PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Routes & Dispatch

Closest First or Furthest First: Choosing Route Order From the Yard

Once a truck has its stops for the day, the next question is the order. Get it right and the truck runs one clean loop. Get it wrong and the driver spends the afternoon doubling back across town. In Building a Day's Porta Potty Route From the Map in Minutes, route order was one step among many. This article looks at it closely, especially the two auto-route options PortaPottyBossPro gives you: Closest First and Furthest First from the yard.

What the Two Options Do

Both options start from your yard, the place your trucks leave in the morning and come back to at night.

• Closest First starts with the stop nearest the yard and works outward, so the truck ends the day at the far edge of the route.
• Furthest First drives out to the farthest stop first and works back toward the yard, so the truck ends the day close to home.

Both give you a sensible order in one click. Neither knows about gate hours, a customer who wants service before 8am, or the dump station on the way back. That is where the dispatcher comes in.

Pump Trucks and the Tank

For a service route, the big factor is the waste tank. A pump truck that starts close to the yard fills its tank on the near stops. If the tank fills before the route is done, the driver has to empty it somewhere, and where that happens matters.

If your disposal site is near the yard, Furthest First often works well: the truck drives out with an empty tank, works back toward home, and finishes near the disposal site with a full tank. If your disposal site sits out along the route, or the driver needs to dump mid-day, Closest First with a planned dump stop in the middle can make more sense.

Think about where the truck will be when the tank is full, not just where it starts.

Delivery Trucks and the Load

A delivery truck or trailer loaded with units has the opposite problem. It is heavy and full at the start and lighter with every drop. Many dispatchers send delivery routes Furthest First, so the long drive happens while the driver is fresh and the truck finishes close to the yard ready to load for tomorrow.

Pickups flip that again. A truck collecting units comes back fuller than it left, so ending near the yard is a big advantage. A pickup route usually wants Furthest First so the last units picked up are the ones closest to home.

Mixed Routes

When one truck is doing deliveries, service and pickups on the same day, think about what is on the truck at each stop. A unit has to be delivered before a pickup fills the space it took. A pickup of a full unit should not happen before the service stops that need tank space. Mixing Deliveries, Services and Pickups on One Porta Potty Route covers how to sequence a mixed day.

When to Adjust by Hand

Auto-routing is a starting point. After you click Closest First or Furthest First, scan the order for stops that do not belong where they landed:

• Gated sites that open late, such as a locked construction yard.
• Schools, gyms and retail lots that are easier to service before customers arrive.
• Event deliveries the customer needs by a set time.
• Stops on a busy road that are much easier from one direction.

Drag those stops to where they belong. The rest of the order stays as the auto-route set it. When to Override Auto-Routing: Hand-Tuning a Porta Potty Route Order gives more examples of when hand-tuning pays off.

Same Route, Same Order

For weekly service, consistency matters. If a site is stop 4 every Tuesday, the customer learns roughly when to expect the truck and the driver learns the loop. Running the same auto-route option on the same route each week helps keep that order steady, as long as the stops stay roughly the same.

Customers can also see their place in line. In the customer app, a customer sees today's route with a line like You're stop 12 of 20, and they can choose to get a text when they're next. A stable order makes that information more useful.

Measure the Difference

If you are not sure which option suits a route, try both on different weeks and compare. Check the finish time from the time clock and the miles on the truck. The option that brings the truck home earlier with fewer miles is the one to keep for that route.

For the bigger picture of how route order fits with the Waiting List, truck splits and live GPS, see PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet route software.