PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Routes & Dispatch

Dense Construction Clusters: Routing Portable Toilet Service Through Busy Job Sites

Construction is the backbone of a lot of portable toilet businesses, and construction work clusters. A new subdivision has a dozen builders, each with units on their own lots. A commercial park has three buildings going up at once. A highway project spreads units along miles of road. In City Porta Potty Routes: Traffic, Tight Sites and Parking the Pump Truck, the focus was on city traffic. This article focuses on clusters of job sites, where the route is less about driving and more about not missing a unit.

A Cluster Is One Stop, and Also Many

In a new subdivision, five builders might each have a unit on their own lot, all within a few hundred yards. On the map they are five pins almost on top of each other. On the route, they should be one tight block of stops, serviced in one pass.

The trouble is that each builder is a different customer, with a different contact, sometimes a different service frequency, and a different bill. Route them together; keep them separate on paper. PortaPottyBossPro handles this naturally: each builder is a client, each lot is a job site, and each site has its own service and its own pin.

Many Units on One Site

A larger commercial site may have ten or fifteen units, plus a hand wash station or two, spread across the site. Each job shows the unit type, the quantity and the unit numbers, plus placement notes like two Standard units by the north trailer, one ADA Accessible by the main entrance, hand wash station at the lunch area.

That is what keeps a driver from servicing eight of ten units and leaving. With the count and placement on the card in the driver app, the driver knows exactly how many units to find.

Group the Cluster by Day

Clusters are a gift for routing. Put an entire subdivision or business park on the same day, in one block of the route. Use auto-routing from the yard to place the cluster in the day, then order the stops inside the cluster by the path the truck drives through it, usually entering at one end and leaving at the other.

If the cluster is large enough to fill most of a day, give it its own route day and fill the rest with nearby stops.

Service Frequency on Busy Sites

Construction sites change. A site with two workers during framing might have thirty during finish work. The minimum days between visits on the service should match the current crew size. When a superintendent asks for more frequent service, update it, and the Waiting List will bring the site due more often.

Extra pump-outs are common after big days. They land on the Waiting List as their own jobs, and since they are in the cluster, they are usually easy to fold into the next truck passing through.

Site Contacts and Access

Construction sites have rules. Gates are locked outside work hours. Some sites want drivers to check in. Some have a superintendent who needs a heads-up before a truck shows up. Put site contacts and gate or access notes on each job site so they are on the driver's phone. When something changes, the office can reach the customer with two-way texting from the office.

One Statement Per Contractor

A contractor with units on six sites does not want six invoices for each service. Set that contractor to Monthly account billing, and they get one statement each month covering every job at every one of their sites, with each line labeled with the site address. Routing the cluster efficiently is the dispatcher's job; that statement is what keeps the contractor happy with the result. Routing Rental Pickups On Time So Extra Days Bill Right covers the pickup side when a job wraps up.

Check the Cluster From the Map

A cluster makes overdue stops easy to spot and easy to miss at the same time. Five pins stacked on one corner of the map can hide a sixth one that turned overdue. Zoom in on your clusters when building the day and make sure every pin in the block is either due and on the route, or not due yet for a good reason. A unit left behind in a busy subdivision is the one the builder notices when the inspector walks the lot.

Drivers can help too. When a driver finds a unit on a lot that is not on the route, a quick note or photo from the driver app tells the office something is out of date, whether it is a unit another company placed or one of yours that never got set up for service.

When Sites Finish

Construction clusters shift as projects finish. A lot sells, the builder pulls the unit, and a new lot down the street gets one. Keep pickups and deliveries in the same cluster on the same day where you can. A delivery truck that drops units on two new lots and picks up from two finished lots in the same subdivision is making one trip instead of four.

For how construction clusters fit into the rest of your routing and dispatch, see PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet route software.