What’s the Haul?

What’s the Haul? 2026 Waste Industry Salary Report

When an owner asks me what a general manager should earn, the honest answer has usually been a patchwork: a Fortune 500 survey that doesn’t fit a regional hauler, or what a friend paid last year. This report puts the numbers in one place, built for waste, recycling and hauling companies.

It covers four functions: operations, maintenance, sales and finance. For each leadership role you’ll see the bottom of the range, the average and the top. You’ll also see how the same role pays across collection, disposal and recycling, and what changed over the last five years. The federal numbers come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The base salary ranges by company revenue come from FastLane Executive Search’s own placement experience, and the report labels them that way.

The finding worth your attention this budget season: frontline pay is moving faster than leadership pay. Refuse collector pay in waste collection is up 29.7% in five years, while general manager pay is up 11.4%. The raise that comes with a promotion is shrinking, and that affects who on your team is willing to step up.

Use it to check where your seats sit before you set a number, make an offer or lose someone to a competitor who already did the math. If you want to talk through a specific role, the conversation is confidential and there’s no obligation.

— Vincent Luca, Founder & CEO, FastLane Executive Search