Two pool techs can each service 15 pools in a day and earn the company very different amounts. One spends six hours at pools and an hour driving. The other spends four and a half hours at pools and two and a half hours driving, and burns more fuel doing it. Same number of stops, same wages, very different margins. That difference is route density: how close together your stops are. This post works through the math, shows how density changes the way you sell and price, and explains when an account across town is not worth keeping.
Example math: what drive time really costs
Take an illustrative route. A tech costs you $25 an hour with taxes, the truck costs around $0.60 a mile to run, and the average stop bills $40 a week. On a tight route, the tech averages 4 minutes and 1.5 miles between stops. Over 15 stops that is about an hour of driving and 22 miles. On a scattered route, the average is 12 minutes and 5 miles between stops, which is three hours and 75 miles.
The scattered route costs about two extra hours of wages ($50) and 53 extra miles ($32) every day it runs. That is $82 a day, or over $400 a week for a five-day route, on the same revenue. It also means the scattered tech has no room for the filter clean or green pool that would have brought in extra money. Your numbers will differ, but the pattern does not.
Look at the map, not the list
Density is hard to see on a list of addresses and obvious on a map. Plot one service day's stops and the problem accounts jump out: the lone pin 9 miles east of everything else, or the two stops on the far side of a highway with one exit. Most owners who do this for the first time find a handful of accounts that cost more to reach than they earn.
When you look at the waiting work on the map, you can circle an area and pick the properties inside it to schedule onto a day and truck in one step. That same habit of thinking in circles on a map, rather than rows in a list, is what keeps routes tight over time.
Sell where you already drive
The cheapest new account is the one next door to a current customer. It adds service time but almost no driving, so nearly all of its revenue lands as margin. That should shape your marketing. Door hangers on the streets around your existing stops, a referral offer to current customers for their neighbors, and yard signs during service days all target the accounts that raise density.
When a lead comes in through your website form, check the address against your current service days before you quote. If it sits inside a cluster, quote your standard rate and offer the day that zone is serviced. If it is out on its own, either quote higher or be honest that you do not service that area yet. Getting density right at the sales stage is far easier than fixing it later. The estimating post covers pricing the account itself.
Pricing the pool that is out of the way
You do not have to refuse every outlier. Some are worth having: a large commercial pool, a customer who also buys repairs, or the first account in a neighborhood you want to grow into. But they should be priced for the time they take.
A simple approach is a distance charge added to your standard weekly rate. Using the example costs above, an account that adds 20 minutes and 8 miles round trip to a route costs roughly $8 in wages and $5 in vehicle cost per visit. Adding $10 to $15 a week to that account covers it. Customers outside your core area usually accept this if you explain it plainly. If they do not, you have learned that the account was never going to be profitable at your standard price.
Trading and dropping accounts
Sometimes the right move is to let an account go. If a pool costs more to reach than it earns, cannot be repriced, and is not a good repair customer, refer it to a competitor who works that area and wish them well. Some owners trade accounts with friendly competitors: your three pools on their side of town for their three on yours. Both routes get tighter.
When you do drop an account, do it at a clean break, like the end of a month, with notice, and record the reason. Tracking cancellation reasons, including the ones you initiated, helps you see later how many accounts you lost to price, to service, and to your own route decisions.
Density inside a single day
Density is not only about which neighborhoods you serve. It is also about how the stops are ordered within a day. A cluster of 12 pools serviced in a random order can still cost an extra half hour of backtracking. Once a day's stops are set, let auto-routing put them in order by distance, then check the result against what the tech knows about the area, like the left turn across a busy road that takes five minutes at noon.
Also look at where each day starts and ends. If a tech lives on the south side and his route is on the north side, his first and last drives are unpaid time for him or paid time for you, and either way it adds up. Matching techs to routes near home, where you can, is one of the simplest density gains there is.
Density compounds over time
A dense route is worth more every year. It is easier to staff because the work feels manageable. It is easier to cover when a tech is out because the next route is nearby. It leaves room for repair and cleanup work. And when owners eventually sell pool accounts, buyers often look closely at how clustered the accounts are, because that tells them how profitable the route will be under their ownership.
Check density a couple of times a season. Look at drive minutes per stop by day, at the outliers, and at where your new accounts are coming from. Use auto-routing to keep the order of each day tight, and use your sales effort to fill in the gaps between existing stops. The route days post covers how to assign zones to days.
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