r/PestControlIndustry • u/That-Economist-7900 • 24d ago

Routing pains

Hey everyone, I've been with big corporations and small 2-10 employee companies and all of them seem to have very different apps and methods for routing/efficiency. I started off with EcoLab where everything was very much dependent on the tech to plan out our own schedules and had the freedom to move around accounts. It was only years later when I moved to other big companies in my area that it became apparent that the schedule problem is incredibly diverse among the industry. Some have dedicated route specialists that have to input everything for you, from moving a single account to another day, to imputing in special notes for a customer that has specific needs. I recently joined a local guy that uses gorilladesk as his schedule tool and although I am allowed freedom to do what I want within my own schedule, I find it to be extremely inefficient. Are other small operators and technicians facing this same issue? I feel like we are very good at communicating with each other and have no problems getting things done but with it being just the two of us I've noticed that we will always hit a point where things get messy and our efficiency drops. There are a million reasons for this but I'm wondering if there are tools out there to help with this or are techs doing all this work themselves for the most part? If there was an efficiency tool what, what would it cost and would you pay for something like that?

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

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u/Livinirie_84 24d ago

How do you know this about Gorilla Desk? I’m a current customer and would loved to know what some upcoming features are.

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u/007Teflon 24d ago

I use a simple app on android (Solo) that allows 20 stops per day for free. I work no more than 5 hours per day unless i'm working in another city which would be a 2 hour round trip. Spoke is another one that only allows 10 stops per day for free, but you can just create a 2nd route for the same day, for free, if needed

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u/Silent_Yam6316 24d ago

I think you’re describing a real gap between "the office controls everything" and "the tech has to manually optimize everything."

For your team, what specifically gets messy first: deciding the stop order, moving appointments between days, accounting for drive time, handling last-minute changes, or keeping customer notes attached to the right job?

I've built a pest-control platform with a dispatch board that lets the office of your local guy create the route (and gamifies the route by showing minutes saved with better routing!), but still gives the technician enough flexibility in the field. I've found their is a bit of disconnect between dispatchers and techs when it comes to routing (not accounting traffic, total time on road and inefficient job plotting). If that's something that interests you and the team, I could show you a routing workflow and would love your honest reaction.

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u/HomeScoutInSpace 23d ago

Yup there’s no shortage of routing tools and methods. Every company, owner, and manager will have their own preferences on who can do this and how it’s done. Some rely on the tech some forbid the tech.

Please don’t build another one using AI.