JunkBossPro Blog — Crew App

Two-Person Junk Crews and Helpers: Who Logs In, Who Clocks In, Who Taps Complete

A lot of junk work needs two people. Couches do not carry themselves down basement stairs, and a hot tub on a back deck is a job for a crew, not a person. So plenty of junk trucks run with a driver and a helper, and on big cleanouts sometimes three. A crew app built for one person per truck leaves the second person with nothing to do but carry. That is a waste of a second phone and a second set of eyes.

Everyone Gets a PIN

Knowing where each truck is during the day is covered in Crew GPS on the Office Map: Knowing Where Every Junk Truck Is. Knowing who is on each truck starts with sign-in.

In JunkBossPro, every employee is set up with their own personal PIN and a truck assignment. The driver and the helper on Truck 1 are both assigned to Truck 1, so when either one signs in, they see Truck 1's jobs in route order. Both have the address, the load size, what's going, the access notes and the past notes in their own hand.

That means the helper can read the card too. On a cleanout, the helper checking “leave the recliner” while the driver backs up the truck is one more chance to catch a mistake before it happens.

Who Clocks In

Everyone. Each person clocks in and out on the time clock with their own PIN, so each person has their own hours. A helper who works Monday on Truck 1 and Thursday on Truck 2 still has one clean record for the week.

This is the main reason not to have helpers ride along unregistered. A helper with no PIN has no punches, and their hours end up on a text message or a sticky note. The time clock is covered in The Time Clock in the Junk Crew App.

Splitting the Taps

The app does not care who taps which button, but your crews will work better with a simple split. One that works well for a lot of junk crews:

• The driver handles navigation, taps Start, and taps Complete at the end. The driver owns the job.
• The helper takes the before photos while the driver talks to the customer, and the after photos while the driver is strapping the load.
• Whoever did the walk-through writes the note about what the customer confirmed or added.

The point is to decide once, not every job. When both people think the other one took the before photo, nobody did.

One Phone or Two

Some companies run one company phone per truck. Others have each crew member use their own phone. Both work.

With one phone per truck, the driver signs in in the morning. The helper should still clock in with their own PIN so their hours are recorded. During the day the phone gets handed back and forth for photos.

With two phones, both people are signed in and both see the same list. The helper can take photos and read notes without borrowing the driver's phone, which saves a lot of passing it around with dirty gloves.

Whichever you pick, a dash mount and a charger in the truck help.

Bigger Crews on Big Jobs

An estate cleanout or a large property manager trash-out might put three or four people on one truck for a day. The same rules apply: everyone with their own PIN, everyone assigned to that truck for the day, everyone clocked in. If someone normally on Truck 2 is helping Truck 1 for a big job, change their truck assignment in the office for the day and their phone shows Truck 1's list. Running a cleanout from the app is covered later in this series.

New Helpers

Helpers tend to turn over faster than drivers. That makes it important that setting someone up and turning someone off are both quick. A new helper gets a PIN and a truck assignment on their first morning. A helper who leaves gets their PIN turned off the same day, and loses access to your jobs and the codes in your access notes. Their past punches and photos stay in your records.

Two People, One Job, One Record

Two-person crews do twice the lifting, and with the right setup they can do twice the checking. Each person signed in, each person clocked in, and a simple rule for who takes the photos and who taps Complete. To see how crews of any size use the app, visit the JunkBossPro junk removal app page.