Customer Profile

Discount Dumpsters is a top-rated regional dumpster delivery and removal service headquartered in Clayton, NC. The family-owned business was purchased by two brothers in 2010 with the aim of specializing in affordable waste hauling for construction and industrial sites. Since then, Discount Dumpsters has grown into one of the leading local providers in its field and enjoys an unmatched reputation for honesty, integrity and reliability.

Background

Hauling waste has more to do with logistics than heavy lifting. For every single dumpster that’s dropped off and later picked up, Discount Dumpsters has to have a tight fix on the customer’s exact location, the scheduled pickup day and time, the appropriate vehicle as well as the driver responsible for the job. All these details are coordinated and logged by the office staff, who also need to be in constant two-way communication with the drivers in order to relay updates and changes.

When Discount Dumpsters was just starting out, the company was able to manage its customers, drivers and assets by using basic spreadsheets. But over the years that manual method became more tedious and unsustainable. The number of customers increased, as did the scope of their requests. More drivers and trucks were added; routes became more complex. Both the owners and the staff recognized that they would need a customized software platform to continue providing their growing customer base with the same high quality of service.

In an ideal world, the company hoped to gain more from this solution than improved record-keeping. To fully optimize operations across the board, it would have to include end-to-end integration, intelligent automation and advanced IoT features such as vehicle tracking and GPS navigation.

Just as importantly, any solution had to fall within budgetary constraints. That meant it would have to be cost-effective to develop, deploy and maintain. Plus it would have to scale quickly and easily to accommodate future growth.

Why Bridgera?

For many companies in the waste hauling industry, and especially those with a regional focus, IoT solutions might seem like the kind of expensive, next-gen technology that only national chains have sufficient reason or resources to implement.

But to Discount Dumpsters, Bridgera’s IoT platform represented something different. Bridgera’s rapid prototyping, turnkey deployment, minimal development time and mobile app expertise leveled the playing field by putting premium, cutting-edge capabilities within the company’s technological and financial reach. Along with making IoT application enablement more accessible and affordable, Bridgera had a track record of delivering the customization necessary to meet current and future needs.

Bridgera also had a professional approachability that competitors lacked. Discount Dumpsters felt that Bridgera would take the time to fully understand their use case and tailor the solution accordingly. Nor would Bridgera look at their list of criteria—things like optimal route mapping and turn-by-turn navigation—and say it was too ambitious. Bridgera’s engineers would instead go out of their way to solve for all the challenges, delivering enterprise-grade results on an SMB budget.

Results

Before implementing Bridgera’s IoT solution, Discount Dumpsters was reliant on time-consuming manual processes. When a customer called, phone operators would type their job requests into a spreadsheet. A dispatcher would then consult the spreadsheet and try to assign efficient routes to drivers using traditional mapping. Drivers would be tracked throughout the day by phone.

Bridgera designed a complete front- and backend solution that eliminated this unnecessary data entry and tapped into powerful IoT-enabled capabilities for effortless oversight.

For example, to order a new dumpster, customers can now use a simple online form—or even a dedicated mobile app that also allows them to track the status of the job from their smartphones. These orders are automatically entered into a central database that admins can access and manage through a user-friendly web portal. From there the dispatchers can assign drivers to vehicles and routes, and the drivers themselves can view those assignments through their own mobile app.

After arriving onsite, drivers can consult the app again to enter the size and contents of the pickup as well as payment information. This information is relayed to the central platform before providing directions for the final leg of the trip to the driver tracking application. GPS-based turn-by-turn navigation in the app helps drivers easily find their way to each destination.

Because the pickup locations are captured as a digital datapoint, Bridgera’s platform can leverage mapping tools to assist admins in planning the most efficient routes—near dump sites or newly added pickups, for instance. Should those routes change during the day, any revisions can be relayed to drivers dynamically via the app. This has cut down on overall travel time and mileage, which now exist as trackable metrics. Drivers can be monitored for productivity, and vehicles can be flagged for routine maintenance after crossing certain thresholds.

All this has enabled Discount Dumpsters to optimize every aspect of its operations. From digital transactions that integrate with their tax software to highly automated driver scheduling and route planning, everything from accounting to logistics has benefitted from Bridgera’s IoT platform.

Bridgera Benefits

Digitization of Data

Optimized assignments of drivers and vehicles based on availability

Route Planning

Centralized route planning with updates relayed dynamically to active drivers

Route Tracking

Real-time GPS-based location tracking

Monitor Productivity

Access to aggregated, actionable metrics like mileage and drive time

Long-Term Potential

Potential to leverage longitudinal data like order history or driver performance

Centralized Platform

Efficient management of jobs, assets and drivers via an intuitive web portal