PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Porta Potty Rental Software

The Dispatch Board: Turning the Waiting List Into Each Truck's Day

The Waiting List shows what needs to happen. The dispatch board decides when and on which truck. As covered in The Waiting List: Every Delivery, Service and Pickup That Still Needs to Go Out, unscheduled work sits on a map until someone assigns it. This article is about that assignment, and how the board becomes each driver's day.

The Scheduled List

In PortaPottyBossPro the dispatch board is called the Scheduled List. Across the top is a week strip, so you can click through the days. Below it are the jobs scheduled for that day, and you can filter by truck to see one truck's day on its own. Each job shows the address with its units underneath: type, quantity, unit numbers and placement notes.

At the bottom, the board totals stops and dollars per service. That gives you a quick read on whether a truck is overloaded, underused, or carrying a day that doesn't pay for the fuel.

Assigning Jobs to Trucks

Jobs move from the Waiting List to the board when you assign them to a truck and a day. Work from the map: select a cluster of due weekly services and the delivery that sits in the middle of them, assign them all to Truck 3 for Wednesday. Once assigned, they leave the Waiting List.

Employees have truck assignments, so when a driver signs into the driver app with the company login and their personal PIN, they see the jobs for their truck.

Route Order: Drag or Auto-Route

Within a truck's day, order matters. You can set route order two ways. Drag the stops into the order you want, which is how most dispatchers handle a day with a time-sensitive delivery or a site that only opens at 9. Or auto-route the day Closest First or Furthest First from the yard.

Closest First starts near the yard and works outward, good when the truck needs to come back to load units mid-day. Furthest First drives out to the far end first and works back toward the yard, so the truck finishes close to home. You can auto-route and then drag a couple of stops by hand to fix what you know better than a map does.

Mixing Deliveries, Service and Pickups

A portable toilet truck's day is usually mixed: weekly services on the way, a delivery or two, a pickup at the end. The board treats them all as stops with their units listed, so the dispatcher can see that Truck 2 has to deliver an ADA unit and a Hand Wash Station in the morning and pick up four Standards from a finished job in the afternoon. That's the kind of thing that decides what gets loaded before the truck leaves.

The order of a mixed day takes some thought. Deliveries usually go early, so units are on site before a crew or an event needs them. Pickups often go late, so the truck comes back loaded at the end of the day rather than hauling units around all afternoon. Weekly services fill in around both. Auto-routing gets you a sensible starting order by distance; your knowledge of the jobs decides the rest.

Changes During the Day

Plans change. A customer cancels, a contractor needs units today, a driver calls in sick. You can move jobs between trucks and days on the board, and the driver's phone shows the new order. Crew GPS on the office map shows where every truck is, which helps you decide who gets the same-day job. Drivers tap Start, Skip and Complete as they go, so the board shows what's done.

Looking Ahead in the Week

The week strip isn't just for today. Building a few days out lets you balance trucks before the week fills up, and see when deliveries for an event weekend will collide with the regular weekly service route. Weekly services that come due later in the week will appear on the Waiting List when their minimum days between visits have passed, so you can add them as they come due.

From Board to Invoice

When drivers complete the jobs on the board, invoices follow: cards on file can be charged on completion and invoices created, or the work rolls into a monthly statement for accounts set to Monthly. The board is where your day's revenue gets decided, which is why it shows dollars per service. For the units that ride along on every job, read Units on Every Job: Type, Quantity, Unit Numbers and Placement.

Getting Good at Dispatch

The best dispatchers build tomorrow's board in the afternoon, check overdue pins first, and leave a little room for same-day calls. The software makes the mechanics fast, so that thinking time goes to the decisions only you can make. For how the board fits with everything else, see the porta potty rental software overview.