PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Routes & Dispatch

Units and Placement Notes on Every Stop: What Dispatch Hands the Driver

A route is a list of addresses in order. A good route is a list of addresses with everything the driver needs to finish each stop without calling the office. The previous article, You're Stop 12 of 20: The Customer's View of Your Portable Toilet Route, covered what the customer sees. This one covers what the driver sees, and what the dispatcher has to put there first.

The Address Is Not Enough

An address gets the truck to the curb. On a big construction site, a fairground or a ranch, that might still be a long way from the units. A driver who arrives at a twenty-acre site with only an address will spend ten minutes looking for three toilets, and sometimes will find two and miss the third.

Multiply that by twenty stops and a fill-in driver, and you have a day that runs an hour late for no good reason.

What Every Stop Should Carry

In PortaPottyBossPro, every job carries the details that matter for portable toilets:

• Unit type: Standard, Deluxe Flushing, ADA Accessible, High-Rise / Crane, Hand Wash Station or Restroom Trailer.
• Quantity: how many of each type are on site.
• Unit numbers: which specific units are there.
• Placement notes: where they sit on the site.

Those details show under the address on the Waiting List, on the Scheduled List and on each card in the driver app. The driver sees them before pulling in.

Why Unit Type Matters for Routing

Unit type is not just a label. It changes the stop. A Restroom Trailer takes longer to service than a Standard unit and needs more water. A Hand Wash Station needs its fresh water and soap refilled and its gray water emptied. A High-Rise / Crane unit may be up on a floor of a building under construction and need coordination with the site.

When a dispatcher can see the unit types on a stop, they can estimate how long it takes and which truck should get it. A route of twenty single Standard units and a route with three Restroom Trailers are very different days. That is part of why Building a Day's Porta Potty Route From the Map in Minutes recommends reading the notes before sending a route.

Writing Placement Notes That Work

Good placement notes are short and specific. Compare these:

• Bad: units on site.
• Good: two Standard by the north trailer, one ADA by the main gate, hand wash at the lunch tables.
• Bad: back of property.
• Good: past the barn, left at the fence line, units by the round pen. Gate code in access notes.

Write notes the way you would give directions to a new driver standing in the yard. Landmarks beat compass directions, and counts beat vague words like some or a few.

Unit Numbers Settle Arguments

Unit numbers seem like extra work until the first dispute. A contractor says a unit was never serviced. Another company's unit sits next to yours on a shared site. A customer says you picked up four units and they had five. When the job lists the unit numbers, the driver knows exactly which units are yours, and the record shows which were serviced or picked up. Photos from the driver app add proof when you need it.

Keep Notes Current

Sites change. Units get moved by crews, a new building blocks the old path, the gate code changes. When a driver finds things different from the notes, they should add a note from the driver app, and the office should update the placement notes on the job so the next visit starts right. Notes that are wrong are worse than no notes at all, because a driver trusts them.

A good habit is to review placement notes on every big site once a month. Walk through each one with the driver who services it. Five minutes of talk saves an hour of searching later.

Notes Help the Office Too

Placement notes are not only for the driver. When a customer calls about a unit, the office can read the same notes and answer without guessing. When a superintendent asks to move two units across the site, the office updates the notes and the next driver sees the change. And when the office asks a new customer where they want the units while booking the delivery, writing the answer on the job means the delivery driver knows the spot before the truck leaves the yard.

Gate and Access Notes Belong Here Too

Sites and contacts can carry gate and access notes: lock combinations, check-in rules, hours the site is open, who to call. Put them where the driver sees them on the card. A driver who arrives at a locked gate at 6:45 with no code has two choices, both bad: wait, or Skip the stop. Skipped Stops on a Porta Potty Route: Locked Gates, Blocked Units and What Happens Next covers what happens after a skip.

The Payoff

When every stop carries the units and the placement, any driver can run any route. That is what makes it possible to cover a sick day, add a truck, or hand a route to a new hire without a week of ride-alongs. For how stop details fit with the rest of routing and dispatch, see PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet route software.