DumpsterBossPro Blog — Dumpster Rental Software

Drivers, Trucks and the Time Clock: Adding a Second Roll-Off Truck Without Losing Track

The jump from one truck to two is the hardest growth step in roll-off. With one truck, the owner is usually the driver, the dispatcher and the office. With two, someone else is driving, and suddenly the information in the owner's head has to be somewhere the second driver can see it.

Reports That Show How Your Dumpster Rental Company Really Runs covered the reports that show how the business is doing. This guide covers adding the people and equipment to do more.

Drivers and Trucks as Records

In DumpsterBossPro, employees and trucks are records in the system. Each driver has a login for the driver app. Each truck is something you assign jobs to. When you assign a job to a driver and truck in one step, the system knows who did the work and with what.

That matters when a truck is in the shop and its driver moves to a spare, when you want to see how much each truck produced, or when you need to know who was driving the day a customer called with a complaint.

Keep truck records current. When a truck is down for repairs, do not assign jobs to it. When you add a truck, add it to the system before its first day on the road so the first job it does is recorded properly.

Adding a Second Truck

Adding a truck in the system is quick. Adding it to the operation takes more thought. Decide how you will split the work: by area, by job type, by size. Many companies give each truck a home area and assign the jobs from that area to that truck, then balance as needed.

The dispatch board, organized by truck and day, makes the split visible. You can see whether the new truck is pulling its weight or sitting idle, and move jobs between trucks to balance the day.

Expect the first few weeks with a second truck to feel slower, not faster. You are learning to split work and to dispatch someone else. Once the routine settles, the second truck pays for itself in jobs you used to turn away.

Getting a New Driver Up to Speed

A new driver does not know your area, your customers or your disposal sites. The driver app helps a lot. Every job has the site and haul-to addresses with one-tap navigation, the dumpster details and the placement and access notes. A new driver can run a route on day one.

Still, ride along for the first few days. Show them the tricky sites, the landfill procedures and how you like photos taken. The app tells them where to go; you teach them how to do it right.

Write down the things you know that are not in any app: which landfill has the shortest lines at what time, which customers need a call before the truck shows up, which sites have soft ground after rain. Put what you can in the job notes and teach the rest on the ride-along.

The Time Clock

The time clock lives in the same system as the jobs. Drivers clock in and out, and the hours sit next to the work they did. That makes payroll simpler and helps you see whether hours and jobs line up.

If a driver's hours keep going up while his job count stays flat, something is off: routes, the truck, the sites or the driver. The time clock and the job records together let you see it.

The time clock also helps when a driver has a question about his pay. The hours are recorded next to the jobs, so the conversation is about facts, not memory.

Never Billed Per User

One of the quiet costs of growth in a lot of software is per-user fees. Every new driver or office person adds to the bill. DumpsterBossPro is never billed per user. Adding a driver never adds to the bill. The Crew plan at $199/mo includes unlimited users.

That means you can give every driver the app, every office person a login and every helper access without doing the math each time.

Growing Without Losing Control

Growth breaks companies when the systems do not keep up. A second truck, a third, an office person, a dispatcher. Each one is a chance for information to fall through the cracks. When everything lives in one system, each new person plugs into the same plan.

It also means the owner can step out of the truck. When the second driver can run a route from the app without calling, the owner can spend more time selling, quoting and managing the business that pays for both trucks.

The next guide covers switching from your old system and importing your customers. To see how drivers and trucks fit into the whole system, visit the DumpsterBossPro dumpster rental software page.