SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Commercial Arrays

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

When a solar cleaning company adds a second truck, the first question is how to split the work. By area? By day? By customer type? Once commercial accounts make up a real share of the business, many companies land on the same answer: one truck runs homes, one truck runs commercial arrays.

Why Split by Customer Type

The renewal habits in Keeping Commercial Solar Cleaning Accounts Renewing Year After Year depend on commercial work running the same way every time. A dedicated commercial truck is one of the simplest ways to make that happen.

Residential and commercial days look different:

• Residential: many stops, smaller roofs, ladders on houses, gate codes and dogs, customers at home who want an arrived text, card on file charged when each job is complete.
• Commercial: fewer stops, much bigger arrays, check-ins and sign-in sheets, hatches and keys, early mornings and weekends, statements at month end.

Mixing them on one truck means the crew switches between two kinds of work all day. A carport at 6am, three houses, a warehouse at noon, two more houses. It works, but the commercial jobs tend to squeeze the residential ones, and the residential customers are the ones who notice when the crew is two hours late.

The Crews Get Good at Their Work

A crew that runs commercial arrays every day learns the sites. They know which front desk wants ID, which hatch sticks, and which manager wants a text before they arrive. They get comfortable on big flat roofs and fast at setting up long hose runs. A residential crew gets fast at the residential day: ladder up, clean, photos, Complete, next house.

Over time, you can match people to the work too. Someone who is great with homeowners at the door may be happier on the residential truck. Someone who prefers long, quiet hours on a big roof may be happier on commercial.

Setting It Up in the Software

In SolarCleaningBossPro, each employee has a personal PIN and a truck assignment. The dispatch board shows jobs by day and can be filtered by truck. The setup is simple:

• Assign the residential crew to Truck 1 and the commercial crew to Truck 2.
• Tag commercial clients Commercial so their due sites are easy to spot on the Waiting List and in lists.
• When sites come due, drop residential jobs on Truck 1 and commercial jobs on Truck 2.
• Set route order for each truck: auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop for the residential truck, and usually by hand for the commercial truck around business hours.

Each crew sees only their truck's jobs on their phones, in route order, with the panel details and access notes on every card.

Routing the Commercial Truck

The commercial truck's day is usually ordered by time windows more than distance. Carports early, before lots fill. Offices after hours. Warehouses mid-morning between shipping waves. Schools on weekends. The office sets that order by hand on the dispatch board, and the crew's phones show the same order. See Scheduling Commercial Solar Cleaning Around Business Hours for the details.

On days with no timing rules, such as a run of farm ground mounts, auto-route works fine. Furthest First from the shop sends the truck to the far end and brings it home at the end of the day.

When One Truck Has Spare Time

The split does not have to be strict. Commercial quarters often bunch up, with lots of sites due in the same few weeks, then go quiet. In the quiet weeks, the commercial truck can take overflow residential jobs. In a big commercial week, the residential crew can help on a large roof. The dispatch board makes it easy to move a job from one truck to the other, and the phones follow.

Crew GPS on the office map shows where both trucks are, so when a job opens up, the office knows which truck is closer.

Before You Have Two Trucks

If you are still running one truck, you can still split by day. Many small companies run homes Monday through Thursday and commercial on Fridays and Saturdays, when offices and schools are empty. Tag clients, use the Waiting List, and plan commercial days as their own days. When the second truck arrives, the split is already in place. More on adding commercial work to a residential business in Adding Commercial Arrays to a Residential Solar Cleaning Business.

Keep an Eye on Both Sides

Reports filtered by the Commercial tag show how each side of the business is doing, so you can see whether the commercial truck is earning its keep. Plans are $59, $89 and $199 per month, and employees, trucks and the tech app come with the platform. To see how the commercial truck fits with the rest of commercial work, go back to the commercial solar cleaning software page.