JunkBossPro Blog — Crew App

Load Size, Item Count and What's Going: Reading the Junk Removal Job Card

A junk removal quote is a promise about a pile. The customer described it, maybe sent a description over the phone, maybe walked the estimator through the garage, and a price was set based on how much truck it would take. The crew that shows up needs to know what that promise was. The job card is where they find out.

The Card Below the Address

Getting to the house and to the dump afterward is covered in The Go Button to the Dump: Navigating to Transfer Stations, Donation Centers and Metal Recyclers. Once the truck is parked, the crew reads the card.

Under the address and the service name, every JunkBossPro job card shows four junk details: the load size, the number of items, what's going and where it is hauled to. Together they tell the crew what was sold, before anyone opens the garage door.

Load Size

Load size is how much of the truck the job was priced to fill. JunkBossPro uses the steps most junk companies already price on:

• Min Load for a single item or a few small things.
• 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4 and 7/8 for partial loads.
• Full Load for a full truck.
• 1.5, 2 or 3 loads for big cleanouts that need more than one trip.

For the crew, the load size is a gut check. If the card says 1/4 load and the pile in the driveway would fill three quarters of the truck, something changed between the quote and today. That is the moment to talk to the customer and let the office know, not after the truck is full. When a customer adds more on site, the guide When the Customer Adds More Junk on Site: From the Crew's Note to the Invoice covers what to do.

Number of Items

Item count is the second check, and for single-item and small jobs it is often the more useful one. “3 items” on a Min Load job tells the crew the customer is expecting three things to leave, not four. On a bigger load, the count helps the crew plan how long the job will take and whether a dolly or an extra set of hands is needed.

What's Going

This is the line crews read most closely. It describes the junk in plain words, the way the customer or the estimator would say it:

• “Washer and dryer in the garage.”
• “Queen mattress and box spring, upstairs back bedroom.”
• “Sectional in the basement. Leave the recliner.”
• “Old hot tub on the back deck, customer already disconnected it.”
• “Everything on the left side of the garage. Right side stays.”

The best descriptions say what goes, where it is and what stays. “Leave the recliner” is as important as “sectional in the basement,” because the most expensive mistake in junk removal is hauling something the customer wanted to keep.

Whoever books the job should write this line as if the crew has never been to the house, because most of the time they have not.

Where It's Hauled To

The last junk detail is the destination: the dump, a transfer station, a donation center or a metal recycler. It shows on the card with a Go button for directions. When a load is headed to more than one place, a short note in the description, like “fridge to recycler,” helps the crew load the truck in the right order.

Notes Below the Details

Under the junk details, the card carries the access notes for the address and past notes from earlier visits. Access notes cover the way in: gate codes, garage codes, stairs, tight driveways and where to park the truck. Past notes are what earlier crews learned, like “narrow side gate, dolly will not fit.” Both get their own guides next in this series.

Read Once, Then Work

A crew that reads the card at the curb walks up to the door knowing the load, the items, what stays, where to park and where the load goes. That is a better first impression than “so, what are we taking today?” It is also how a two-truck company keeps both crews working the same way. To see the job card alongside the rest of the crew's tools, visit the JunkBossPro junk removal app page.