PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Routes & Dispatch

Mixing Deliveries, Services and Pickups on One Porta Potty Route

Most portable toilet companies do not have the luxury of separate trucks for every kind of work. A lot of days, one truck does a bit of everything: drops two units at a remodel, services fifteen sites, pumps out a unit after a party and picks up three units from a finished job. The previous article, Service Trucks vs Delivery Trucks: Routing Two Kinds of Portable Toilet Work, made the case for separating service and delivery when you can. This one is for the days you cannot.

The Rule: Think About What Is on the Truck

A mixed route is a puzzle about space. At every stop, the truck has a certain amount of deck space, tank space and water. Deliveries free up deck space. Pickups use it. Service and pump-outs use tank space and water. Before you set the order, ask what the truck will be carrying at each point in the day.

A Typical Order

For a truck towing a trailer that holds a few units, a common order looks like this:

• Leave the yard loaded with the units to be delivered.
• Make deliveries first, while the trailer is full.
• Run service stops with the trailer now empty or lighter.
• Pick up finished units on the way back toward the yard.
• Empty the tank and return.

This keeps the trailer from hauling delivery units all day, and it puts the pickups at the end, so picked-up units are not riding along through every service stop.

When the Delivery Is Far Away

If a delivery is out at the far end of the service area, delivering first can mean driving past all your service stops to get there. In that case, it may be better to use Furthest First from the yard: drive out empty-tanked with the units, deliver, then service back toward home.

That is exactly the kind of decision auto-routing gets you started on and the dispatcher finishes. Closest First or Furthest First: Choosing Route Order From the Yard covers the two auto-route options in detail.

Pickups and Rental Days

Pickups have a billing side. In PortaPottyBossPro, each rental tracks the delivered date, the picked-up date, the days included and a per-day rate after that. The lists show something like Out since 10/3 (12 days, 4 extra), and extra days are added to the invoice automatically as Extra rental days.

That means a pickup that slips a few days is not just a scheduling problem; it changes what the customer pays. If the customer asked for a pickup on Friday, get it on a Friday route. Routing Rental Pickups On Time So Extra Days Bill Right covers routing pickups with rental days in mind.

Pump-Outs in the Middle of the Day

Extra pump-outs, a unit that got heavy use after a big weekend or a busy pour day on a job site, sit on the Waiting List like any other job. On a mixed route, put them where the truck still has tank space. If the tank is close to full, a pump-out might need to wait until after the dump stop.

Know the Units Before You Load

Mixed routes go wrong at the yard. The driver loads two Standard units when the customer ordered one Standard and one ADA Accessible. Every job carries the unit type, quantity and unit numbers under the address, and the driver sees the same thing on each card in the driver app. Have drivers check the day's deliveries against what is on the trailer before they leave.

Keep Service Steady Inside a Mixed Route

Even on a mixed day, try to keep weekly service sites on their usual day and roughly their usual place in line. A customer who is stop 8 every Wednesday and gets told they are stop 19 because three deliveries got added is a customer who calls the office. Put deliveries and pickups around the service core rather than through it.

A useful habit is to build the service part of the route first, the same way you would on a service-only day, and then ask where each delivery or pickup fits best around it. Often the answer is first thing in the morning or last thing in the afternoon. If a delivery only fits by tearing the service order apart, it may belong on another day or another truck. Leaving it on the Waiting List for a better fit is a real option, as long as the customer's date allows it.

When Mixed Routes Stop Working

If every day is a mixed route and every day runs late, the work has outgrown one truck. That is the moment to think about a dedicated delivery truck or another route, which When to Add a Porta Potty Route (and a Truck) Instead of Stretching the Ones You Have discusses.

For how deliveries, service and pickups come together on one map and one board, see PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet route software.