SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Routes & Scheduling

One Truck on Homes, One on Arrays: Splitting Residential and Commercial Solar Cleaning Routes

A residential solar cleaning day and a commercial one barely look like the same job. One is eight or ten homes, each with a ladder setup, a gate and a homeowner. The other might be one warehouse roof with hundreds of panels, a site contact and a sign-in sheet. Mixing the two on one truck can work for a while. As soon as there is enough work, splitting them makes both easier.

Why the Order of a Day Matters

Choosing which stop goes where, including moving stops by hand, is covered in Setting Solar Cleaning Route Order by Hand When the Auto-Route Needs a Nudge. Much of the hand-ordering on mixed days exists only because homes and commercial sites have different needs. Give each its own truck and a lot of that juggling disappears.

It also makes each crew better at its own kind of work. A tech who spends every day on homes gets fast at ladder setups and customer conversations. A tech who spends every day on arrays learns the sites, the contacts and the roof hatches.

How the Two Kinds of Work Differ

The residential truck works short stops. Lots of ladder moves, lots of customer contact, gate codes, dogs and spigots on every card. Its route is about tight neighborhoods and keeping drive time low between many small jobs.

The commercial truck works long stops. Flat roofs or big ground mounts, roof hatches or lifts, longer hoses, site rules and contacts. Its route is about being on site at the right time and planning around the site's hours. A commercial day might be one or two stops.

Equipment often differs too: longer hose reels and more water capacity on the array truck, more ladders and a tighter kit on the residential one.

Setting Up Trucks in SolarCleaningBossPro

Employees are assigned to trucks, and the dispatch board filters by truck. Set up Truck 1 for residential and Truck 2 for commercial, assign the techs who usually run each, and you can look at either day on its own.

Tags on clients help keep the two apart when scheduling. Tag customers Residential or Commercial, and use the panel details on each job, such as “Ground mount” or “Flat roof,” to tell the work apart on the Waiting List. When you pick due jobs off the map, the commercial ones go to Truck 2 and the homes go to Truck 1.

Different Rhythms, Different Plans

Residential customers are usually on twice-a-year or yearly plans, so homes come due spread through the year with bunches in the dirty seasons. Commercial arrays are often quarterly, with a minimum of 90 days between visits, which gives the commercial truck a steadier, more predictable calendar.

That steady quarterly rhythm is useful. Once a commercial site is cleaned, you know roughly when it will come due again, and you can plan the array truck's weeks well ahead. Scheduling commercial work around site rules is covered in Scheduling Commercial Solar Array Cleanings Around Business Hours and Site Rules.

Routing Each Truck

The residential truck benefits most from auto-routing. With eight or more stops, Closest First or Furthest First from the shop saves real drive time, and a few hand moves put the steep roofs early. The commercial truck often needs less routing and more timing: one or two stops, set by hand to match the site's hours.

On light commercial days, the array truck can pick up larger residential jobs or ground mounts nearby. Filter the board to Truck 2, look at the Waiting List map for big due jobs near the commercial stop, and add them after it.

Billing Follows the Split

The split also tends to match how customers pay. Homeowners usually pay per cleaning, with a card on file charged when the tech taps Complete. A property owner or business with many buildings can be set to Monthly and get one statement each month covering every site, with each line labeled with its address. Keeping commercial work on its own truck makes it easy to see which sites were done before that statement goes out.

When One Truck Is Still Enough

If you only have one truck, you can still separate the work by day instead of by vehicle. Make Tuesdays and Thursdays residential and keep Wednesdays for commercial arrays, for example. The board shows each day on its own, and the tech's phone shows whatever is on it. When the time comes to add a second truck, the split is already built into your week. For the full routing toolkit, see the SolarCleaningBossPro solar cleaning route software page.