PressureWashingBossPro Blog — Pressure Washing Software

Routes and the Dispatch Board: Planning a Rig's Day in Pressure Washing Software

A pressure washing rig is slow to move. A trailer with a full tank does not zip across town between jobs, and every extra mile is fuel, time and daylight. Good routing does not need to be fancy. It needs to keep each rig working in one part of town at a time, in an order that makes sense.

Where the Day Comes From

A rig's day is built from two sources: recurring visits that came due on the Waiting List, explained in The Waiting List: How Pressure Washing Software Keeps Recurring Visits From Slipping, and one-time jobs that came from approved estimates. Both end up on the same dispatch board.

The dispatch board, also called the Scheduled List, shows jobs by day. You assign each job to a rig and a date, and that is where the day takes shape.

Filter by Rig

Once you have more than one rig, filtering by rig is the first thing you will do every morning. Each rig gets its own list for the day. A common setup:

• Rig 1, residential. House washes, roof soft washes, driveways and decks during the day.
• Rig 2, commercial. Drive-thrus, storefronts and dumpster pads early in the morning or after close, then HOA common areas or fleet work in between.

Employees are assigned to rigs, so each operator sees the right list on their phone.

Auto-Routing From the Shop

With a rig's jobs for the day selected, auto-routing puts them in order with one click. There are two options:

• Closest First. Starts near the shop and works outward. Good when the first stops have tight timing, like a drive-thru before opening near the shop.
• Furthest First. Drives out to the far end first and works back toward the shop. Good for ending the day close to home and dumping or refilling at the shop.

Auto-routing gives you a sensible starting order. You can then adjust it. For most residential days, the starting order is close to right and needs only a nudge or two. For a mixed day with commercial stops that have time windows, expect to move a few jobs by hand after the auto-route runs.

Setting Route Order by Hand

Washing has timing rules software cannot always guess. A storefront that must be done before 7am goes first regardless of distance. A house where the customer asked for an afternoon visit goes last. A roof soft wash might go first in the morning so it can dwell while the crew does the driveway next door.

You can set route order by hand on the board, and the crew's phone shows the same order. When you move a job, the phone follows. Nobody works off an old list.

Saved Views and Route Sheets

Saved views let you come back to the same filtered layout every day, like “Rig 2 commercial, this week,” without setting filters again.

Route sheets can be printed for anyone who still likes paper on the dash, or as a backup when a phone dies in the heat. Most crews end up running from the phone, but having a printed sheet costs nothing.

Practical Routing Habits for Washing Companies

A few habits that help a washing rig get more done in a day:

• Group by area, then by time. Fill a day in one part of town first, then put the time-sensitive stops at the right end of it.
• Use the Waiting List map. If tomorrow has three house washes on the north side, look for due commercial stops near them and add them.
• Do not overload the day. A 3-story stucco house wash with a roof takes much longer than a 1-story vinyl house. The job details on each card tell you which is which.
• Leave room for weather. If a day gets rained out, the skipped jobs come back to the office with the operator's note so they can be moved.

The Office Sees the Rig Move

Crew GPS shows on the office map, so whoever is in the office can see where each rig is. When a customer calls asking about timing, you know. When an urgent job comes in, you know which rig is closest. The customer can see it too: the customer app shows their place in the route on a live map.

The crew's side of the route, from login to Complete, is covered in The Crew App: Pressure Washing Software on the Operator's Phone. To see how routing fits with job details, recurring visits and billing, visit the PressureWashingBossPro pressure washing software page.