DumpsterBossPro Blog — Roll-Off Dispatch

Dump & Return and Relocate Jobs: Dispatching the Odd Roll-Off Requests

Most of the board is deliveries, pickups and swaps. Then there are the other two: the customer who wants their can emptied and brought back, and the customer who needs the can moved twenty feet because the concrete truck is coming Thursday.

Swaps, covered in Dispatching Swaps: Pulling a Full Can and Setting an Empty One in One Trip, are the main way to give a customer an empty can. Dump & Return and Relocate are the alternatives, and they need their own planning.

What Dump & Return Means

A Dump & Return job is exactly what it sounds like. The truck pulls the full can, takes it to the landfill or transfer station, dumps it and brings the same can back to the site. The customer ends up with an empty can, just like a swap, but no second can is involved.

That makes it useful when you are short on empties of that size, when the site only has room for one can at a time, or when a customer's account is set up that way. The tradeoff is time: the site is without a can for the whole round trip.

Dispatching Dump & Return

Because the truck returns to the same site, the route for that job is site, haul-to, site. Plan the next stop from the customer site, not from the landfill. If the disposal site is far, that round trip can be the biggest job of the day.

Tell the customer how long the can will be gone, so the crew does not plan on loading it during that time. A quick text from the driver when they head back with the empty saves the customer from wondering.

Dump & Return jobs are also a good fit for sites where a second can simply cannot fit: a narrow lot, a tight alley drop or a spot hemmed in by the house and the property line. In those places, a swap may not even be possible, and Dump & Return is the only realistic option.

What Relocate Means

A Relocate job moves a can from one spot to another, usually on the same site, sometimes to a different part of a large property. The can stays with the same rental; it is just in the wrong place now. Driveways get repaved, concrete trucks need access, a building inspector wants the can off the curb.

No dump run is involved, so Relocate jobs are usually short, but they still need a truck and a driver, and they need clear instructions.

Getting Relocate Right

The most common Relocate failure is the driver moving the can to the wrong place. Placement notes on the job should say exactly where it goes, and photos help even more. If the customer can send a picture through two-way texting with an arrow on it, attach that to the job.

Check whether the can is loaded. A full can is heavier and may not be safe to move without dumping first. If it is close to full, it might make more sense to dispatch a Dump & Return and set the can back in the new spot.

If a customer asks for a relocate to a spot the driver thinks is unsafe — too close to a building, on a slope, over a buried line the customer mentioned — the driver should stop and call or text the office before moving it. A relocate is cheap; a damaged foundation is not.

Fitting Them Into the Day

Relocates are good filler. They are short and do not involve the landfill, so they fit well near the end of a truck's route or between a dump and a delivery in the same area. Dump & Return jobs are the opposite: they are long and fixed in shape, so give them room on a truck's day early enough that the disposal site will still be open.

On the DumpsterBossPro dispatch board, each job shows its type, so you can see at a glance which trucks are carrying the long jobs and which have short ones you can move around.

Watch for customers who request relocates often. Sometimes it is a sign the original placement was not well thought out. A better conversation at intake, or a better site note, can save both of you a trip.

Billing the Odd Jobs

Dump & Return usually comes with a dump fee and a weight, so the driver enters the scale-ticket tons on the job just like a pickup. Relocates often carry a flat charge. Either way, they appear on the job and flow to the invoice instead of getting forgotten because they were "just a quick move."

Next up is auto-routing a roll-off day. For an overview of every job type and dispatch tool, visit the DumpsterBossPro roll-off dispatch software page.