Skip to content

Dumpster rental

The booking workflow

How a dumpster rental moves through HaulHQ: the customer books and pays, you deliver, you pick up.

This is part of the Dumpster rental workflow

Doing junk removal? Start with the quote workflow.

A dumpster rental is a booking, not a quote. The customer picks a size and dates, sees the price, and checks out. You are not in the middle of that transaction -- your job starts when it completes.

The path

  1. 1The customer picks a container size and a rental window on your booking page.
  2. 2They check out. If Stripe is connected they pay or leave a deposit; if not, the booking is recorded and you collect later.
  3. 3HaulHQ creates a job and reserves an equipment unit -- a specific container -- for those dates.
  4. 4A delivery trip is scheduled, and a pickup trip for the end of the rental.
  5. 5You deliver. Your driver marks it delivered and takes photos.
  6. 6You collect at the end of the rental and mark it complete.

One job, two site visits

This is the structural difference from junk removal. A rental is a single job with a delivery trip and a pickup trip, days or weeks apart. Your schedule has to hold both.

What has to be set up for this to work

  • A catalog with each container size as equipment, and a quantity -- see Catalog & equipment.
  • A service area with cities, not just zips -- see Service area.
  • Hours and booking capacity, which live on two different screens -- see Scheduling & business hours.
  • A booking page on your website carrying [[haulhq_booking]](/docs/wordpress/haulhq-booking).

Common mistakes

"I will set up my dumpsters in Settings > Quote Form."

That screen is junk removal only and has no effect on rentals. Dumpsters live in the Catalog. This is the single most common wrong turn in the product -- see the two workflows.

"Customers can book but I never see availability limits working."

Bookable units come from the quantity on each equipment item. Quantity zero means nothing is bookable; a quantity higher than your real fleet oversells you.

"The rental ended but the container is still marked out."

The pickup trip has to be completed, not just the delivery. The unit returns to available when pickup is marked done.