PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Weekly Service Scheduling

Extra Pump-Outs on Request: Fitting Unscheduled Service Into the Week

Not Every Visit Is on the Schedule

A good weekly routine, like the one in What a Porta Potty Service Visit Includes: Pump, Clean, Restock, Check, keeps most sites in shape. But some weeks a site needs help before its regular day. A crew doubled in size. A holiday party used the units on Friday night. A tank got overfilled. The customer calls, texts or opens the app and asks for an extra pump-out.

How you handle that request says a lot about your company. Get there fast and bill it fairly, and the customer remembers it. Lose it in a voicemail and the customer remembers that instead.

Where the Request Comes From

Extra pump-out requests come in through several doors:

• A phone call to the office.
• A text to your business number, handled through two-way texting.
• A service request from the customer app.
• A driver who notices a full tank at a nearby site and reports it.

The customer app is the cleanest door, because the request arrives as a job tied to the customer and site instead of a message someone has to retype. Customers Requesting Porta Potty Service From Their Phone covers customers requesting service from their phones. Whatever the door, the goal is the same: the request becomes a job, not a sticky note.

On the Waiting List Like Any Other Job

In PortaPottyBossPro, an extra pump-out is its own job on the Waiting List. It sits on the map with the regular weekly service, deliveries and pickups, so the office sees it in context. If a truck is already servicing two sites a few blocks away today, the extra pump-out can ride along. If not, it can go on the next truck that passes through.

Because the extra pump-out is separate from the weekly service, it does not break the regular schedule. The site's weekly service keeps its own minimum days between visits and comes due on its own. You decide whether the regular visit still goes out on its usual day or whether the extra visit carries it for a few days.

Getting It on a Truck

Select the pump-out on the Waiting List, assign it to a truck and day, and set its place in the route order on the dispatch board. If the request is urgent and the truck is already out, add it to today and drag it into the right spot. The driver sees the new stop on the phone with the units, unit numbers and placement notes, the same as any other service stop.

The customer gets the automatic arrival text when the driver gets there. If they set alerts for when they are next on the route, they get that too, so they know help is on the way without calling again.

Pricing Extra Pump-Outs

Decide your policy before the calls come. Common approaches:

• A flat extra service charge per unit.
• A flat trip charge plus a per-unit charge.
• No charge when the extra visit is caused by your own missed or short service.

Set the extra pump-out up as its own service with its own price so it shows as a separate line on the invoice. For contractors on monthly billing, it appears on the monthly statement with the site address, so the GC can see exactly which site needed the extra visit and when. Example: if you charge $150 a month per standard unit for weekly service, an extra pump-out might be a separate per-visit charge on top.

When Extra Becomes Regular

One extra pump-out is a bad week. Three in a month is a pattern. When the same site keeps asking for help, it is time to talk about twice-weekly service or more units. Look back at the site's jobs and photos and bring that history to the conversation. Twice-Weekly Porta Potty Service: When One Visit a Week Is Not Enough covers making the switch to two visits a week.

Do Not Let It Push Regular Service

The risk with extra pump-outs is that they eat into the day. A driver who adds three unplanned stops may not finish the regular route, and the sites at the end of the list slide to tomorrow. That is how one customer's emergency becomes three other customers' missed visits.

Watch the dispatch board totals when you add extra work. If a truck is full, move a regular stop that still has room in its due window to the next day, rather than letting the end of the route fall off. The Waiting List will keep the moved site in the due color, so it will not be forgotten, and it will only turn overdue if it slips past the grace period.

Close the Loop

After the visit, photos stay with the job and the stop is completed from the driver's phone. If the customer was upset, a quick text from the office after completion goes a long way. To see how extra pump-outs fit alongside weekly service on the Waiting List, visit PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet service scheduling software.