TrashCanBossPro Blog — Routes by Trash Day

Weekly, Every-Other-Week and Monthly Plans on One Bin Cleaning Route

A single street can have a weekly customer, two every-other-week customers and a monthly one. On any given trash day, some of them are due and some are not. Routing that by hand is a calendar puzzle. Letting the plans come due on their own turns it into a map.

How Plans Come Due

The notes in Can Location Notes and Gate Codes: Getting to the Cans Fast at Every Route Stop tell the tech how to reach the cans. The plan tells the office when to send the tech. In TrashCanBossPro, recurring plans are set by minimum days between visits:

• Weekly: 7 days
• Every other week: 14 days
• Monthly: 28 days

When that many days have passed since the last completed cleaning, the next one comes due and shows on the Waiting List map. Nobody has to remember whose turn it is.

Why 28 Days and Not a Calendar Month

Trash day is weekly. A calendar month is not. If "monthly" meant the same date every month, a Tuesday customer would come due on a Thursday one month and a Sunday the next, and you would never catch their cans empty at the curb.

Twenty-eight days is exactly four weeks. A monthly customer cleaned on a Tuesday comes due again on a Tuesday. Every-other-week at 14 days does the same. All three plans stay lined up with the weekly trash cycle, which is what keeps routes built around trash day stable month after month.

Over a year, a 28-day plan is thirteen cleanings rather than twelve. Many bin cleaners price monthly plans with that in mind, or bill per cleaning. That is your pricing call.

Mixing Plans on One Route

On a typical Tuesday route, the Waiting List map shows a mix: every weekly customer in the Tuesday zone, about half of the every-other-week customers, and about a quarter of the monthly ones. The colors show which are due now and which are overdue past the 7-day grace.

You pick the due pins in tomorrow's trash day neighborhoods, assign them to a trailer and day, and auto-route. The route naturally has a different mix of addresses each week, but the same neighborhoods. Tags such as Monthly and Every-Other-Week on the client help you see the mix on the list.

Balancing Every-Other-Week Customers

Every-other-week plans can bunch up. If most of a neighborhood's every-other-week customers started in the same week, they all come due in the same week, and the route alternates between heavy and light.

When you sign up new every-other-week customers, try to start them on the light week. Over time the neighborhood evens out. If it is already lopsided, you can move a few customers by a week once, and the plan keeps them on the new rhythm from then on.

Monthly customers can bunch the same way across four weeks. The same fix applies.

Recycling and Yard Waste Weeks

Many cities pick up recycling or yard waste every other week. A customer who pays to have all their cans cleaned will want you there on a week when everything was emptied. Every-other-week plans at 14 days fit that pattern well: start the customer on a week when all their cans go out, and every cleaning after lands on a matching week. Put a short line in the can location notes, such as "recycling every other week, same day as trash," so the tech knows what to expect.

When a Plan Drifts

Plans count from the last completed cleaning. If a cleaning is skipped and done a day late, the next one comes due a day later too. Most of the time you simply schedule the next one on the customer's regular trash day once it is due. The grace window before a pin turns overdue gives you room to wait for that trash day.

After holiday weeks and rain-outs, scan the Waiting List for pins that have drifted off their trash day and bring them back. Holiday Weeks: When Trash Day Shifts and Your Bin Cleaning Route Has to Follow covers that in detail.

Changing a Customer's Plan

Customers move between plans. A monthly customer wants weekly cleaning in the summer when the cans smell worse. A weekly customer cuts back to every other week. When the plan changes, the minimum days between visits change, and the Waiting List follows on the next cleaning. Customers can also request service or sign up for services in the customer app, which comes to the office for you to set up.

Billing follows the plan: invoices with line items, card on file and auto-charge on completion or on a schedule.

The Short Version

Weekly is 7 days, every-other-week 14, monthly 28, all multiples of a week so they stay on trash day. Plans come due on their own on the Waiting List, and each route is the due pins in that trash day's neighborhoods. Balance new every-other-week and monthly sign-ups across weeks. For the rest of the routing tools, return to the TrashCanBossPro bin cleaning route software page.