This was an interesting question posed to me the other day, and the answer simply is "dumpsters" - although these do not take the format we're used to in the UK and Ireland. In fact, our skips really originate from Germany, whereas the word "skip" derives from the word "skep" which pertains to a basket used by beekeepers. See here for more details from an article we published in The Skip magazine in Feb 06.
I don't know too much about dumpsters in the US, although I was on the look out for them on a recent trip to Chicago. I guess this link is the closest America has to topskips.com - when we enter that market, that's who we'll be competing against! (Once we've conquered Europe of course :-))
