Almost every RV’er agrees on their least favorite task: dumping the RV’s gray and black water tanks. It can sometimes be a challenge to find RV dump stations while on the road.
For campers in established RV parks, full hookups are common. Each campsite usually has an individual sewer connection. This makes dumping tanks convenient.
They may lack a sewer connection at their site. Yet, the campground likely has a communal one available.
What about RV travelers boondocking or dry camping without sewer connections? This includes dispersed camping or free camping areas. What do they do when their tanks get full?
Well, lucky for them there’s an app (or several apps and a few websites) for that!
RV Dump Station Apps
These tools help find RV dump stations to empty holding tanks for free or a small fee.
The sites include RV parks, campgrounds, gas stations, and outdoor stores. Some highway rest areas also allow tank dumping. (See, for example, California Department of Transportation’s list of RV sanitation stations at rest areas or Oregon Department of Transportation’s list of rest areas with RV sanitary dump stations.)
This review covers three popular websites and apps where you can find all of the locations in one place:
We discovered AllStays Pro as the top app and website for RV dump stations. RV Dump Sites came second, with Campendium as the third. These are the three tools we reviewed below.
AllStays Pro ($29.95 annually; website and app)
AllStays offers two versions: 1) A free version with limited camping location info (see our AllStays campsites instructions). 2) A Pro version with extensive information, including dump station listings in the search tool.
The pro version costs $29.95 per year for an annual renewing subscription rate. (See how the pro version of AllStays works.)
There are two app versions: “Camp and RV” and the iOS-specific “RV Dumps.” All features from these apps are in AllStays Pro. This review focuses on the AllStays Pro website version.
Logging into AllStays Pro gives access to tools for finding campsites and other RV travel interests.
To find RV dump stations, select the “Camp RV Pro – Everything” button in the top left corner.
You’ll be presented with a map of the United States. Here you can zoom in and out, use the “locate me” GPS feature, or search for a specific location.
For this example, we’re going to search for Moab, Utah as it’s a location popular with RV’ers. Many people boondock (i.e. camp without hookups) in the desert in the Moab area and need to find places to dump their tanks, so it’s a good example of where a camper may need to find a location to be able to continue their camping adventure.
Enter “Moab, Utah” in the search box and select the location from the results.
You’ll be presented with a map of the Moab area that includes icons for the different locations of interest. Each of the icon types represents a different category, such as RV parks, gas stations, stores, dump stations, and more.
AllStays Pro has a wealth of features, but for the purpose of this review, we’ll keep it focused on how to use the AllStays Pro website to find RV dump stations.
Select the “filter” icon in the top right corner of the map to pull up all of the available filtering options. To find dump stations, select “Dump station” under the “Amenities” dropdown of filtering categories circled in red below.
The results will show you all the available locations in Moab, including RV parks and campgrounds with dump stations (which will let you dump for a fee), as well as other locations such as gas stations and stores in the area with dump stations available for use.
In the Moab example with AllStays Pro, we find 9 dump stations located directly in the town of Moab. The black icons indicate that there are 7 independently owned RV parks and campgrounds (as opposed to city, county, state or federal campgrounds) with dump stations, one store with a dump station (red icon), and one gas station (blue icon) with a dump spot.
Selecting the blue icon for the gas station pulls up details about the Maverik gas station. We can see from the details that it is free to dump and that water is available, but you will need your own hose.
AllStays Pro also includes buttons for different mapping features, such as Google Maps, Waze Maps, and a street view of the location to help you find your way there.
We stayed in Moab in a BLM campground without any hookups along the Colorado River and can confirm that the information provided in the AllStays Pro website for RV dump stations is correct. In fact, here’s a photo of the line for the dump station at that exact location.
We dumped our tanks at the Maverik gas station for free and also filled up with potable water there. You can also see people lugging water containers from the free potable water faucet in the photo of the gas station above.
We’ve camped at several places in Moab, with and without hookups. See Goose Island Campground, Sun Outdoors Moab Downtown RV Park and Campground, and Sand Flats Recreation Area Campground.)
