended
• 40-54: Good
• Below 40: Listed

No payola. No "featured" operators buying their way up. Every operator is scored the exact same way with the exact same public data.

Here's how New York looks under the DCS Score:

More than one in five New York dumpster rental operators scores below 40. That's the "avoid unless you have no other choice" tier. Most of them are the ghost listings we just covered.

But the inverse is true too: 15 operators in New York are genuinely Elite. If you can find those 15, you're in good hands. They're mixed in on the map with listings that have no history at all, so check the score before you call.

The 15 Elite New York Dumpster Rental Operators

These are the only 15 companies in New York that score in the Elite tier (85+ DCS). Ranked by DCS Score, then by review volume. Every single one has been independently scored on public data — none paid to be here.

Interesting pattern: upstate New York dominates the Elite list. Rochester alone has 4 Elite operators — more than all 5 NYC boroughs combined (3). Buffalo, Syracuse, and the Hudson Valley round it out. NYC has the most operators but the lowest concentration of Elite-tier trust.

How to Check a New York Listing Before You Call

Rules extracted from looking at 175 operators in one state:

1. Never hire a company with fewer than 10 Google reviews. 10 isn't even a high bar — it's the absolute minimum. If a company has been operating for real, somebody has left them a review.

2. Check the review dates. 100 reviews in a single week = bot farm. Real NYC carting companies accumulate reviews slowly because most of their customers are contractors who never leave reviews at all.

3. Click through to the website. If a "local" company's website is a generic national page, or the same site turns up behind other company names, you're probably calling a broker, not the hauler.

4. Demand the DSNY permit handling in writing (for NYC jobs). Any legit NYC operator knows exactly what a street-placement permit costs and how long it takes. Ghost operators will tell you "don't worry, we handle it" and then leave you with a $500 fine from DSNY when the container sits unpermitted for 3 days.

5. Ask how long they've been in business in this borough. Not "how long has the company existed" — "how long have you personally been dropping containers in Brooklyn/Queens/etc?" The answer should be in years, not months.

6. Use the DCS Score. We did the math for you. If a company scores below 40, skip it.

What's Next

We're doing this for every state. Arizona was the worst. New York is the second-worst. Alabama and South Carolina are close behind.

Next up: the 10 best dumpster rental operators in NYC (all 5 boroughs), and the 10 best in Buffalo.

The DCS Score is independent, transparent, and free to use. We don't take money from operators to move them up. If a company is in the Elite tier, it's because the public data says so — not because they bought a premium listing.

Want to see your city? [Browse the full New York operator directory](/dumpster-rental/new-york) or [compare the top operators in NYC side-by-side](/dumpster-rental/new-york/new-york).

Methodology

• Data source: Google Places API, pulled April 2026, across 50 US states and 200 metros.
• Universe: 6,304 unique operators with at least one business detail field populated (name, phone, or address).
• Ghost listing definition: A Google Maps business listing with either (a) zero reviews, or (b) no star rating, OR (c) both.
• DCS Score: Our proprietary 100-point rubric. Full methodology on our [scoring page](/methodology).
• Independence: No operator has paid for placement in this report. No operator can pay to improve their DCS Score — it's calculated from public data only.

Data last updated April 2026. Operator counts and ratings change over time; we re-score monthly. If your company appears in this report and you believe your DCS Score is inaccurate, contact us with corrected data.