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Fitting the Pieces Together: A Guide to Office Operations for the Liquid Waste, Portable Toilet & Septic Pumping Industries |
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Most dumps charge on a per-gallon basis, based upon the rated capacity of the tank. This means that if you go to a dump with a 2500 gallon tank truck with only 2000 gallons you are paying a 20% premium for the gallons dumped. To avoid this disposal penalty, you can try one of the following:
Top off one tank from another truck to have a full load and avoid paying the 20% penalty. But you now have incurred the additional cost of having two trucks out of service for the time it takes to meet and transfer waste from one truck to another. In addition, you have exposed your company to the incremental liability of a possible spillage where the transfer took place.
Use a transfer truck that off-loads smaller trucks and goes to the dump while the smaller trucks are servicing additional customers. An excellent idea, as long as you take into consideration the cost of the tanker, driver, insurance and transfer times.
Build a holding tank placed so trucks can off-load partial loads when they need full tank capacity and top-off partial loads when they are headed to the dump. Remember to include the cost of the tank, real-estate, maintenance on tank and driver time to load and off load.
Schedule a mix of jobs so that you can maximize tank utilization. This requires having a record management system that maintains tank size, pump interval and capacity to send reminders so that you have non-critical jobs you can use to fill out your schedule.
The point we are making is that in order to run an efficient operation, it can take a significant amount of planning, equipment, driver and office time that need to be included when calculating your expenses associated with septage management. You should seriously consider the total cost of disposal when setting your price. If you simply use the dump per gallon rate, you may be significantly under pricing your service.