PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Weekly Service Scheduling

Twice-Weekly Porta Potty Service: When One Visit a Week Is Not Enough

When Weekly Is Not Enough

Most sites do fine with one service a week, and Setting Up Weekly Porta Potty Service So Every Site Comes Due on Its Own covers how to set that up. Some sites are different. A unit shared by a large framing crew in July can be full by Thursday. A food truck lot or a busy trailhead may go through paper and sanitizer in three days. When the calls start coming in about smell, full tanks or empty dispensers, it is time for a second visit.

Twice-weekly service is not just weekly service twice. It changes how you price, how you route, and how you talk to the customer about it.

Signs a Site Needs Two Visits

Watch for patterns rather than single bad days. A site probably needs twice-weekly service if you see:

• Extra pump-out requests from the same site more than once a month.
• Drivers reporting a full or nearly full tank at the weekly visit.
• Paper and sanitizer gone well before the next visit.
• A crew that has grown since the job started without more units being added.
• Complaints from the site contact about the condition of the unit midweek.

Your drivers know first. Ask them to note it when a tank is close to full and to take a photo. That record makes the conversation with the customer much easier, because you are showing them what you found instead of asking them to pay more on a hunch. High-Use Porta Potty Sites: Spotting Them and Servicing Them Before Complaints covers high-use sites in more detail.

Setting the Minimum Days

In PortaPottyBossPro, the minimum days between visits decides when a site comes due again. Weekly service uses seven. For twice-weekly, three or four days works well. With three days, a site serviced Monday comes due again Thursday. With four, a Tuesday visit brings it due Saturday, which may push into the weekend, so think about the days your trucks actually run.

Pick the number that matches the two days you want. Monday and Thursday is a common pair. Tuesday and Friday is another. Because each site keeps its own clock from the last completed visit, a late visit naturally shifts the next one instead of stacking two visits a day apart.

Pricing the Second Visit

A second weekly visit costs you nearly as much as the first: truck time, fuel, disposal, labor and supplies. Price it that way. Some companies offer twice-weekly as its own service at a set monthly or per-visit price. Others charge the regular weekly rate plus an extra service charge. Whichever you choose, set it up as a service with its own price so the invoice shows what the customer is paying for.

For contractors on monthly billing, the monthly statement lists every visit at every site with the site address on each line. A GC who questions the bill can see eight visits at one site and four at another and understand why.

Routing Two Visits a Week

Twice-weekly sites make the routing puzzle tighter. The site needs to be on a truck twice, on days that are three or four days apart, and both days need room. Build your service week so the twice-weekly sites sit in areas that a truck covers on both of those days. If the north side runs Monday and Thursday, put the north side's twice-weekly sites there.

The dispatch board shows each truck's stops by day and the totals per service. When a truck is carrying a heavy Thursday because of all the second visits, you can see it and spread the load before the week starts.

Telling the Customer

Customers notice twice the service, but only if they know about it. Turn on service reminders so the site contact gets a text the night before, and let the automatic arrival text tell them the truck was there. In the customer app, the site contact can follow the route on service day and see how many stops away the crew is.

What the Driver Sees

For the driver, a twice-weekly site looks like any other stop. It shows up on the phone in route order with the units, unit numbers and placement notes on the card. The only difference is that the driver sees it twice in the same week, which is a good moment to pay attention. If the tank is nearly empty at the second visit week after week, the site may not need it. If it is still full, the site may need more units rather than more visits.

Ask drivers to take a photo of each unit on each visit. Over a month, those photos tell you whether the frequency is right and give you something concrete to show the customer.

Changing Frequency Later

If a site goes back to weekly when the crew shrinks, change the minimum days back to seven and the schedule follows. To see how frequency settings, the Waiting List and the dispatch board work together, visit PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet service scheduling software.