TrashCanBossPro Blog — Routes by Trash Day

Catching Up Overdue Cleanings Without Wrecking the Next Bin Cleaning Route

A rained-out Tuesday, a holiday week, a tech out sick. Any of them can leave you with a pile of cleanings that should have happened and did not. The temptation is to throw them all onto the next route day. That usually turns one bad day into two. There is a better way to catch up.

How Overdue Happens

Billing on completion, as in Getting Paid as the Route Runs: Card-on-File Charges at Each Bin Cleaning Stop, means an uncompleted cleaning is also unbilled work. That is another reason not to let overdue stops linger.

In TrashCanBossPro, a cleaning comes due when its plan's minimum days have passed: 7, 14 or 28. It stays due until it is completed. Once it has been due longer than a 7-day grace, its pin on the Waiting List map turns overdue. Skipped stops, rained-out routes and anything you did not get to all end up there eventually.

Look Before You Schedule

Open the Waiting List map and look at the overdue pins. Ask two questions about the pile:

• Where are they? Clustered in one neighborhood usually means one missed route. Scattered across the city usually means a slow build-up of skips.
• What plans are they on? An overdue weekly customer has already missed a cleaning. An overdue monthly customer is a few days late on a 28-day cycle.

The answers decide the fix.

Let Some Wait for Their Trash Day

Not every overdue pin needs to go out tomorrow. A weekly customer whose next trash day is tomorrow can simply be cleaned on that route as normal. An every-other-week or monthly customer who is a few days past due can often wait for their trash day too, when the cans will be empty and at the curb.

Cleaning a can on its trash day is faster than chasing it on the wrong day. If waiting a few days puts the stop back in the empty-can window, waiting is usually the better choice. Text the customer so they know: "We missed you last week with the rain. We'll be by Tuesday after pickup."

Fold the Rest Into Nearby Routes

For stops that cannot wait, look for route days that already pass nearby. Add the overdue stops to those routes, assign them to the trailer and day, and re-run the route order. The cans will not be at the curb on a non-trash day, so make sure the can location notes say where they are, or text the customer to ask them to roll the cans out.

Spread the overdue stops across several days rather than piling them on one. Two or three extra stops on each route is a manageable bump. Twenty extra on one route is a late finish and new skips. For more on fitting stops in, see Same-Day Add-Ons: Fitting a New Trash Can Cleaning Into Today's Route.

Use the Flex Day

If your city runs trash on four days and you keep the fifth as a flex day, this is what it is for. A catch-up route on the flex day can clear a whole rained-out neighborhood at once. Auto-route Closest First or Furthest First, tell customers the day ahead, and let the night-before reminder do the rest.

If you do not have a flex day and catch-ups are a regular problem, that is a sign your route days are too full. When to Add a Second Route Day to Your Bin Cleaning Business covers what to do about it.

Don't Shortchange Today's Customers

The customers already on tomorrow's route did nothing wrong. If catching up the overdue pile pushes them to the end of the day, where their cans get put away, you have created a new set of skips to catch up next week. Keep the regular trash day customers in their normal route order and add catch-ups around them, not in front of them.

Find the Cause

Once the pile is cleared, ask why it happened. A one-time storm is just weather. A pile that comes back every few weeks points to something else: a route day that is too long, a neighborhood where the truck always runs late, or customers who are not getting their reminders. Fix the cause and the catch-ups shrink on their own.

The Short Version

Read the overdue pins by place and plan, let the ones that can wait go out on their next trash day, spread the rest across nearby routes or a flex day, and keep regular customers in their usual spot. For the rest of the routing tools, return to the TrashCanBossPro bin cleaning route software page.