DumpsterBossPro Blog — Contractor Accounts

Scale Tickets and Per-Ton Overage on Contractor Loads

Volume is easy to see. Weight is not. A can of shingles from a tear-off can look half full and weigh more than a heaping can of framing scraps. Contractors generate the heaviest loads you haul: roofing, concrete, tile, plaster, brick, wet drywall. If tonnage is not billed on contractor work, it is the first place your margin disappears.

Rental days in Rental Days on Contractor Jobs: Days Included, Daily Rates and Cans That Sit cover time. This guide covers weight.

How Weight Allowances Work

Most roll-off pricing includes a weight allowance with the rental, with overage charged per ton beyond it. The allowance and the per-ton rate depend on your disposal costs and your market. What matters is that every contractor knows the allowance when they book, and that every job has the numbers set.

Facility charges change, and they differ by debris type. Revisit your allowance and rate when your disposal costs move, so the per-ton overage still covers what you pay.

Be careful with allowances that sound generous on paper. If most of your contractor loads are mixed construction debris, a modest allowance works. If you serve a lot of roofers and demolition crews, the same allowance may be blown on nearly every load, which is fine as long as the overage rate is right and the contractor expects it.

Entering the Scale Ticket on the Job

In DumpsterBossPro, the scale-ticket weight is entered on the job when the load comes back, and overage is billed per ton automatically. The driver or office enters it from the ticket; nobody has to do the math or remember to add a line at month end.

Make it part of closing the job. A job without a weight is not done. On a busy contractor week that rule matters, because the jobs most likely to be missing a weight are the ones done in a hurry.

If tickets come back to the office in a stack at the end of the day, assign one person to enter them before close. A day of missing weights is easy to fix. A week of them turns into guesswork, and guesswork is where disputes start.

Setting Expectations With Contractors

The tonnage conversation is easier before the first load than after it. When you set up a roofer or demolition contractor, explain the allowance and the per-ton rate and how the charge shows up on the monthly invoice. Put it in the quote they approve online, so it is in writing.

Contractors who understand the charge plan around it. A roofer might order a second smaller can rather than overload one. A demo crew might separate concrete into its own can. Both are better for you than a surprise argument.

Heavy Debris Types to Watch

Shingles, concrete, brick, tile, plaster, dirt and wet materials are the usual culprits. If a contractor's job involves any of them, flag the debris type on the job so the driver knows what he is hauling and the office knows to watch the weight.

Some facilities limit or refuse certain heavy materials in mixed loads, and road weight limits apply to your trucks. Rules vary by location, so check your local requirements before telling a contractor a can can be filled to the top with concrete.

Watch for loads that are suddenly much heavier than a contractor usually sends. That can mean the job changed, such as a remodel that moved from interior work to a patio tear-out. It is worth a quick text to the super to update the debris type on the next job.

Showing the Ticket When Asked

A contractor who gets an overage line will sometimes ask to see the ticket. That is fair. Keep the ticket weight on the job, and keep the ticket itself or a photo of it according to your process. When the bookkeeper calls, you can answer in a minute with the site, the date, the weight and the facility.

That transparency is worth more than the overage itself. A contractor who trusts your weights does not shop you on price every time a competitor calls.

Overage on the Monthly Invoice

Per-ton overage lands on the job, and the job lands on the account's monthly invoice with its job site named. A builder who sees that the heavy loads all came from one site can talk to that super about what went in the can. That conversation helps both of you.

Next, the guide looks at the monthly invoice itself. For how tonnage fits into contractor billing, see the DumpsterBossPro contractor dumpster rental software page.