SepticBossPro Blog — Route Planning

Lid Depth, Tank Location, and Realistic Septic Route Timing

Two septic stops with identical tanks can take wildly different amounts of time. One has a riser at grade right next to the driveway. The other has a lid buried two feet down behind a fence, under a flower bed the homeowner planted last spring. If your routes treat those stops the same, your afternoon will always run late. Continuing from Why Tank Size Records Make Septic Routes More Accurate, this looks at the two fields that decide how long a stop really takes.

Lid Depth Is Dig Time

A riser at the surface means the driver pops the lid and gets to work. A lid eighteen or twenty-four inches down means digging, and digging in clay, rocky ground, or frozen soil takes time. SepticBossPro stores lid depth in inches on each property record, so the dispatcher can see which stops on tomorrow's route need a shovel and which do not.

That number also tells you something about upselling. Customers with deep lids are often good candidates for risers, which cuts dig time on every future visit and makes their stop easier to route.

Weather changes dig time too. A lid that takes a few minutes to expose in dry summer soil can take much longer in wet clay or when the ground has started to freeze. Knowing the depth lets the dispatcher make a reasonable adjustment for conditions on the day.

Tank Location Is Search Time

The other hidden time cost is finding the tank. A driver who has never been to a property can spend a long time probing the yard if nobody wrote down where the tank is. Tank location notes on the property, such as "ten feet off the back left corner of the house, under the bird bath," save that time.

Photos are even better. A driver can take a picture of the lid location in the crew mobile app, and the next driver sees exactly where to go.

New customers are where search time is worst. For the first visit, ask the homeowner what they know, check any permit drawings, and plan a little extra time. After that visit, the notes and photos should make every future stop at that property faster.

Building Stop Times Into the Route

Once you know lid depth and location, you can estimate stop times more realistically. A simple approach: give shallow, well-documented stops a standard time, add time for deep lids, and add more for stops where the location is unknown or the access is difficult. When you order stops on the route map with drive times in view, those stop times are what turn a list of addresses into a schedule that actually ends when you expect.

It also helps balance trucks. A truck with several deep-lid stops is carrying more work than its stop count suggests.

Avoiding Back-to-Back Hard Stops

If a route has three deep-lid stops in a row, the driver is digging for a big part of the morning and customers further down the route will see the truck much later than expected. Where possible, mix easy stops between hard ones so the route keeps a steady pace. On-the-way texts help here too, because customers hear from you when the truck is actually heading their way, not at a time someone guessed.

Drivers have a feel for this already. Ask them which stops are the hard ones on their regular routes and make sure those details are written into the property records, so the dispatcher can plan around them too.

Keeping the Notes Current

Lid depth and location change. A customer adds a riser, builds a deck, or puts in a patio near the tank. Ask drivers to update notes and take a fresh photo whenever something has changed. The crew app makes that part of marking the job complete rather than a separate chore.

A short note about access, like a gate code or a dog in the back, belongs on the property for the same reason. Anything that slows a driver down at the property is worth writing down.

Realistic Routes Start With Realistic Stops

A route is only as accurate as the time estimates behind it. Record lid depth and tank location on every property, use photos to show the next driver where to go, estimate stop times from those details, and avoid stacking hard stops together. The SepticBossPro route planning features bring those property details onto the route so the dispatcher can plan a day that ends on time.

Over time, the routes built on these details become noticeably more reliable. Fewer afternoons run late, fewer customers wait past their window, and drivers stop feeling like the schedule was written by someone who has never dug up a lid.

Customers judge you by whether the truck shows up when you said it would. That promise starts with knowing how long the stop before theirs will take.