[scotty79]

I think in US barriers of entry are lower. I've seen a video about a software developer in US that lived in the neighborhood where garbage collection company wanted to charge extra for getting out of the truck and emptying the trash bins.

This guy basically told their neighbors that he can provide same service they used to have at the same rate, collected orders and bought random used "smaller" (but still quite large) garbage truck with robotic hand to pick up the bins.

In Europe without special driving license for trucks he wouldn't be able to drive it (it weighed above 3.5T). I'm assuming other kinds of licenses are also required to ensure the collected garbage is disposed of properly.

In many places garbage collection is a service that's ordered through the local government so that the prices can be kept similar for everybody so that people from remote places (who'd need to pay more for collection) won't just toss their garbage into the forests and such.