Buddy's Septic

Buddy's Route

Real road miles, the 2,400‑gallon tank, and the run to Barricade Lane — worked out before the truck moves.

Setting it up

1. Save it to the home screen Open the link in Safari or Chrome, tap Share then Add to Home Screen. It gets an icon and opens full screen like a real app. Do this on both phones.
2. Check the yard and the dump site Go to Setup. The yard should be 9425 Pamunkey Crest Dr and the dump site 9124 Barricade Ln. Both should say Pinned. If either doesn't, tap Find on map.
3. Set the truck Tank capacity 2,400 gallons, plus miles per gallon and what diesel is costing. These only affect the dollar estimates — get them roughly right and move on.
4. Set the office Under The office, put in the name and mobile number that finished jobs should go to. This is what turns the truck's Pumped it into a text you can invoice from.
5. Bring the customers over from ServiceTitan See the next section.
6. Pin every address Setup → Pin every address. Anything it can't find gets sorted out in a minute — see When it can't find an address.
7. Pre-load the road distances Setup → Pre-load road distances, while you still have wifi. It measures the real roads between everything once and remembers them forever. After this the whole app plans routes with no signal at all, which matters out where the truck goes.

Getting customers out of ServiceTitan

Nobody should retype three hundred addresses. ServiceTitan will hand them over:

1. In ServiceTitan Go to Search, choose Customers from the dropdown, and clear any filters so you get everybody. Open the dropdown next to the search button and pick Export to CSV (Excel works too).
2. Open the file and copy it Select the whole sheet — header row included — and copy.
3. Paste it in Setup → Import from ServiceTitan, paste, tap Read it.
4. Check the columns It matches ServiceTitan's columns by itself. Glance at the preview to make sure names and addresses look right, fix anything wrong with the dropdowns, then import.

When it can't find an address

Rural addresses defeat every geocoder sooner or later — new roads, private drives, a mailbox number that isn't on the county map. Normal, and about fifteen seconds to fix.

• In Book, tap the No pin filter to see everyone it couldn't place.
• Open one and tap Drop the pin myself.
• Drag the flag onto the driveway and save. Tapping the map moves it too.

A hand-dropped pin is better than a found one. They never need doing twice.

Planning the week

With a 2,400‑gallon tank and most tanks around 1,000 gallons, that's about two stops a load. Which day someone lands on matters more than most people think.

1. Open Week and tap Build the week It takes everyone who's due, splits them so each day fits the tank, and orders each day by real road miles.
2. Read the totals Each day shows its miles, driving time and finish time. The top shows the week.
3. Send a day to the truck Tap Run this day and it loads into Run.

If a day says HOME FULL, the truck is parking with gallons still aboard and the app carries that over — the next day starts part‑full and dumps sooner. That's on purpose.

Before you get out of the truck

Tap Site on any stop. Everything you worked out last time is on one screen, with the things that can hurt you at the top:

• Dog — what it is and where it's kept.
• Soft when wet — don't take a loaded truck in. Twenty tons in a wet yard is a tow bill and a lawn you'll be paying for.
• Back in — no room to turn around, so don't drive in nose first.

Below that: where the lid is, gate code, where to park, how much hose to drag, lid depth, how many lids, concrete or plastic, whether there's a riser, and whether there's a filter to clean.

None of it is there until somebody puts it there. Tap Edit and add what you learn while you're standing in it — that's the whole point. You only work a property out once.

Finding the lid

This is the part that eats the day. The app fixes it, but only after the first visit.

1. The first time — mark it With the lid open and you standing over it, tap Site then Save the lid spot. Hold still for a couple of seconds while it takes the fix. This pins the tank, not the house.
2. Every time after — walk to it Tap Walk me to the lid. You get feet, a direction, and a big arrow. Tap Turn on the compass once and the arrow points at the lid as you turn.
3. Close the last few feet yourself Phone GPS gets you inside about fifteen feet on a good day. Your photo and your note do the rest — that's why both are worth writing down.

If the mark turns out to be off, open the lid and tap Re-save the lid spot from here. It overwrites the old one.

Photos

On the site screen, Add a photo. Shoot the open lid with something permanent in the frame — a corner of the house, a post, a tree. That's what makes it findable in three years. Tap any photo to see it big.

Writing up the job

Tap Pumped it when you're done:

Gallons	Starts at their tank size. Change it to what you actually took — this is what fills the truck up in the app and what the dump fee is figured on.
Price	What the job's worth, so the office isn't guessing.
What you found	Tap any that apply — filter cleaned, baffle broken, roots, lid buried and wants a riser, drain field wet, hard dig, extra hose, all sound. Tap again to un-pick.
Anything else	Free text for whatever the buttons don't cover.

Tap Done and three things happen: the gallons go into the truck, the stop comes off the run, and their clock restarts. Then it offers to text the whole job to the office. It only drafts the message — you still hit send.

On my way on a stop drafts a text to the customer with roughly when you'll be there, worked out from the route. Same deal: you hit send.

The load, and the dump

The bar under the numbers shows what's actually in the truck right now, not a guess. Tap it to open the load sheet:

• Whose waste is aboard, address by address, with gallons each
• The running total against 2,400 and how full that is
• What it'll cost to dump at $25 per 500 gallons

Hanover wants a truck‑hauled waste manifest for every load, and the form is at the site. This is the sheet you read off while you fill theirs in, instead of standing there trying to remember whose tanks are behind you. Copy the load sheet puts the whole thing on the clipboard if you'd rather text it to yourself.

Once you've emptied, tap Dumped it — empty the truck. The tank goes back to zero and the load is filed. If a line is wrong, tap the × next to it before you dump.

The rest of the run screen

Optimize order	Re-sorts the stops into the shortest real-road loop and tells you what it saved against the order they were in.
Navigate	Hands the whole day, in order, to Google Maps for turn‑by‑turn. More than ten stops splits into legs that pick up where the last ended.
While you're out there	Customers within six road miles of today's route who are coming due. Picking one up now saves a whole separate trip later.

If something looks wrong

“Roads not measured yet”	A new address hasn't been measured. Tap the button while you have a signal — once only.
Someone has no miles	They aren't pinned. Book → No pin → drop the pin.
“Location is blocked”	The phone won't share where it is, so the lid finder can't work. Allow location for this site in the browser's settings, then reopen it.
Arrow won't turn	Tap Turn on the compass. On an iPhone it asks permission the first time. Without it you still get feet and a direction, just no live arrow.
No Site button on a stop	That stop was added as a one‑off, not from the book. Save them as a customer and it appears.
Tank shows the wrong amount	Tap the bar and fix the load — remove a wrong line with the ×, or dump it.
Somebody due who shouldn't be	Their last‑pumped date is missing or old. Open them in the Book and set it.
New phone	Everything lives on the phone, not the cloud. Use the backup below — but photos don't travel.

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