One of the central goals of a hauling operation is to pick up 100% of today’s trash 100% of the time. When a driver misses stops on his route, route supervisors are faced with two uncomfortable choices: incur expensive overtime hours to go back and collect the garbage or divert another truck off its scheduled route to render the service. These runbacks—having to service a client outside of the normally-sequenced order—can be the bane of trash hauling.

Here are ways in which a Routeware system can help reduce the expense and headache of runbacks.

Analyze why a driver is skipping stops. Rcore®, Routeware’s on-board computer, assigns a reason to every skipped stop. Analyzing these reasons can help uncover the root causes of runbacks. Is the gate always locked? Is there a traffic delay—for example, the pickup always occurs near a busy school zone?

Analyze route efficiency. If the route is too dense, a driver will struggle to get through all of the stops, invariably leading to runbacks. Through maps and reports, the Routeware system can help balance the route workload, eliminating overlaps and unnecessary deviations. This means more efficient routes that drivers can finish without overtime or runbacks.

Profile online vs. offline time. The amount of time a driver spends on breaks (be they mandated downtime or trips to the landfill or fueling station) directly affects the number of runbacks. The less time a driver spends idle, the more challenged he will be to complete his route. The Routeware system features complete online/offline profiling, including dashboards with excessive break time alerts. With these tools, drivers spend more time being productive, reducing the chance of runbacks.

Understand customer behavior. Despite the hauler’s best intentions, a customer may be responsible for their own runback. Being consistently late with their setout or expecting special treatment may put the hauler in an awkward spot, leaving only their word pitted against the customer in order to resolve a complaint. With its built-in 100% service verification (skip reasons, time/date/GPS coordinate recording, and digital photos), customer behavior can be quickly analyzed and changed with objective, fair information.

Reducing runbacks with the use of a Routeware system can save haulers the unfortunate expense of layering in the extra work on top of an already-busy route schedule. With very little effort, haulers can easily uncover and resolve issues behind problematic routes. Additionally, if runbacks are customer-caused, haulers running Routeware will be in a much stronger position to charge for the extra service—or not render it at all. This leads to increased revenue and decreased costs; the kind of bottom-line results that a Routeware system consistently delivers.