FLEET GPS AND DRIVER HISTORY, FREE, NO HARDWARE TO BUY
The free Samsara alternative built for dumpster companies
See every driver's whole day: the route on a map, every stop explained (customer, landfill, headquarters, break, or flagged as unplanned), and a replay that re-drives the day along the roads at up to 128x. The GPS is the phone your drivers already carry. The panel at the top of this page is the real screen. Free inside Dumpster Controls, the free dumpster rental software.
- No gateway to install, no per-vehicle fee: the driver app is the GPS unit
- Every stop matched to the order, the landfill or the yard, automatically
- Route replay along the roads, from 1x up to 128x
- Driver Reports: miles, hours, stops and landfill runs per driver per day
Get the Free SoftwareSee features
4.7 on the App Store Available in all 50 US states and Canada
Last updated September 30, 2026 Published by Dumpster Controls, built by a software group led by a founder with 20+ years in enterprise IT who also ran a roll-off business for four years
Dumpster Controls is a free Samsara alternative for dumpster companies: fleet GPS from the driver's phone, a live map of trucks, containers and landfills, and Driver Day, a per-driver history that rebuilds each day as trips and stops with a route replay. No hardware to buy, no per-vehicle fee, no contract; it is part of the same free platform that runs booking, dispatch, invoicing and the driver app. Samsara is hardware-based telematics for every industry, sold by quote, sized to your fleet (their pricing page publishes no dollar prices; checked 2026-09-30).
The difference that matters day to day is context. A GPS dot tells you a truck sat somewhere for 38 minutes. Driver Day tells you those 38 minutes were the line at Pine Ridge Landfill on the #1042 dump run, because the map and your dispatch board are the same system. Stops explain themselves: customer stops match the dispatch task, landfill stops carry the wait time, the yard is the yard, lunch shows as a neutral break, and a stop that matches nothing is flagged in orange for you to tap and see exactly where it was.
Topicssamsara alternative free samsara alternative fleet gps without hardware phone gps fleet tracking driver route replay driver day history dumpster truck gps
Counted in our production database on October 1, 2026. Updated monthly.
$0
GPS hardware and per-vehicle fees
90 days
Of driver day history kept
128x
Top replay speed for a day
190+
Drivers on the platform
The whole day of every driver, on one screen
Open a driver, pick a date, and the day is a story: every trip drawn along the roads it took, an A pin at the first departure, a B pin at the last stop, and a synced timeline beside it with the order number and the address of each stop. Click a stop in the timeline and the map highlights it; click a pin and the timeline scrolls to it. Signal gaps are drawn as dashed lines instead of invented straight roads. Press play and the day re-drives itself: a truck marker rides the route at the real pace of the recorded GPS while the clock and the speed of that moment run beside the scrubber, from 1x up to 128x.
Then the numbers roll up. Driver Reports totals miles, driving hours, stops, landfill runs and jobs per driver per day, for this week, last week, the month or any range, with a click-through from any day straight to that day on the map. The weekly recap plays the week like a story: fleet miles, driver of the week, and the all-time record day. On paid plans the owner also gets an end-of-day email with one line per driver, around 6 pm local time.
The same phone GPS that powers the live map writes every driver's day. A real operation, no hardware installed.
The Free Forever Promise
Free means free. Forever.
Fleet GPS is free for any fleet size, and during the launch promotion the full Driver Day module is open to every account: unlimited trucks and drivers, no hardware. Telematics vendors sell this by quote, per vehicle, with hardware installed in every truck.
$0
Monthly fee
Ever. No surprise charges.
$0
Setup fee
No onboarding cost.
$0
Per-user fee
Unlimited admins, drivers, dispatchers.
$0
Annual contract
Cancel anytime. We never auto-charge.
How we make money: only when you opt in, and the numbers are public. The software is free with unlimited orders and no per-order software fee. If you choose to collect a customer’s card payment through Dumpster Controls, the processing fee is 2.99% + $3.99 per card transaction on the free plan, or 2.99% + $0.30 (the standard Stripe rate) on the optional $169/month Unlimited plan. Take payment by cash, check, Zelle or any other way and you pay nothing at all. Beyond that, our revenue comes from the optional Unlimited plan and from equipment partners and sponsors advertising in the app and on our public directory; our marketplace, the Dumpster Net Hub, charges zero marketplace fees. Run your own business your way and you never pay to use the software. It’s the only model that lets a 1-truck owner-operator run on the same software as a 50-truck fleet.
Dumpster Controls vs. Samsara, criterion by criterion
Samsara is a serious platform and this comparison keeps it honest: their installed gateways and AI dashcams do things a phone cannot, and if your operation needs engine diagnostics or ELD compliance, that is their territory. For the job a dumpster company actually hires fleet tracking to do, here is the factual difference:
| Feature | Dumpster Controls | Samsara |
|---|---|---|
| Software cost | $0, unlimited trucks and drivers | By quote, sized to fleet; no public prices (checked 2026-09-30) |
| GPS hardware | None: the driver's phone | Vehicle Gateway installed per vehicle |
| Rollout | Drivers install the free app and sign in | Hardware fitted in each truck |
| Stops explain themselves | Matched to your orders, landfills and yard automatically | Address book you build and maintain |
| Route replay of a driver's day | ||
| Per-driver day reports | ||
| Runs the rest of the business (booking, dispatch, invoicing) | Same free platform | Telematics only; operations software is separate |
| Built for dumpster rental | ||
| Engine diagnostics, dashcams, ELD | No: use telematics if you need this |
Samsara facts from their own pages: pricing by fleet-size quote with no published dollar prices (samsara.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-30), the Vehicle Gateway as the installed GPS unit (samsara.com/products/models/vehicle-gateway, checked 2026-09-29) and Route Playback in their knowledge base (kb.samsara.com, checked 2026-09-29). Our facts match the public manual at /help/driver-day.
Turned on in minutes, not installed in weeks
- 1
#### 01. Sign up free
Email + password. No credit card, no quote call, no hardware order. - 2
#### 02. Invite your drivers
They install the free iOS/Android app, sign in, and allow location. - 3
#### 03. The day writes itself
Trips, stops and miles appear per driver; today and yesterday are always open in full. - 4
#### 04. Replay and report
Press play on any day, open Driver Reports for the week, and let the recap crown the driver of the week.
The direct answer on a Samsara alternative for dumpster companies
Busy owners want the answer first and the detail after. Here is the short version, written to be quoted:
Q: What is a free Samsara alternative for a dumpster rental company?
A: Dumpster Controls includes fleet GPS and per-driver day history free, with the driver's phone as the GPS unit: a live map of trucks, containers and landfills, trips and classified stops per driver, route replay up to 128x, and Driver Reports by day and week. There is no hardware to install and no per-vehicle fee, and it runs inside the same free software that handles booking, dispatch and invoicing for dumpster companies. Samsara is quote-priced, hardware-based telematics for general fleets; it covers engine diagnostics, dashcams and ELD, which Dumpster Controls deliberately does not.
Samsara alternative for dumpster companies: FAQ
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