Skip hire
Waste compliance software for skip hire.
A container left on somebody else's ground, filled by somebody you never met, and it is still your duty of care.
14 days free access · no card needed
Skip hire has a compliance problem that collection rounds do not: the waste is produced while nobody is watching. A container goes out empty, sits for a week on a drive or a site, and comes back holding whatever was put in it — including things the customer was told not to put in it.
That makes the description on the paperwork a prediction rather than an observation. The transfer note says what the customer said it would be, and the first time anyone actually looks is at the tip face, by which point the vehicle has moved and the record is already written.
The other half is the fleet. Skip lorries are HGVs on an operator licence, so the maintenance regime, driver entitlement and daily checks sit on top of the waste regime, and both get examined by different people.
The records
What skip hire operators are answerable for
- Waste transfer notes, with an accurate description
- Waste carrier registration and its renewal date
- Permits and exemptions for the sites you tip at
- Weighbridge tickets against each movement
- Vehicle checks, defects and inspection history
- Driver licence, CPC and entitlement dates
The problem
What makes this hard for skip hire operators
A description written before anyone looked
The paperwork describes what the customer said they were putting in the container. What came back may be different, and the person best placed to notice is the driver at the point of collection — who has another eleven drops to make.
Containers on ground you do not control
A skip on a public road, a verge or an unsecured site is open to anybody. Fly-tipped additions become yours the moment the lorry lifts it, and the record needs to show what you knew and when.
Two regimes on the same vehicle
The lorry is governed by operator licensing and the load by waste law. Inspections come from different bodies asking different questions, and most operators keep the two sets of records in different places.
Paperwork generated in a cab
Notes written on a pad in a lorry are illegible, incomplete or lost at roughly the rate you would expect. The gap is rarely a note that was wrong; it is one that cannot be found.
Exchanges that lose the chain
A full container swapped for an empty one in a single visit produces two movements that look like one. Where the chain of custody is reconstructed afterwards, that is where it breaks.
The answer
How WasteOptix helps
Paperwork generated in a cab
Transfer notes are completed digitally at the point of collection, so the record exists legibly from the moment of the movement rather than when a pad comes back to the office.
Digital transfer notesExchanges that lose the chain
Rounds and movements are scheduled and recorded individually, so a delivery, an exchange and a collection are three events with their own records rather than one visit.
Rounds & schedulingTwo regimes on the same vehicle
Vehicle checks, defects, inspection history and driver entitlement sit against the vehicle and the driver, so the operator licence side of the business is held in the same system as the waste side.
Vehicles & driversA description written before anyone looked
Where a load is not what was described, it is captured as an incident with the detail recorded while it is fresh rather than remembered at the end of a shift.
Incident managementContainers on ground you do not control
Carrier registration, permits and renewal dates sit on one calendar, so the authorisations the whole operation depends on are watched rather than assumed.
Compliance calendar
Who it is for
The people doing this job
Transport and operations managers
Running rounds and the lorries that do them, against two regulators at once.
waste carrier registrationCompliance managers
Holding the permits, the registration and the records an inspector asks for.
waste duty of careDrivers
Delivering, exchanging and collecting, and the only person who sees what is actually in the container.
waste transfer noteWeighbridge and transfer station staff
Receiving loads and producing the tickets that have to match the notes.
weighbridge ticketTechnically competent managers
Named against permitted sites and answerable for how they are run.
technically competent manager
Questions
What skip hire operators ask
- Does WasteOptix plan or optimise rounds?
- No. It records and schedules rounds; it does not route them and it is not a telematics platform. Sequencing and tracking stay with whatever you use for that.
- Can drivers complete transfer notes in the cab?
- Yes. The note is completed digitally at the point of collection, which is what makes it legible, complete and findable afterwards — the three things a paper pad in a lorry reliably is not.
- Does it handle our HGV compliance as well?
- Vehicle checks, defects, maintenance history and driver licence and CPC dates are held against the vehicle and the driver. The waste side and the operator licence side end up in one system rather than two.
- Does it invoice customers?
- No. There is no invoicing, accounting or payroll in it. It sits alongside whatever you use commercially.
- What happens when a container comes back contaminated?
- It is captured as an incident against the movement and the customer, with the detail recorded at the time. That record is what turns a recurring problem customer into something you can evidence rather than something a driver grumbles about.
Keep reading
Every movement with a note that can actually be found
14 days free access · no card needed