One truck, one route, and a month spent timing it
Three trucks now, a published route, and an invoice that is arithmetic rather than a figure.
What we learned in the first two years
We started with one truck and about forty households, selling on price, and it was the wrong thing to sell. A truck and two people is the same for everybody and there is always somebody willing to charge a rufiyaa less.
A customer on the main road changed the business by telling us she would pay more for a time she could rely on. She had been keeping the bin indoors and listening for the truck, and some mornings she missed it.
So somebody spent fifteen mornings writing down the actual time the truck reached each corner. Every street but two was consistent inside twenty minutes; the two exceptions sat behind a junction that floods, and reversing part of the route fixed one of them. Then we published the windows and started telling every new household their slot.
The operation barely changed and the subscriptions grew by a third. The other decision from that period was to charge by the day, so that an invoice is days minus misses times a figure, and a credit does not depend on anybody complaining. Two months in four years have gone out at zero.
Who you will speak to
Abdulla Naseer
Drove the first truck himself for two years. Still redraws the route twice a year and still walks the new streets before adding them.
Aishath Nuha
Prints the monthly invoices with the missed mornings already taken off, and keeps the weighbridge tickets nobody expects to need.
Bulky items and building waste
Do you take building rubble from my renovation
Yes, but on a by the load booking with the tipper, never in the household bin. Two hours and two people is one load, and the crew tells you at the gate whether your pile is one load or two before touching any of it.
We do not take asbestos sheet and we will stop if we find it. If your old roofing or boundary sheeting might be asbestos, say so on the form and somebody will come and look at no charge.