PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Construction Site Accounts

Routing Trucks Through Construction Job Sites: Weekly Service in a Sensible Order

Construction Stops Are Not Like Other Stops

A homeowner's unit sits in a driveway you can reach any time of day. Construction stops have gate hours, check-in rules, cranes, mud, and supers who want service before the crew arrives or after they leave. A route that ignores those things looks efficient on a map and falls apart by 9am.

Winning the work with a clear quote, as covered in Quoting Construction Porta Potty Jobs So Contractors Say Yes, is the start. Servicing it in a sensible order every week is what keeps it.

Start With the Waiting List Map

Every construction site with service due shows on the Waiting List, as a pin on a live map and a row in a list. Pins are colored by status: not due yet, due now, or overdue past a seven-day grace, using each service's minimum days between visits.

Looking at the map, the dispatcher can see where due construction stops cluster. A subdivision with eight lots due, a commercial site across the highway, and a few roofing jobs scattered around town. Grouping by area is the first step to a good route.

Assign to Trucks and Days

Select the due stops and assign them to a truck and day on the Scheduled List. The week strip shows each day, and the board can be filtered by truck. The board totals stops and dollars per service, so the dispatcher can see whether one truck has too much and another has room.

Construction-heavy companies often find it useful to give certain trucks certain areas on certain days. The builder on the north side always gets Tuesday; the commercial sites downtown always get Thursday. Supers like predictability, and drivers learn the sites faster.

Watch the size of each site when balancing trucks. A single commercial site with a dozen units and a hand wash station can take as long as several small residential lots. Because each stop shows its unit type and quantity, the dispatcher can see which stops are heavy and avoid stacking three of them on one truck while another truck runs light. The dollar totals on the board help here too, since bigger sites usually carry bigger service charges.

Mixing construction stops with other customers on the same route is normal. A truck can service a builder's lots in the morning and residential and event units in the afternoon. The goal is a full, sensible day, not a route that only serves one type of customer.

Auto-Routing and Manual Order

Once a day's stops are assigned, auto-routing can put them in order, Closest First or Furthest First from the yard. That gives a good starting order based on distance. Then the dispatcher adjusts by dragging stops for the things a map does not know:

• A site whose gate opens at 7am should not be first if the truck leaves at 6.
• A high-rise unit that depends on crane time goes in its time window.
• A site where the super wants service after the crew leaves goes near the end.
• A site with heavy traffic at shift change should be avoided at those times.

Put those constraints in the site's access notes so the dispatcher sees them while routing. Job Site Access Notes: Gates, Lockboxes and Where the Porta Potties Go covers access notes.

What the Driver Sees

The route order on the board is the order on the driver's phone. Each stop shows the address, units, placement and access notes, and a Map button for navigation. The driver taps Start, services the units, takes photos and taps Complete, or taps Skip with a note if a site cannot be reached. The crew's GPS shows on the office map, so the dispatcher can see progress during the day.

Automatic on-the-way and arrived texts go to site contacts, and the customer app shows the super a live map with where they are in the route.

Handling Changes During the Day

Construction days change. A super requests an extra pump-out at 10am, or a gate is locked and the stop has to be pushed. New jobs go on the Waiting List and the dispatcher can add them to a truck that has time. Skipped stops stay on the list for the next possible day. Extra Pump-Outs on Busy Construction Sites: Fitting Them Into the Week covers fitting extra pump-outs in.

Review and Improve

At the end of each week, look at what went late and why. A site that is always skipped for a locked gate needs a talk with the super or a different time slot. A truck that always finishes late has too many stops. Small changes to the routing habits pay off every week the project runs.

To see the Waiting List, dispatch board and driver app together, visit PortaPottyBossPro construction porta potty rental software.