RV Dump Sites (free; website & app)
This second website and app is designed with the sole intent of helping campers find dumping stations. When you first visit the RV Dump Sites website, you’ll see a map of the USA. You can search for a specific location using the search function or use the GPS feature to find your location.
In this example, we enter “Moab, Utah” to see how the results compare to the AllStays Pro version above. I zoom in to see the dump stations in the Moab area a little larger.
The icons on the map indicate RV dump stations in the area. There is also a listing to the right of each of the search results that includes the distance from our selected location. You can click on these to get more information about the particular location.
In this example, the RV Dump Sites website provides a listing of 7 RV dump stations in Moab. It is missing two of the RV parks and campgrounds that were located using the AllStays Pro website.
Users can also filter by particular type of dump stations: free, pay, guests, or no info (cases in which the RV Dump Sites website does not yet have additional details about that particular location).
In this example, I filtered for only free RV dump stations, and the website shows only one result: the Moab Maverik gas station. This is consistent with our experience of having camped in Moab and needed to dump our Airstream’s gray and black tanks. We did so for free at the Maverik gas station in downtown Moab.
Clicking on the “Moab Maverik” icon and name brings up additional information about this RV dump station. Users of the website can also review the dump station and provide additional details (e.g., potable water availability) that may be helpful to their fellow RV’ers.
The RV Dump Sites website is a very good option if you’re looking for RV dump stations and don’t want to pay the annual fee to use AllStays Pro. While it missed two RV parks and campgrounds in Moab, it does have the ability to search for only free dump stations which is a handy feature not available in the AllStays Pro website version.
Campendium (free; website and app)
Campendium is a website and app that helps RV’ers find and review RV parks and campgrounds. (We explained how Campendium works.) In addition to being a great resource for finding campsites, Campendium also includes a feature that allows you to search for RV dump stations by either searching for a specific location or using built-in GPS features to find your location.
Once you’ve searched for “Moab, Utah” in the search field (or used the GPS locating feature in the app), you’ll be presented with a list of campsites and other features of interest to RV’ers as well as a map of the area with icons representing places of interest.
To find locations, click on the “Category” dropdown and select “Dump Station.”
Campendium will then filter for RV dump stations in Moab and the map and list of items will be updated to reflect only RV dump stations.
Campendium’s RV dump station results for Moab only includes two dump stations located at the Maverik gas station and a store, whereas the AllStays Pro and RV Dump Site website search results presented us with additional dump stations in RV parks and campgrounds.
One suggestion for Campendium users to find dump stations is to also search for private RV parks and campgrounds which may allow you to dump your tanks at their location for a small fee. To add these to your search criteria, select “RV Parks” and “Campground” under the category dropdown, along with “Dump Station.”
The problem with this approach is that you can’t be sure that these RV parks and campgrounds will allow you to use their dump station if you’re not a guest. Be sure to call ahead to verify that any privately owned RV parks will let you dump there for a fee, as many require you to be a guest in order to use their facilities.
Users in Campendium can then pull up additional details about a particular RV dump station by clicking on the link for each location. Similar to Campendium’s listings for campgrounds, it provides photos uploaded from Campendium users as well as their reviews of this particular dump station.
Other Options for Finding RV Dump Stations
There are other websites and apps that can help you find RV dump stations, but in our opinion, they aren’t as useful as AllStays Pro, the RV Dump Sites website, or Campendium.
For example, RV Parky is useful for finding RV parks and campgrounds (see our review of RV Parky here), but not so great at finding RV dump stations. With RV Parky, you can’t search for dump stations at places like gas stations, outdoor stores, truck stops, and others. This limits its usability for people on the road.
Other RV dump station websites include RVdumps.com or Sanidumps.com which have state-by-state listings of available dump stations, but neither website appears to be as robust as AllStays Pro, RV Dump Sites or Campendium.
If you have any other suggestions or tips for people finding RV dump stations while out on the road, please add a comment below.
