How to Find the Right Dumpster Lid

A front load dumpster.

Finding the right type of dumpster lid is easy – but it can be a little bit tricky if you aren’t familiar with dumpsters, or if you’ve never done it before. There’s actually a wide variety of waste containers out there in the field. However, front and rear load containers are some of the most commonly used types.

The first step in finding the lid you need is to determine what type of dumpster you’re dealing with. Front load containers are simple to identify. They have “slots” on each side that the garbage truck will put its forks into (to lift and dump the container into the truck.) Robmar’s front load dumpster lids are all 36.75″ in width. We offer 5 different lengths to accommodate a variety of different dumpster sizes.

A rear load dumpster.

Rear load containers can usually be identified by their slanted, front-facing side. You will also notice that rear load containers have rods/posts that extend out on both sides of the container (they can be found on the top of the front side.) The truck will use these to lift and dump the container. Robmar’s rear load dumpster lids are all 31″ in width. We provide 7 different lengths.

Now that you know what type of container you’re trying to fit, it’s time to measure to determine the length you’ll need. This length measurement will help you to decide on the model number to order. The correct way to measure a container is from the center of the hinge hole, all the way to the front edge of the container. This is the right way to find a lid that will fully cover the opening of your dumpster.

Robmar’s lids are designed to be able to hang up to 2″ off of the front of the container and still maintain structural integrity. For example: In these pictures, we’re measuring a front load container. My measurement shows about 39.5″ from the hinge hole center and the front edge of the dumpster. That would mean that the F-3641 would be the correct choice.

We would like to thank one of our customers, Sky-Tec Container Corporation, for allowing us to show their nice looking rear load and front load containers as examples in this post. (Theirs are the pretty ones. The rusty containers are the ones we have in front of the shop here at Robmar – oops.)