Interested in Supplies?
Get Supplies articles, news and videos right in your inbox! Sign up now.
Supplies + Get AlertsConverting from old-school, pen-and-paper recordkeeping to a modern paperless system was the biggest challenge Scott and Lisa Weld faced when they bought a septic company in 2023, Royal Flush Environmental Services, to supplement their portable sanitation business, Buck’s Sanitary Service in Eugene, Oregon.
Buck’s had been paperless for years. They originally worked with Sharon Dingaro-Marchak at PrimeFyre to tailor a system for their business. It includes accounting, customer management, dispatch and routing capabilities. The company also uses advanced GPS tracking systems from StreetEagle (Insight Mobile Data, a GPS Insight company).
Everything is dispatched electronically. Drivers use tablets to take pictures and upload notes. Each truck has GPS and they run live GPS in the offices. “And it’s nice for the customer because our drivers can stand right on top of a septic tank lid, drop a pin and it’s recorded in the customer database,” Lisa says.
But this was unfamiliar territory to the employees who stayed on with Royal Flush when the Welds bought the company. And the Welds wasted no time making the change.
“They had been writing Visa numbers on handwritten receipts,” Scott says. “Those could be left in the cab of a truck or shuffled into an office. There was no encryption. It doesn’t meet any type of protocol for handling Visa numbers. That was huge. And that was just one
element of it.”
Gaining the trust of the employees for this task was the first hurdle for the Welds. It was hard on them, Lisa says. “They didn’t know who we were. And it was just sprung on them. They were pretty shocked and nervous.”
To smooth things over, the Welds and their son Sten and daughter Milah worked alongside them every day until they were comfortable. “Those are tough transitions to make — to look at a tablet, read a work order, and then give feedback in the work order so it’s stored permanently for customer service to review in the case of a question,” Scott says.
Read more about Buck’s Sanitary Service/Royal Flush Environmental Services in this month’s issue of Portable Restroom Operator magazine.
