How many stops should a garbage route have?

There is no single number. It depends on the time each stop takes, the distance between stops, how far the yard and the dump are, and how much the truck holds. Start from the total: customers times pickups per week, divided by working days, gives the stops each day must carry. Split that across your trucks, then adjust until each route is about the same length of working day.

Should I plan routes by weekday or by date?

By weekday. Most collection repeats every week, so the plan is which route serves every stop each weekday. Dates matter for exceptions such as holidays, extra pickups and skipped weeks, and those are handled day by day on top of the weekday plan.

Can one customer be on two routes on the same day?

One service should be on one route per day. A customer with two services, such as trash and recycling collected by different trucks, can be on two routes that day, one per stream. What to avoid is the same service on two routes, where two trucks drive there or each driver assumes the other has it.

How often should I rebalance routes?

Whenever the workload has drifted. The EPA lists the usual signs: route design or balance not examined recently, crews working uneven days, a change in service, truck, crew or frequency, and a service area that is growing or shrinking. Seasonal swings, such as yard waste in spring and fall, are another reason to look again.

Guides · Running a hauling business

Route planning for a small waste hauler: building routes by weekday

Updated November 9, 2026

A small hauler’s routes are rarely designed. They grow. A customer signs up, a driver says “I can fit that in,” and the stop lands on whichever truck goes nearby. After a year, one truck finishes at noon and another comes back after dark.

Route planning is the fix. It means deciding which truck serves which stop on which day, on purpose. The order of the stops within a route is a second job, covered in Putting stops in order. This guide is about the first job.

Plan by weekday

Most collection repeats every week. A customer on Tuesday is on Tuesday next week too. So the plan to build is a weekday plan: for each weekday, every stop that day holds, and the route that serves it.

A weekday holds more than any one date. A twice-a-week customer shows up on two weekdays. An every-other-week customer is in the Thursday plan even on the Thursdays they are skipped. Plan for the full weekday, and the busiest week fits.

Start with the total. The U.S. EPA’s guide to collection efficiency suggests a simple first cut: total customers, times collections per week, divided by collection days. If you have 600 customers collected once a week over five days, each day needs to carry about 120 stops. With two trucks, that is about 60 stops each before you adjust for anything else.

The EPA describes two levels of planning. The first divides the whole service area into what is collected each day and by each truck. The second is the path each truck drives. Get the first right before you worry about the second.

Balance the routes

A balanced route is not one with the same number of stops as the others. It is one with about the same working day. The EPA’s routing guidelines put it plainly: total collection and handling time should be about the same for each route.

Several things decide how long a route takes.

Time at each stop. A cart tipped by an automated arm takes less time than a row of bags thrown by hand. A commercial container behind a locked gate takes longer still.
Distance between stops. Sixty stops on two dense streets is a short day. Sixty stops on rural roads is a long one.
The yard and the dump. The drive out to the first stop, to the dump and back to the yard is part of the day. The EPA counts it as non-productive time, and it adds up.
Truck capacity. Size the route so the day’s expected load fits the truck. A route that fills the truck before the last stop needs another trip to the dump, and that trip comes out of the day.
Streams. Trash, recycling, yard waste and bulky items often ride on different trucks. A route can only take the stops its truck collects.

Compare routes by the time they take, not by stop count. Move work from the long ones to the short ones until the days are close.

Keep each stop on one route each day

Each service at a stop should belong to one route on a given weekday. When the same service is on two routes, one of two things happens. Both trucks drive there, or each driver assumes the other one has it and nobody does.

A customer with two services is different. Trash on one truck and recycling on another is two services and two routes, one per stream. That is fine, as long as each stream has exactly one route that day.

The same rule keeps routes clean on the map. The EPA’s first routing guideline is that routes should not be fragmented or overlapping. Each route should be compact, made of streets clustered in the same area. Two trucks crossing each other’s path all day is a sign the plan has drifted.

Use zones to keep routes compact

A zone is an area on the map that one route, or one group of routes, works. Drawing zones makes the plan easier to build and easier to talk about. “Move the river side to Wednesday” is clearer than a list of forty addresses.

