DumpsterBossPro Blog — Contractor Accounts

Site Contacts and Access Notes: Getting the Can Placed Right on a Contractor Job

Most contractor complaints are not about price. They are about placement. The can went on the side of the driveway where the concrete truck needed to back in. It blocked the porta-john. It sat on the neighbor's curb strip. It went in, and the driver could not get it back out because a pallet of block landed in front of it.

Every one of those is an information problem. After organizing sites as described in One Contractor, Many Job Sites: Organizing Addresses Under a Single Account, the next job is getting the right information onto each one.

Who to Call at the Site

Every job site needs a person: the super, the foreman, the property maintenance lead. Record a name and a cell number on the site, not just on the account. The office number is useless to a driver standing at a locked gate at 6:45 in the morning.

Contractors move supers between jobs. Ask whenever a new site is added who is running it, and update the contact when the crew changes. Two-way texting helps here, since a quick text to confirm the contact is easier for a busy super than a phone call.

Record a backup contact too. When the super is off for a day, someone else on site should be able to tell the driver where the can goes. A foreman or lead carpenter is usually the right second name.

Access: Gates, Codes and Hours

Write down how to get in. Gate code or lockbox, which entrance trucks use, whether the site is open before seven, whether there is a weight restriction on a private drive, whether trucks have to come in from the north because of a low wire. Builders in planned communities may have entrance rules for construction traffic.

These notes belong on the site so they show up in the driver app on every job there. A driver who has never been to that subdivision should arrive knowing exactly what the regular driver knows.

Placement Preferences

Be specific. Not just driveway, but left side of the driveway, front of the can toward the garage, on boards. Not just on site, but on the gravel pad by the lot line, clear of the silt fence. Ask whether the can needs to be reachable from the house for wheelbarrows, and whether the super wants the door end facing a certain way.

Placement rules on public right-of-way vary by city, and some places require a permit for a can in the road. Rules vary, so check local requirements, and note on the site whether the can must stay on private property.

Ask the super what he does not want as well. Not in front of the garage. Not under the power line. Not where the drywall delivery truck parks. The negatives are often more useful to a driver than the positives.

Photos From the Driver App

Words get misread. Photos do not. Drivers can attach photos from the driver app at drop-off, which gives you a record of exactly where and how the can was placed. On a remodel at an occupied home, a drop-off photo answers the question of who scratched the driveway before anyone asks it.

Photos also train your next driver. A picture of the can sitting correctly on the Lot 14 pad tells the new guy more than three sentences of notes.

Keeping Notes Current

Job sites change week to week. The driveway gets poured, the silt fence moves, the gate code changes after a theft. Make it a habit that whenever a driver finds something different, he says so and the office updates the site notes the same day. Stale notes are almost worse than none, because the driver trusts them.

When a super texts a change, copy it into the site notes right away rather than leaving it buried in the text thread. The text history is useful, but the driver app shows the site notes.

A quick review of the notes on your top contractors' active sites once a week, ideally with the regular driver, catches most of what has gone stale before it causes a bad drop.

Why This Keeps Contractors Calling

A contractor remembers the hauler that put the can exactly where the super wanted it without being told twice. That is the whole reason to collect this information. It costs a few minutes per site and saves the uncomfortable call from a superintendent who has already had a long day.

Next, the guide turns to swaps on a schedule. To see how site notes flow into the driver app, visit the DumpsterBossPro contractor dumpster rental software page.