TrashCanBossPro Blog — Routes by Trash Day

Holiday Weeks: When Trash Day Shifts and Your Bin Cleaning Route Has to Follow

A few times a year, the city takes a day off and every trash day after it slides back by one. Monday's pickup becomes Tuesday, Tuesday's becomes Wednesday, and Friday's lands on Saturday. If your routes follow the garbage truck, they have to slide too. Handled well, a holiday week is a little extra planning. Handled badly, it is a week of full cans.

Why Holidays Hit Bin Cleaners Harder

In Dense Subdivisions vs Spread-Out Customers: Route Density for Bin Cleaners, the point was that a good route is a dense block of cans emptied that morning. A holiday breaks that. If you show up on Tuesday to a Tuesday neighborhood whose pickup moved to Wednesday, every can is full. The whole route is a skip.

Most service businesses can ignore a holiday shift. Yours cannot, because your real appointment is set by the trash truck.

Know the Calendar Before the Week Starts

Cities publish their holiday collection schedules, usually on the sanitation or public works page. Some holidays shift the whole week, some only shift the day of the holiday, and some do not shift at all. Different haulers in the same metro area may handle the same holiday differently.

At the start of each year, check the holiday schedule for every city and hauler you work in and put the shift weeks on your own calendar. A week of warning is plenty. A morning of warning is not.

Find the Affected Stops

Because TrashCanBossPro stores the trash day on every address, finding the affected stops is simple. On the Scheduled List, look at each route day in the holiday week. The trash day shows under every address, so you can see which stops were planned around a pickup that is now moving.

If the shift covers the whole week, it is usually every stop from the holiday onward. If it only covers part of the city, or one hauler, filter your thinking by neighborhood and check the addresses in those areas.

Move the Route, Not Just the Stops

The cleanest way to handle a full-week shift is to slide each route day back by one. Monday's route runs Tuesday, Tuesday's runs Wednesday, and so on. On the board, move the jobs for each day to the next day for each trailer, and keep the route order you already set. The tech's phone shows the moved jobs on the new day.

The tricky part is the end of the week. Friday's route now lands on Saturday. You have three options:

• Run a Saturday route, if your crew is willing
• Fold Friday's stops into the following Monday if their plans can wait
• Use a flex day earlier in the week, if your city has a day with no pickups

The Waiting List colors help you decide which stops can wait. Due-now stops usually have room before they pass the 7-day grace and turn overdue. Stops that are already close to overdue should go out sooner.

Tell Customers Early

Customers know their own trash day moved. They do not always think about yours. A short text from the office early in the holiday week clears it up: "Trash pickup moves back a day this week for the holiday, so we'll be by on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Please leave your cans out after pickup."

Two-way texting from the office lets you send that to the customers on the affected routes, and any replies come back to the office. The automated night-before reminder still goes out ahead of the new route day, which is a second nudge. For more on those reminders, read The "Leave Your Cans Out" Text: Reminders That Keep Bin Cleaning Routes Moving.

What Happens to the Plans

Recurring plans count minimum days between visits: 7, 14 or 28. A cleaning that slides back a day is still a completed cleaning when the tech taps Complete, and the next one comes due from that date. That means a weekly customer cleaned on Wednesday instead of Tuesday will show on the Waiting List a day later than usual the following week. When you build the first normal route after the holiday, look for those pins and decide whether to bring each one back to its regular trash day now or let it run one more cycle. Every-other-week and monthly plans have more room, so they usually settle back on their own. You do not have to change the plan itself.

If you bill on completion, the invoice and any card-on-file charge happen when the job is completed, on whatever day that ends up being. Nothing extra to adjust.

After the Holiday

Once the week is done, take a quick look at the Waiting List map. Anything that slipped through, a skip because a customer forgot or a stop that got bumped twice, will be sitting there as due or overdue. Clear those on the next route that passes nearby. Catching Up Overdue Cleanings Without Wrecking the Next Bin Cleaning Route has more on that.

The Short Version

Put the holiday shift weeks on your calendar, slide each route day back to follow the truck, decide early what to do with the day that falls on the weekend, and text customers before the week starts. For everything else about routing by trash day, return to the bin cleaning route software page.