JunkBossPro Blog — Junk Removal Software

Haul-To on Every Job: Dump, Transfer Station, Donation Center or Metal Recycler

Picking up the junk is half the job. The other half is getting rid of it. For most junk haulers, that means more than one place: a dump or transfer station for general junk, a donation center for usable furniture, a metal recycler for appliances and scrap. JunkBossPro puts that destination on every job.

Where It Goes Matters

Knowing what's on the truck is covered in Item Counts and What's Going: Writing Junk Jobs the Crew Can Read. The haul-to field answers the next question: once it's loaded, where does it go?

Without a haul-to on the job, the crew either calls the office, guesses, or goes to the same place every time out of habit. Habit is fine until the donation center pickup was the whole reason the customer chose you, or a load of appliances ends up at the transfer station when the metal recycler was on the way.

The Four Destinations

Each job can be set to haul to:

• Dump — the landfill your company uses
• Transfer station — where most general household junk goes in many areas
• Donation center — for furniture and household goods in good enough shape
• Metal recycler — appliances, scrap, old grills, bed frames

A job with mixed loads can note both, as in “Metal recycler for the washer and dryer, transfer station for the rest.” What a given site will take, and what it charges, is up to that site. Check the rules at your local transfer station or donation center; the software just records where the crew is headed.

The Go Button

On the crew's phone, every job card has a navigation button for the customer's address. The haul-to adds a second one: a Go button that navigates the crew to the drop-off. After the last pickup before a dump run, the crew taps Go and the phone gives them directions. Nobody types an address into a map app with dirty gloves on, and a new crew member doesn't need to know where the transfer station is to get there.

This matters most on days when the crew hits more than one drop-off. A morning of appliances followed by an afternoon cleanout might mean the metal recycler before lunch and the transfer station at the end of the day.

Planning Dump Runs Into the Route

When the office builds the day on the dispatch board, the load sizes and haul-to destinations together show where the dump runs need to happen. Three half loads in a row won't fit in one box. The office can order the stops so the truck passes the transfer station between the second and third, or put the donation drop right after the job with the good furniture.

Auto-routing orders the stops Closest First or Furthest First from the yard, and you can adjust the order by hand around the dump runs. That's covered in Auto-Routing Junk Jobs Closest First or Furthest First From the Yard.

The Ticket Comes Back

At the dump or transfer station, the crew gets a ticket with the weight. That ticket is where dump fee overage starts. If your price included a set number of tons and the ticket shows more, the overage gets added to the invoice once the tons are entered. The next guide in this series walks through exactly how.

A habit worth building: have the crew photograph the ticket and keep it with the job. When a customer asks about an overage line, you can point to the ticket.

Telling Customers Where Their Stuff Went

Plenty of customers care where their old things end up. They'd rather the dining table go to a donation center than a landfill. When the haul-to is on the job, the office can answer that question honestly when the customer asks. Just keep it to what you actually did; the software records the destination, not what the site does with the items afterward.

The haul-to also helps when the crew is deciding on site. If the job says donation center and the couch turns out to be torn, the crew can note it on the job and take it to the transfer station instead. The office sees the note, and the next person who looks at the job knows why the plan changed. Small notes like that keep the office and the truck telling the same story.

One More Field, One Less Phone Call

Haul-to is a small field that saves the crew from calling in, saves new hires from getting lost, and keeps donation and recycling trips from slipping. To see it alongside load size, items and dump fee overage, go back to the JunkBossPro junk removal software page.