JunkBossPro Blog — Crew App

Two Trucks, Two Routes: Single Items on One, Cleanouts on the Other

The jump from one truck to two is one of the biggest changes a junk removal company goes through, and it usually happens in a busy season with no time to plan it. Suddenly there are two crews, two lists and two dump runs to plan, and the owner cannot be in both trucks. How you split the work between them decides whether the second truck makes money or just makes the day more confusing.

Two Kinds of Junk Days

Running a cleanout from the phone is covered in Running a Garage, Estate or Storage Cleanout From the Crew App. Cleanouts are one kind of junk day. The other is a string of single items and small loads. The two do not mix well on one truck.

A single-item day is lots of short stops: a mattress, a fridge, a recliner, a hot tub, a few bags. The truck fills slowly and the crew spends most of the day driving and doing quick walk-throughs. A cleanout day is one or two long jobs that fill the truck, sometimes more than once. The crew spends most of the day carrying.

Put a garage cleanout in the middle of a single-item route and every stop after it runs late. Put four mattress pickups around a cleanout and the cleanout gets rushed.

The Typical Split

A setup that works well for a lot of two-truck companies:

• Truck 1: single items and small loads. Min Load through about half loads, mattresses, appliances, the odd hot tub, same-day calls. Many stops, one dump run late in the day.
• Truck 2: cleanouts and big jobs. Garage, estate and storage cleanouts, full loads, multi-load jobs, shed teardowns, construction debris. Fewer stops, dump runs between jobs.

On the dispatch board, filtering by truck shows each list on its own, and saved views make flipping between them quick. Each crew's phone shows only their own truck's jobs.

Booking Into the Right Truck

The split starts when the job is booked. Every request lands on the Waiting List map first. When the office looks at it, the load size on each request tells them which truck it belongs on: a Min Load mattress goes to Truck 1, a 2-load estate cleanout goes to Truck 2.

The map tells them which day. If Truck 1 is already on the north side Thursday, the mattress on the north side goes on Thursday too. That is how the single-item truck stays full instead of zigzagging across town.

Routing Each Truck

Auto-route works differently for each kind of day. The single-item truck benefits most: with lots of stops, Closest First or Furthest First from the yard puts them in a sensible order in one click. The cleanout truck often gets ordered by hand, because there are only two jobs and the question is which one to start with and when the dump run falls in between.

Whatever the board shows is what each crew sees, as covered in The Junk Crew's Day in Route Order: Working the Job List Top to Bottom.

When One Truck Needs the Other

The split is not a wall. Some days the cleanout finishes early and Truck 2 has room for a same-day call. Some days a hot tub on Truck 1's list needs an extra set of hands. Crew GPS on the office map shows where both trucks are, so the office can move a job from one list to the other and both phones update. When a helper switches trucks for the afternoon, a change to their truck assignment in the office puts the new list on their phone.

Property Manager Work

Monthly trash-outs for property managers, realtors and apartment complexes can go on either truck, depending on size. Small unit turnovers fit Truck 1's day. A full house trash-out fits Truck 2. Either way, accounts set to Monthly get one statement each month covering every address, with each line labeled, so splitting their jobs across trucks does not split their bill.

Two Trucks, One System

Two trucks only double your capacity if they are not stepping on each other. A clear split, one board, and a crew app that shows each crew only their own list is how they stay out of each other's way. To see how the crew app handles one truck or several, visit the JunkBossPro junk removal app page.