At this point I don't see the trash cans in the truck as necessarily being terribly important. I'm guessing that a town that small probably doesn't have curbside trash pickup, and people take their own trash to a disposal site. That's how it was when I lived in a town similar to that one. Of course, there could be evidence in them, but we don't know that. I'm just saying that the trash cans didn't jump out at me as unusual or incriminating.
The use of 'barrel' in that story is peculiar, but I wonder if that's a term they're using to describe the containers that LE removed their evidence in?
I still think (hope) that LE & the AG office don't have enough to arrest anyone yet or they'd have done so.