JunkBossPro Blog — Crew App

Junk Removal App: The Complete Guide for Junk Hauling Companies and Their Crews

A junk removal company lives and dies on what happens between the yard in the morning and the yard at night. The phone can ring all day and the estimates can look great, but if the truck shows up at the wrong house, hauls the wrong couch, forgets the dump ticket or leaves without getting paid, the day falls apart. This guide walks through the crew's side of JunkBossPro from login to the last dump run, so you can see what your drivers and helpers actually hold in their hands.

Where the Crew App Fits

JunkBossPro is software for junk removal companies running one truck or a few: residential pickups priced by the truck load, single items like mattresses, appliances, hot tubs and pianos, garage and estate cleanouts, yard waste, light construction debris, shed teardowns and monthly trash-outs for property managers. The office side handles the Waiting List, estimates, dispatch and billing. The crew app is the part that rides in the truck. For the overview of both sides, start on the JunkBossPro junk removal app page.

The idea is simple. Everything the office knows about a job should be on the crew's phone by the time the truck pulls up, and everything the crew learns at the house should be back in the office by the time the truck pulls away.

Getting the App on the Crew's Phones

The crew app runs in the browser on iPhone and Android. There is no app store download, no special device and no waiting for an update to be approved. Open the link, sign in, and add it to the home screen so it opens like any other app. Most crews already carry a phone that will do the job.

Signing in takes two things: your company login and a personal PIN for each crew member. The company login says which business this is. The PIN says which person is holding the phone, so every job, photo and clock-in belongs to the right name. When a helper leaves, turning off their PIN turns off their access. The details are in Company Login Plus a Personal PIN: How Junk Crews Sign In to the App.

The Day in Route Order

Every request starts on the Waiting List, the live map and list of jobs that are not booked yet. The office drags them onto a truck and a day on the dispatch board, then sets the order by hand or with auto-route, Closest First or Furthest First from the yard. Whatever order the board shows is the order the crew sees on the phone.

A common setup is one truck on single items and small loads, and another on cleanouts and big jobs. Each crew sees only their truck's list, top to bottom. If the office slides a same-day mattress pickup in at stop four, the list on the phone changes with it. Nobody has to call the driver and read out a new address.

What Is on Every Job Card

The job card is where a junk app earns its keep. A generic field app shows an address and a notes box. JunkBossPro shows the junk details that whoever booked the job already collected:

• Load size. Min Load, 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4, 7/8, Full Load, or 1.5, 2 or 3 loads.
• Number of items. Six items is a different job from twenty.
• What's going. In plain words: “Washer and dryer in the garage.” “Old sectional in the basement, leave the recliner.”
• Where it's hauled to. The dump, a transfer station, a donation center or a metal recycler.
• Access notes. Gate codes, garage codes, stairs, tight driveways, where to park.
• Past notes. What earlier crews learned at this address.

Read once at the curb, that card answers most of the questions a crew would otherwise call the office about.

Getting There: Navigation and the Go Button

Each job has a navigation button that opens directions to the customer's address. After the truck is loaded, the job also has a Go button that heads for wherever that load is going: the dump, a transfer station, a donation center or a metal recycler. A crew that splits a load between a recycler and the dump knows where each part goes before they leave the driveway.

Start, Skip, Complete

Three buttons run the day. Start tells the office the crew is on the job. Skip is for the stops that cannot happen: nobody home, gate locked, the pile is three times what was quoted and the customer wants to rethink it. A skip comes with a note so the office knows why. Complete closes the job, creates the invoice and can charge the card on file. More on each in Start, Skip, Complete: The Three Buttons That Run a Junk Removal Day.

Photos, Dump Tickets and Getting Paid

Before-and-after photos taken in the app stay with the job. A quick shot of the garage on arrival and another after the truck is loaded is a record of what was there and what was left. It is the first thing to pull up when a customer calls a week later about something they think went missing.

The dump ticket matters too. If your prices include a set weight, the overage is billable, but only if somebody records it. In JunkBossPro you enter the ticket's tons, the tons included in the price and your per-ton rate, and the overage is added to the invoice on its own line: “Dump fee overage (0.28 tons @ $70.00) = $19.60.” If you also leave dumpsters, dumpster drop days can be set with days included and a daily rate after that.

When the crew taps Complete, the invoice is created and a card on file can be charged right there at the curb. Customers without a card on file get the invoice and can pay online from the customer app.

Texts the Customer Gets Without Anyone Typing

Customers choose their alerts: the night before, when they are next, and when the crew arrives. As the crew works the route, on-the-way and arrived texts go out automatically. In the customer app, the homeowner sees a live map with their place in line, like “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.” A customer who knows the truck is coming opens the garage and moves the car. Replies come back to the office through two-way texting.

Time Clock and Crew GPS

Drivers and helpers clock in and out on the same phone they run jobs on, so hours are recorded as they happen instead of rebuilt from memory on Friday. While the crew is working, crew GPS shows on the office map. When a same-day call comes in for an old fridge, the office can see which truck is closest before deciding where it goes.

Getting Started

Set up your trucks and employees with PINs, enter your service list (single item, quarter, half, three-quarter and full truck loads, cleanouts, whatever you sell), and put a few real jobs on tomorrow's board. Ride along for the first morning. Most crews get it by the second stop. The JunkBossPro junk removal app page has the full feature list, and there is a live demo of a sample junk removal company you can click around with no signup.