TrashCanBossPro Blog — Tech App

The Navigation Button: One Tap From the Stop Card to the Next Curb

Bin cleaning techs drive more than almost anyone else in home services. The stops are short, so the time between them is a big share of the day. Every minute spent typing an address, reading it wrong or looping a cul-de-sac twice is a minute the trailer is not washing cans.

From the List to the Road

The stops arrive in the order covered in The Bin Cleaning Tech's Day in Route Order: Working the Stop List Top to Bottom. The navigation button is how the tech gets from one card to the next address.

Every stop card has a Map button. One tap opens navigation to that address on the tech's phone. The tech does not copy the address, switch apps, paste it, or type a street name with wet gloves. They tap, set the phone in the mount, and drive.

Why Typing Addresses Is a Real Cost

It sounds small. It is not. A tech who types fifty addresses a day will mistype some of them. A missing digit sends the trailer to the wrong end of a long street. A street name that exists in two nearby towns sends it to the wrong town. Autocomplete picks the first suggestion, and the first suggestion is not always right.

Each of those mistakes costs a few minutes and sometimes a lot more. Worse, some of them end with a tech washing the cans at the wrong house, which is free work for a stranger and a missed cleaning for the paying customer.

Tapping a button that already has the right address removes that whole category of mistake. The address was entered once, in the office, when the customer signed up.

Good Addresses Start in the Office

The button is only as good as the address behind it. A few habits keep addresses clean:

• Use the full address. Street number, street, city and ZIP. Skip abbreviations that only make sense to you.
• Check new sign-ups. When a sign-up comes in from the website form, glance at the address before converting it into a client. Customers make typos too.
• Watch out for new construction. Brand new streets sometimes are not on maps yet. Add a note on the address with directions from the nearest known street.
• Fix it once. When a tech finds a bad address, tell the office so the record gets corrected. The next tech should not hit the same problem.

If you imported an existing customer list from a spreadsheet, spot-check a handful of addresses on the map in the first week. Any that land in the wrong place are worth fixing before the first route.

Arriving Is Not the Same as Finding the Cans

Navigation gets the trailer to the curb. It does not tell the tech where the cans are. That is the job of the can location notes on the card, such as “left side of garage” or “behind the side gate.” On trash day afternoon most cans are at the curb, but not all of them. Some customers roll them back right after pickup. Some HOAs require cans to be out of sight.

So the routine at each stop is: tap Map, drive, park, then read the can location and gate notes before stepping out. For more on reading those notes, see Cans, Trash Day and Can Location: Reading Every Stop Card in the Trash Can Cleaning App.

Parking a Trailer Where the Map Says

Navigation apps are built for cars. A truck pulling a wash trailer has different needs. It cannot turn around in a tight cul-de-sac. It should not block a driveway or a mailbox. It may not fit through an HOA entrance with a low arm gate.

Those details belong in the notes on the address. “Park on Elm, cul-de-sac too tight for trailer.” “Use the back entrance off Maple, front gate arm is low.” Once a tech learns something like that, the office should add it to the address so every tech after them benefits.

Navigation and the Customer's Texts

Heading to the next stop is also when the customer can get an automatic on-the-way text. That text tells the homeowner the trailer is coming, which is often the difference between cans at the curb and cans dragged back into the garage. Customers choose that alert themselves in the customer app, along with night-before and arrived alerts.

The customer app also shows the live route map and their place in line. The more the tech follows the route order and taps through stops as they go, the more accurate that picture is.

One Tap, Right Address, Every Time

The Map button is one of the smallest features in the app and one of the most used. It turns a correct address in the office into a correct arrival at the curb, fifty times a day. For the full set of tools on each stop, go back to the TrashCanBossPro trash can cleaning app page.