DumpsterBossPro Blog — Driver App & Routes

Placement Notes That Put the Dumpster Exactly Where the Customer Wanted It

The customer wants the dumpster "in the driveway." That sentence sounds clear until you back up to a double driveway with a basketball hoop on one side, a sprinkler head in the middle, and a boat trailer on the other. Now the driver is sitting in the cab, hoist ready, trying to reach a customer who is at work.

Placement notes exist to answer that question before the truck shows up. After Size, Unit Number, Debris Type: Knowing the Can Before You Load It covered what can goes out, this article covers where it goes.

What a Placement Note Should Say

A useful placement note answers four things: which side, how close, what to avoid, and what direction the door faces. "Left side of the driveway, as close to the garage as possible, keep clear of the mailbox, door facing the house" is a note a driver can act on. "Driveway" is not.

On commercial and contractor sites, add who decides. "Super on site will point to the spot" is fine, as long as the driver knows that before arriving. "Back corner of the lot by the fence, not in the fire lane" is better.

What Not to Do Matters as Much

Some of the most useful notes are the negative ones. Do not block the neighbor's driveway. Not on the soft side of the yard. Not under the power line. Not in front of the shared mailbox. Not over the drain grate at the bottom of the drive. Each of those is a sentence that saves a callback, a damaged surface, or an angry neighbor. Put them on the job so the driver reads them before backing in.

A driver who has to guess will usually pick the spot that is easiest to back into, which is not always the spot the customer had in mind. A note removes the guess.

Boards, Surfaces and Overhead

Placement notes are also where surface protection goes. If the customer wants boards under the rails, or the office promised boards on a new concrete driveway, that belongs in the note so the driver loads them. Overhead clearance belongs here too: low wires, a tight carport, branches over the drive. The driver will see those on arrival, but knowing ahead of time means the approach is planned instead of improvised. The next article in this series goes deeper on driveway boards and surfaces.

Writing Notes the Driver Can Read in Five Seconds

Drivers read notes in the cab, between stops, sometimes at a light. Long paragraphs do not get read. A good format is short phrases, most important first:

"LEFT side of drive. Boards. Door toward garage. Do not block mailbox. Customer's car may be in drive, call on arrival."

That reads in five seconds and covers what the driver needs. Save the story about how the customer found you for somewhere else.

Capital letters for the one thing that matters most are fine. Codes, names and phone extensions go in exactly as given. If there is a gate code, put it in the access notes where the driver expects to find it, not buried halfway down a paragraph about the customer's remodel. And when something changes, edit the note instead of adding a second note that contradicts the first. Two notes that disagree are worse than none.

Who Writes Them and When

The person who takes the order is in the best position to ask placement questions, because they are on the phone with the customer. Make the questions part of the script: where do you want it, which side, anything to avoid, anything overhead, do you want boards. If the customer is not sure, the office can use two-way texting to ask them to send a photo or describe the spot before the delivery day.

Drivers add notes too. When a driver sets a can and learns something, such as the left side of the drive slopes or the gate only opens halfway, that goes on the job. On the swap or pickup, the next driver gets it.

Placement Notes and Placement Photos

A note says where the can should go. A placement photo shows where it actually went. Together they close the loop: if the customer later says the can was supposed to be on the other side, the note and the photo answer the question. Both live on the job. To see how placement notes sit alongside the site, haul-to and dumpster details in the driver's view, visit the dumpster driver app page.