Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Evan Schwartz · AMCS · August 2026
Here is the map. The US waste, recycling and transport market is one of the few that can be counted honestly from public data, so this page does that: the segments that buy operational software, who signs inside each one, and roughly how many organizations sit there. Counts are banded on purpose. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Private haulers and collection companies
The long tail of the industry and the core of the waste market on this page. Mostly owner-run, mostly regional, and most of them running a mix of software that grew by accident rather than by decision. The buying moment is usually a truck order, a route that stopped paying, or an acquisition that brought a second system into the building.
Who signs: owner or president, chief operating officer, VP of operations, controller, and the one person who is also the IT department.
9,000 to 10,000
US employers in waste collection and hauling; roughly 2,200 to 2,600 of them carrying 50 or more people
Recycling, materials recovery and scrap processing
Different economics from collection, because the commodity price sits on the other side of the ledger and inbound material has to be weighed, graded and settled. That makes scale tickets, grading and settlement the center of the conversation rather than routing.
Who signs: plant or yard manager, VP of operations, CFO, commercial or trading lead, IT director at the larger processors.
4,500 to 5,500
US employers across materials recovery, recycling and scrap metal processing
Municipal and public sector operators
Cities and counties that still collect in house. They buy slowly, they buy publicly, and the specification is written months before anyone is allowed to talk about a decision. The upside is that a published procurement calendar tells you exactly when the window opens.
Who signs: director of public works, solid waste director, fleet superintendent, city or county procurement officer, and the council committee that signs.
3,000 to 3,500
US municipal and county public works and solid waste operations running collection in house; not enumerated as employers, so this band is the softest on the page
Bulk, tanker and specialized transport fleets
The segment that shares the routing, weighbridge and fleet maintenance problem without sharing the waste vocabulary. Adjacent by capability rather than by category, which usually means less competition in the room and a longer explanation at the start of it.
Who signs: VP of transportation, fleet director, operations manager, dispatch lead, CIO at the larger carriers.
12,000 to 14,000
US truck transportation employers at 20 or more people, filtered toward bulk, tanker and specialized haul
Industrial, hazardous and environmental services
Compliance is the product here, so documentation, chain of custody and manifesting carry more weight than route density. Smaller by count and materially higher in contract value, and the one segment where a software failure is a regulatory event.
Who signs: VP of compliance, environmental services director, operations VP, quality and safety lead.
1,200 to 1,600
US employers across hazardous waste treatment, remediation and industrial environmental services
Producers with a take-back or reporting obligation
Manufacturers, retailers and brand owners who now have to account for what happens to their material after it leaves. They are not a waste company and they do not think of themselves as one, which is exactly why nobody is selling to them properly.
Who signs: head of sustainability, ESG or compliance director, supply chain VP, packaging lead.
No clean register
identified by obligation rather than by industry code, one company at a time; the difficulty is the reason the segment stays open

Where the openings are

1
The market runs on two clocks and most channels only watch one. Public operators buy against a published procurement calendar that is visible months ahead. Private haulers buy at a trigger: a fleet order, an acquisition, a route that stopped paying. A single outbound motion aimed at both hits one of them at the wrong moment every time, and the fix is two audiences rather than two products.
2
Consolidation is a buying signal that arrives before the requirement does. Every roll-up in this industry ends with one operator holding two or three systems that do not talk to each other. That moment is public, it is dated, and it is reachable by name, but only if someone is watching several thousand operators rather than waiting for an inbound query.
3
Operations and IT both hold a veto, and they are reached differently. The operator feels the pain and the IT lead carries the risk, and at a mid-size hauler they may be the same overloaded person. Naming both roles across the same account is a mechanical job. Meeting whichever one happens to answer is not a strategy.
4
The adjacent transport segment is larger than the core and worked far less. Bulk and specialized fleets have the same routing, weighing and maintenance problem under a different label. They do not search for waste software, so they never appear in inbound, which is precisely what makes a named-account channel the only way to reach them.
Built from public registries covering US employers, current to the most recent published filing year. Counts are banded deliberately. Workforce bands use plan participants as a headcount proxy, so they indicate scale rather than an exact staff count. Owner-only and very small operators are not published in this data, industry codes are self-reported, and public sector operations do not appear as employers at all, so they are described rather than counted.
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