Good zone edges follow the ground. The EPA suggests using natural boundaries: major roads, railways and features of the land. A river with few bridges is the obvious one. A truck rarely wants to cross an edge like that more than once.

Zones also help you plan around the streets themselves. The UK Health and Safety Executive advises looking at narrow streets, pedestrian areas and busy places such as schools when planning a route, before a truck is sent there. Collection near a school can be timed to miss the start and end of the school day. Knowing where those places are in each zone makes that easier.

Rebalance by moving areas, not single stops

Routes drift. New customers sign up, others leave, and a new subdivision appears at the edge of town. Sooner or later one route runs long.

When that happens, move an area, not a scattering of stops. Take a block or a neighbourhood at the edge of the long route and give it to the neighbouring route that has room. The routes stay compact, and the drivers can see the change on a map.

Then put each changed route back in order. Moving stops between routes changes where both trucks drive, so both orders need another look.

The EPA’s checklist gives the usual signs that it is time to rebalance:

Route design or balance has not been examined recently.
Crews are working uneven days.
Service levels, trucks, crew sizes or collection frequency are changing.
The service area is growing, or shrinking.

Seasons matter too. The EPA notes that good route management lets you adjust workloads when the waste stream changes with the season. Yard waste is the familiar case: heavy in spring and fall, light in winter.

Before a new plan goes live, have a driver run it. The EPA recommends that experienced drivers and collectors test a route under real conditions. They will find the low bridge or the street the truck can’t fit down.

A plan only works if the people who run it have it.

Drivers need their route: the stops in order, with a map.
The office needs the whole plan, so it can tell a customer which day they are on and which truck serves them.
Everyone needs the same version. When stops move, send the new plan to everyone at once, and tell the customers whose day has changed.

One document per weekday, sent to everyone, beats a whiteboard in the yard and a different list in each truck.

Doing it in RouteNow: PlanNow

PlanNow is RouteNow’s screen for this job.

Pick a weekday, and every stop that day holds goes on the map as a pin, coloured by its route. A stop no route has yet shows grey. The route list beside the map is the legend. It counts each route’s stops and shows its miles, and its expected yards against the truck’s capacity where that is set. Your zone areas are drawn where you have them.

To move an area, use Box or Shape to sweep the stops you want, then send them to a route. They take that route’s colour, and the counts move with them. Undo if it isn’t right. Nothing is saved until Apply.

Apply saves the moves. Then Sequence what’s needed puts each route they touched back in drive-time order with SequenceNow, so you can make all your moves first and re-order once. A day whose order you set by hand is left alone.

When the day is settled, share it as one document: the map, the breakdown by route, and a route sheet for each. Download it, or send it by text or email.

PlanNow is a weekday plan: which route every stop is on. Nothing is dispatched until you say so.

Questions haulers ask

How many stops should a garbage route have?: There is no single number. It depends on the time each stop takes, the distance between stops, how far the yard and the dump are, and how much the truck holds. Start from the total: customers times pickups per week, divided by working days, gives the stops each day must carry. Split that across your trucks, then adjust until each route is about the same length of working day.
Should I plan routes by weekday or by date?: By weekday. Most collection repeats every week, so the plan is which route serves every stop each weekday. Dates matter for exceptions such as holidays, extra pickups and skipped weeks, and those are handled day by day on top of the weekday plan.
Can one customer be on two routes on the same day?: One service should be on one route per day. A customer with two services, such as trash and recycling collected by different trucks, can be on two routes that day, one per stream. What to avoid is the same service on two routes, where two trucks drive there or each driver assumes the other has it.
How often should I rebalance routes?: Whenever the workload has drifted. The EPA lists the usual signs: route design or balance not examined recently, crews working uneven days, a change in service, truck, crew or frequency, and a service area that is growing or shrinking. Seasonal swings, such as yard waste in spring and fall, are another reason to look again.

See it in RouteNow

Sources

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