The skip nobody asked about
Your yard foreman is doing a stock count because the office keeps running out of 8 yard skips. The count comes up several short. After an afternoon of cross-checking delivery notes, the office finds them: one at a house where the owner has been filling it slowly with garden waste for two months, one at a building site that finished weeks ago and has used it as storage since, and one at an address that nobody can match to a current booking at all.
None of those customers has been charged for the extra time. None of those skips has been available to hire to anyone else.
Why skips go missing in plain sight
The hire period is set when the skip is booked, typically a standard number of days, and then nothing happens when it ends. Collection is triggered by the customer ringing to say the skip is full. If they do not ring, the skip stays.
- Hire end dates are recorded on the booking but nobody gets a reminder when they pass.
- Extension charges exist in your terms but are applied only when someone notices.
- Delivery notes are filed on paper, so a count of skips on hire requires going through them.
- Skips that are exchanged rather than collected break the link between skip and booking.
- Trade customers with several skips on a site make it harder to see which is which.
The result is a fleet you pay for that is partly doing nothing, spread across addresses you have lost track of.
What overstaying skips cost
The first cost is utilisation. A skip at a customer's house for weeks beyond the hire period is a skip you cannot hire to anyone else, which leads to turning work away or buying more skips than you need. The second is revenue: extension charges you are entitled to under your terms, never raised.
There is also a risk cost. A skip left for months on a road may have a lapsed permit, may be filled with things you did not agree to take, and may become the subject of a complaint from a neighbour. Finding out months later makes every one of those harder.
How we track every skip on hire
What we build ties each skip to its booking and its hire period, and acts when the period ends.
- Every delivery records the skip, the address, the hire start and the agreed end date. If your skips carry numbers, the driver records the number in the app; if not, the booking stands in for it.
- A few days before the end date, the customer receives a text or email asking whether to collect or extend, with a link to answer.
- Customers who ask for collection go straight onto the collection list. Customers who extend are charged under your terms, with the charge passed to your accounts package.
- Skips past their end date with no answer appear on an overdue list for the office, sorted by how long they have been out.
- Exchanges keep the booking's hire history, so a long job with several exchanges is still one hire with one record.
- A live map and list show every skip currently out, which replaces the paper count.
| Days past end date | Action |
|---|---|
| Before end date | Reminder to customer: collect or extend |
| End date passed, no reply | Second reminder, listed as overdue |
| Well past end date | Call from the office, extension charge applied under your terms |
| Customer unreachable | Collection scheduled, permit checked |
The hire periods, reminder wording and extension charges are yours. We build the system around them.
What the yard and office see now
Instead of an annual stock count that goes wrong, the office has a list every morning of skips due back this week, skips overdue and skips extended. The garden waste customer got a reminder on day six, extended by a week, and was charged for it. The building site's skip was collected once the office rang the contractor.
The yard foreman can check the map to see how many 8 yarders are out and where, before the office promises one it does not have.
Is your fleet leaking into driveways?
- Stock counts regularly come up short.
- Collections happen only when customers ring.
- Extension charges are in your terms but rarely invoiced.
- You cannot list every skip currently on hire without going through paperwork.
- Some skips have been out so long nobody remembers the booking.