JunkBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

Auto-Routing a Junk Truck: Closest First or Furthest First From the Yard

Putting six or eight stops in a sensible driving order by eye is doable. Doing it for two trucks every night, while also thinking about load sizes and dump hours, gets old fast. Auto-routing does the first pass for you, and the choice between its two modes is worth understanding.

Where Routing Fits

Routing happens on the board. If you haven't read it yet, The Junk Dispatch Board: Every Job by Day and by Truck explains how jobs get a day and a truck. Once a truck has its jobs for the day, you route them.

JunkBossPro auto-routes from your yard, the place the trucks start each morning. It offers two directions: Closest First and Furthest First. Both use the same stops. They just run the day in opposite directions.

Closest First

Closest First starts with the stop nearest the yard and works outward, so the truck ends the day at the far edge of its route.

It tends to be the right call when:

• Your main dump or transfer station is near the yard. The early stops fill the truck close to home, and the first unload is a short drive.
• The far stops are small. A single item at the end of the day doesn't need an unload before the truck heads back.
• Customers near the yard want early times. Closest First naturally puts them at the top.

The catch is the drive home. The truck finishes far out, and if it's loaded, that last trip to the dump can be a long one.

Furthest First

Furthest First drives out to the far stop first and works back toward the yard. The truck ends the day close to home.

It tends to be the right call when:

• The truck needs to finish near the dump. If the transfer station is on your side of town, ending there with a full box is ideal.
• The far stop is a cleanout. Start the big job early while the crew is fresh and the day is long.
• You want the crew home on time. Ending near the yard means less windshield time after the last job.

The catch is the morning drive. The truck spends its first half hour driving instead of loading.

Think About the Dump, Not Just the Yard

Auto-routing starts from the yard because that's where the trucks start. But for a junk crew, the dump is the other anchor of the day. Every job has a haul-to stop, so it's worth looking at where those stops are before picking a direction.

A good habit: look at the load sizes in order after routing. If the truck is full by stop three, find where stop three is. If the transfer station is close to it, great. If it's across town, try the other direction and see if the full point lands somewhere better. Dump runs between jobs are covered in Planning Dump Runs Between Junk Removal Jobs.

Auto-Routing Is the First Draft

Auto-routing knows where stops are. It doesn't know that the customer at stop five has to leave by 9, that the hot tub needs the third crew member who only works mornings, or that the storage facility gate opens at 8. After auto-routing, set the route order by hand for those stops.

That two-step habit — auto-route, then adjust — gets you most of the way in one click and keeps the judgment calls where they belong, with you.

What the Crew Sees

Whichever direction you choose and whatever you move by hand, the crew's phone shows the same order. Each card has a Go button to navigate to the customer, and the haul-to stop has its own Go button to the dump. The crew works top to bottom.

If a same-day job gets added later, you can re-route the truck or drop the new stop in by hand where it fits. The phone updates either way.

Customers feel the route order too. Those who opt in get a text when they're next and another when the crew arrives, and the customer app shows them their place in line on a live map. A route that makes sense to the crew also makes the customer's wait easier to predict, which means fewer calls asking where the truck is.

Pick a Default, Then Break It

Most companies settle on a default for each truck. The single-item truck might always run Closest First because it does lots of small stops and unloads near home. The cleanout truck might run Furthest First so it ends the day at the transfer station. Then on the odd day, they flip it.

The next guide covers the hand adjustments in more detail. For the rest of scheduling and dispatch, visit the JunkBossPro junk removal scheduling software page.