PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Routes & Dispatch

Due, Overdue, Not Yet: Reading Pin Colors on a Porta Potty Route Map

A route map full of pins is useful. A route map full of pins that tell you which stops are fine and which ones are in trouble is far more useful. The previous article, The Waiting List Map: Seeing Every Porta Potty Stop That Still Needs a Truck, introduced the map. This one is about reading it: what each pin color means and what a dispatcher should do about it.

Three States Every Stop Can Be In

On the Waiting List, every recurring service stop is in one of three states:

• Not due yet: the stop is on the list, but not enough days have passed since the last service.
• Due now: the minimum days between visits have passed, and the stop should go out.
• Overdue: the stop has gone past a 7-day grace after it came due.

Deliveries and pickups sit on the map as well, so you see the full picture of open work, not just service.

Where the Colors Come From

The status is driven by the service itself. Each recurring service has a minimum number of days between visits. A weekly service might be 7 days. A busy construction site with a large crew might need service every 3 or 4 days. A seasonal park unit might be every 14.

When a service is completed, the clock starts over. That is why the colors stay honest: they are not based on a guess about when the truck went out, they are based on the last time a driver tapped Complete on that stop.

Getting the minimum days right is worth a few minutes per customer. Set it too long and a busy site fills up before the truck arrives. Set it too short and your trucks pump units that are barely used.

Morning Habit: Scan for Overdue First

Before building the day, look at the map for overdue pins. Each one is a customer who is past due by more than a week of grace. That usually means one of a few things happened:

• The stop was skipped because of a locked gate or blocked unit and never rescheduled.
• A route got rained out and only part of it was moved.
• The site was added mid-week and never landed in a route day.
• The service frequency is set wrong for how the site is really used.

Clear overdue stops first. Put them on today's or tomorrow's route even if they are slightly out of the way. A few extra miles cost less than a customer who decides to call a competitor.

Using Due Now to Fill Routes

Due now pins are the bread and butter of route building. When you build a day, start with the due pins in that day's area, then look for nearby not-due-yet pins only if you have a good reason to pull them forward, such as a site that is always busy or a customer who asked for an early visit.

Pulling stops forward constantly is a trap, though. Every early service resets the clock and costs you a visit you could have billed later in the month. Let the colors do their job.

The exception is a site you know will be hammered, such as a job site with a big crew starting a concrete phase or a park with a holiday weekend coming. Pulling that stop forward a day or two is cheaper than an emergency pump-out call on Saturday. Use judgment, and write the reason in the job notes so the next dispatcher understands why it went early.

Patterns Worth Noticing

After a few weeks, the map tells you more than what is due today. If the same corner of your service area keeps showing overdue pins, that route day is overloaded. If one customer is always overdue, their service frequency or their route day is wrong. If overdue pins spike after every storm, your weather plan needs work, which Rescheduling Porta Potty Routes for Weather Without Losing Track of a Stop covers.

Those patterns are much harder to see on a whiteboard or in a spreadsheet, where an overdue stop looks exactly like every other row.

Keep the Colors Trustworthy

The colors only work if drivers close out stops honestly. A driver who taps Complete on a stop they skipped makes the map lie, and that stop will not come due again for another week. A driver who taps Skip lets the office see the problem and put the stop back on a day. Make it clear to every driver that Skip is not a mark against them; it is how the map stays right.

For how pin colors fit into building routes, assigning trucks and keeping customers informed, see PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet route software.