Scrap metal software for pickup and container
companies, at no cost

A scrap metal hauler does most of the things a dumpster company does, with one thing reversed. The truck goes to a customer, loads metal or drops a container, and later takes the load somewhere. But the customer usually does not pay. The load pays: steel, aluminum, copper and brass sold by weight at a recycling center. Our own software, until September 2026, was built on the assumption that an order ends with an invoice. Put a scrap company on that and every order is "unpaid" forever, every reminder is a mistake, and the trip to the recycler has to be logged as a landfill trip. Dumpster Controls now has a Scrap Metal business line that removes that assumption, in beta, free, for every account.

Who this software is for

The line is built for three kinds of companies. The first is the scrap hauler who does pickups: a call comes in, a truck goes out, loose metal comes back, nothing stays at the customer. The second is the company that drops containers for scrap: a 20 or 30 yard box at a machine shop, a body shop or a construction site, sitting there for weeks until it is full. The third is the roll-off company that also buys scrap and, before this line existed, would have had to run those jobs as ordinary dumpster orders with the price typed as zero and the recycler entered as a landfill.

What the three share is the same operation. A customer record, an address, a date, a driver, a truck, a stop on a map, and a run to the yard. What they do not share with a dumpster company is billing. That is exactly the split the Scrap Metal line makes: the operation is the same platform, the money is switched off by default.

How a scrap metal order works

Scrap Metal is a business line, the same idea as Dumpster Rental and Junk Removal. A new account picks its lines in the welcome dialog. An existing account turns Scrap Metal on in Settings, under Company, in the Business lines section, where it carries a Beta badge. Turning it on adds a Scrap Metal option to Create New Order and a Scrap Metal card to Operations and the Dashboard. It does not touch any order you already have.

When you choose Scrap Metal in Create New Order, the form asks one question first: how does this job work? Pickup only means one visit; the truck picks up the scrap and no container stays on site. Drop off means a container stays on site until it is full. Pickup only collapses the form to what a single visit needs, so the pickup date is the only date and the container size becomes optional. Drop off keeps the full container form: size, delivery date, pickup date, driver.

Below that sits a box that is checked by default: No charge for this order. The hint under it says what it does in one line: scrap jobs usually are not billed; uncheck to invoice the customer. Leave it checked and the order summary reads "This order has no charge. No invoice is created and nothing is sent to the customer." There is no invoice preview, because there is no invoice. A short confirmation asks if you want to create the pickup for that customer on that date, and the order exists.

1. 1

   01.Turn the line on

   Welcome dialog for a new account; Settings, Company, Business lines for an existing one. It carries a Beta badge.
2. 2

   02.Create New Order, Scrap Metal

   Pick pickup only or drop off. The no-charge box is already checked. Uncheck it only for the customers you do bill.
3. 3

   03.Dispatch it

   The stop lands on the dispatch board with a Scrap metal badge. The run to the recycler is labeled Scrap yard, not Landfill.
4. 4

   04.The driver runs it

   The web driver app and Truck Tablet Mode show the same badge, and a Pickup only chip when there is no container. Photos and completion work as on any stop.
5. 5

   05.Watch it on the map

   Scrap stops draw as diamond pins on the dispatch and Dashboard maps, and the dispatch map adds a legend, so a dispatcher never mistakes one for a dumpster delivery.

What "no charge" means, exactly

This is the part that had to be built rather than toggled. Before this line existed, an order with a zero price in Dumpster Controls was still an order that "has not been paid". It showed as unpaid in the list, it tripped reminders, it went late, it counted against receivables. A scrap company living inside that model spends its day dismissing warnings about money nobody owes.

A scrap order with no charge in Dumpster Controls has no financial phase at all. The order list shows a plain "No charge" chip where the amount would be. The expanded order shows "No payment to collect" instead of a payment breakdown, because seven zeroed lines of dumpster pricing on an order that never had a dumpster price would be noise. The order cannot be marked as paid, because there is nothing to mark. It cannot be resent as an invoice, because there is no invoice. It is excluded from payment reminders and from late-on-payment counts. It cannot be listed on the Dumpster Net Hub, which exists to move money between companies. And cancelling it is just cancelling it, with no refund question, because nothing was ever charged.

Charging remains possible. Some scrap customers do get billed, for a hard-to-reach load, a long haul, or a job with a lot of non-metal debris mixed in. Uncheck the box on that one order and it gets an invoice, a payment link and the rest of the normal flow, and only that order. Extra charges on top of a no-charge order also work, for the case where a container came back with concrete in it.

Dispatch, driver app and map

Everything downstream of the order is the same platform the roll-off companies use, with scrap marked wherever it matters. On the dispatch board, the task card carries the usual type badge (delivery, pickup) plus a teal "Scrap metal" badge, and the leg that would be labeled Landfill on a dumpster order is labeled "Scrap yard". Drag it onto a driver's lane and it is scheduled. See the dispatch board in detail.

In the web driver app, the stop sheet shows the same "Scrap metal" badge and, on a one-visit job, a "Pickup only" chip, so the driver knows before leaving the yard that there is no container on this run. Truck Tablet Mode shows the same, in the landscape cockpit layout built for a tablet mounted in the cab. See the driver app. One honest caveat: the native driver app published in the App Store and Play Store is a frozen build and does not show the scrap badge yet; the web driver app and the truck tablet do.

On the live map, every stop belongs to a business line, and each line gets its own pin shape: a circle for dumpster rental, a square for junk removal, a diamond for scrap metal. The dispatch map adds a legend for the shapes whenever a junk or scrap stop is on screen. The Dashboard has its own Scrap Metal card as well, with the Beta pill on it, so scrap counts are never mixed into the dumpster counts.

What is different from a regular dumpster order

A regular dumpster order has a price, an invoice, a payment status, a landfill leg with a receipt, and the option to swap the container when it is full. A scrap order shares the customer, the address, the dates, the driver, the truck and the map with it, and differs in four places. It has no financial phase unless you ask for one. It can be a single visit with no container at all. Its disposal leg is a scrap yard run, with the landfill card hidden. And container swap is not available on a scrap order in this beta; the app says so in the order drawer instead of failing silently.

The point of keeping everything else identical is that a dumpster company adding scrap changes nothing about how it already works. Same drivers, same trucks, same board, same login. The scrap orders simply carry their own card, badge and pin.

The economics, stated plainly

A scrap company rarely charges the customer because the load has value. It sells the metal by weight at a scrap yard, and sometimes passes part of that value back to the customer as a rebate. Dumpster Controls today handles the operation side of that business, at no charge to the customer and at no cost to the company: the orders, the pickup-only or container choice, dispatch, the driver, the map and the customer records. What happens at the scale house, the ticket and the amount the yard paid, is not shown anywhere in the app in this beta. Showing the sale on the order is planned; it is not live, and this page will say so until it is.

What it costs

The software is free, with unlimited orders, drivers, trucks and customers, and no credit card, contract or setup fee. The free plan is for a company that owns and operates its own trucks. 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. See the pricing page.

Scrap metal software: FAQ

The feature is documented step by step in the Scrap Metal section of the help center, and the launch story, starting with the support ticket that asked for it, is in the blog post.