TrashCanBossPro Blog — Routes by Trash Day

Putting a New Customer on the Right Bin Cleaning Route Day

Every new customer is a routing decision. Put them on the right day and they slot into an existing route with almost no extra drive. Put them on the wrong day and you have a stop with full cans, or a detour across town. Getting it right at sign-up takes a couple of minutes and saves trouble every cleaning after.

Start With What You Know

Catching up a backlog, as in Catching Up Overdue Cleanings Without Wrecking the Next Bin Cleaning Route, is cleanup after the fact. Placing new customers well is how you avoid needing it. The key fact is the same one every route depends on: the customer's trash day.

Ask at Sign-Up

The sign-up form and request form on your website are the first chance to collect it. Ask for the trash pickup day along with the address and how many cans they want cleaned: trash, recycling and yard waste. Ask where the cans are kept if they are not at the curb, and whether there is a gate code.

Sign-ups land in Form Responses, with the card captured on the sign-up form. One click converts a sign-up into a client. Before you click, take a minute to check the address against your routes.

Check the Map

Look at where the new address sits on the Waiting List map. Is it inside a neighborhood you already clean? Near the edge of one? Far from everything? Is its trash day the same as the customers around it?

• Inside a neighborhood, same trash day: easy. They join that route day.
• Edge of a neighborhood, same trash day: still good. They extend the route by a stop.
• Near a route but different trash day: look at which of your route days passes closest on their trash day.
• Far from everything: decide whether to take them, at what price and on what plan. A monthly plan may make more sense than weekly.

For far-off sign-ups, Dense Subdivisions vs Spread-Out Customers: Route Density for Bin Cleaners covers the trade-offs.

Set Up the Address Properly

When you convert the sign-up, fill in everything the route needs:

• Can counts: trash, recycling and yard waste
• Trash pickup day
• Can location notes: side of the garage, behind the gate, gate code
• The plan: weekly, every-other-week or monthly
• Tags, such as Monthly or Every-Other-Week, and any custom fields you use

That information shows under the address on the lists and on the tech's phone from the first visit on. A new customer with a blank trash day is a routing problem waiting to happen.

Schedule the First Cleaning on Their Trash Day

The first cleaning sets the rhythm. Because plans run on 7, 14 or 28 days, a first cleaning on a Tuesday keeps the customer on Tuesdays from then on. Put the first cleaning on the next route day that matches their trash day, assigned to the trailer that runs that neighborhood.

If the first cleaning lands on a different day, the plan will count from that day, and you will be nudging it back toward trash day for the next few cycles. Starting right is easier.

For every-other-week and monthly customers, think about which week they start. If a neighborhood's every-other-week customers are bunched on one week, start the new one on the other.

Welcome Them to the Route

A new customer does not know how your routes work. Tell them in plain words: "We clean on your trash day, after the truck comes. Please leave your cans at the curb until we've been by. You'll get a reminder the night before." Set their alert preferences (night before, when they are next, when the tech arrives) and point them to the customer app, where they can see the live route map and their place in line on cleaning day.

The first cleaning is when you learn the most. Ask the tech to check the can location notes against reality and report anything that needs fixing.

Watch Capacity

Before saying yes to a run of new customers on one day, check that the day has room. If a route day is already finishing late, more customers there means more skips. That may be the push to add a second trailer or a second route day.

The Short Version

Ask for trash day and cans at sign-up, check the address on the map, fill in every field the route needs, schedule the first cleaning on their trash day with the right trailer, and explain how the route works. For more on routing by trash day, return to the bin cleaning route software page.