DumpsterBossPro Blog — Dumpster Rental Software

Taking a Dumpster Rental Order: What to Capture Before the Truck Rolls

Most wasted roll-off trips are decided on the phone, not on the road. The driver who shows up to a locked gate, a car parked where the can was supposed to go, or a customer who wanted a 30 and got a 20 was set up to fail by the order that was taken.

From Request to Paid: The Full Life of a Roll-Off Rental in One System showed how a rental moves through the system. This guide is about the first step, the order itself, and the handful of questions that save a second trip.

Who, Where and How to Reach Them

Get the customer's name, a mobile number that takes texts and an email for the invoice. Then get the site address, which is not always the billing address. A contractor might bill to his office and have the can go to a house across town. A landlord might live out of state. Put the site on the job and keep the billing address on the customer.

Ask who will be on site. If it is not the person paying, get that person's name and number in the notes. The driver needs to know who to look for and who to call if the driveway is blocked.

The Right Size and the Right Debris

Customers rarely know what size they need. Ask what they are doing instead. A single-room clean-out, a roof, a full kitchen, a garage, new construction. Then recommend a size and say why. It is better to talk someone into the right can than to run a second delivery three days later.

Ask what is going in it, and record the debris type on the job. Heavy material such as concrete, brick, dirt or roofing behaves very differently from household junk. It fills by weight before it fills by volume, and many companies put heavy loads in smaller cans for exactly that reason. What you can and cannot accept depends on your local landfill and transfer station rules, so tell customers what your company accepts rather than guessing.

Placement and Access

This is where most second trips come from. Ask exactly where the can should go: driveway, side yard, curb, a spot on the job site. Ask about overhead wires, low branches, narrow gates, soft ground and how much room the truck needs to back in. Ask whether they want boards under the rails to protect the driveway.

If the can is going in the public right-of-way, ask whether they have looked into whether a permit is required. Permit rules vary by city and county, so the honest answer is to tell them to check with their local office rather than making a promise. Put every one of these answers in the placement and access notes so the driver sees them in his app before he gets there.

Dates and the Rental Terms

Get the delivery date and the expected pickup date, even if the customer is vague. Then say the rental terms out loud: how many days are included, what the daily rate is after that, what weight is included and what each ton over costs. Customers argue about charges they were surprised by. They rarely argue about charges they were told about.

Better still, put it in writing. A quote with online approval puts the size, the days included, the daily rate, the included weight and the per-ton overage in front of the customer, and they approve it from their phone before the can ever leaves the yard.

Capturing It in One Place

Every answer above goes on one job, not on a sticky note and a text and a memory. In DumpsterBossPro, the job holds the site address and the haul-to address, the job type, the size, the unit number when it is assigned, the debris type, the placement and access notes, the rental dates and the terms. When the driver opens the job, he sees what the office saw.

If you take orders through a web request form, the form captures the basics and the office fills in the rest with a quick call or a two-way text. Either way, the job is complete before it is assigned.

A Short Intake Script

Write a one-page script and tape it next to the phone. Name and mobile. Site address and who will be there. What the project is and what is going in. Size recommendation. Exact placement, gates, wires and ground. Delivery date and expected pickup. Days included, daily rate, included weight and per-ton overage. Card on file or invoice. That is the whole thing, and it takes about four minutes.

The next guide goes deeper on the two addresses every roll-off job needs. For the full picture of how intake ties into dispatch and billing, visit the DumpsterBossPro dumpster rental software page.