Scrap Metal Is Now a Business Line: Orders With No Charge, in Beta for Everyone

In September 2026 a support ticket arrived from the owner of a scrap metal removal company. He does more pickups than drop offs, and he does not charge for his service. His question was short: is there a way to turn the money function off so it stops interfering with billing?

There was not. Every order in Dumpster Controls had a price, an invoice and a payment status, because every order came from a dumpster rental or a junk job, and those end with someone paying. His orders ended with a truck full of metal. Inside our software they looked like a growing pile of unpaid invoices, and the software behaved accordingly.

The same problem has a second form, in a roll-off company that also buys scrap. When a container comes back full of steel instead of drywall, the trip to the recycling center had to be logged as a landfill trip, because that was the only kind of disposal leg the app knew. The yard pays the company, and the order records a tipping fee.

What shipped

Scrap Metal is now a business line in Dumpster Controls, in beta, for every company, free. It sits next to Dumpster Rental and Junk Removal in the same account, and it changes three things about an order: how it is created, what happens to the money, and how it is marked on every screen a dispatcher or driver looks at.

Creating one starts in Create New Order, with a new Scrap Metal card carrying a Beta badge. The first question is how the job works. Pickup only is one visit: the truck picks up the scrap and no container stays on site. The form collapses to what a single visit needs, one pickup date, and the container size becomes optional. Drop off is a container that stays on site until it is full, with size, delivery date, pickup date and driver, exactly like a regular dumpster order.

Below that is a box that is checked before you touch it: No charge for this order. Leave it checked and no invoice is created, no payment link is generated, nothing is sent to the customer, and the order can never be late on payment or show up in receivables. The summary says this in plain words, and a short confirmation replaces the invoice preview, because there is no invoice to preview. Uncheck the box for the one customer you do bill, and that order gets the normal invoice flow.

Downstream, the order is marked wherever it matters. It has its own card on the Operations page, with a tab listing drop offs, pickups and scrap yard runs, and its own card on the Dashboard. On the dispatch board the task carries a teal Scrap metal badge, and the leg that would say Landfill on a dumpster order says Scrap yard. The web driver app and Truck Tablet Mode show the same badge, plus a Pickup only chip when there is no container, so the driver knows before leaving the yard. On the live map, scrap stops draw as diamond pins, next to circles for dumpsters and squares for junk, and the dispatch map adds a legend.

How to turn it on

A new account picks its business lines in the welcome dialog, on the step that asks what the company does; Scrap Metal is there, unchecked, with its Beta badge. An existing account turns it on in Settings, under Company, in the Business lines section. The moment it is on, the Scrap Metal card appears in Create New Order and in Operations. Turning a line on adds screens; turning one off only hides empty cards and creation buttons, and never hides an order you already have.

Nothing else in the account changes. A dumpster company that adds scrap keeps its regular orders, drivers, trucks and board exactly as they were. The scrap orders simply carry their own card, badge and pin. The step by step, with screenshots, is in the Scrap Metal section of the help center.

What it does not do yet

This is a beta, and the honest boundary is the scale house. The app runs the operation: the order, the pickup-only or container choice, dispatch, the driver, the map and the customer record, all at no charge to the customer and no cost to the company. It does not show what the recycling center paid for the load, so the scrap sale does not appear on the order or in Finances, and there is no tonnage report by customer or by metal. Container swap is not available on a scrap order, and the app says so in the order drawer instead of failing quietly. The native driver app in the App Store and Play Store is a frozen build and does not show the scrap badge; the web driver app and the truck tablet do. Showing the sale on the order is planned and is not live.

What it costs

Nothing. The software is free with unlimited orders, drivers and trucks, and no credit card, contract or setup fee. The only cost anywhere in the platform is card processing, and only when a customer pays by card through it. A scrap order with no charge never reaches a card, so a scrap company that never bills a customer runs entirely at zero. The full picture for scrap operators is on the software for scrap metal companies page.