Getting work

He doesn’t know when it was done, so he waits until it smells.

Published 2026-08-22 5 min read

The short answer

Two things he has no record of: when the tank was last pumped, and where the lid is. Both are produced by your visit, and both should leave with him in writing.

Almost nobody calls you because it is time. They call you because something backed up, or because the yard smells on a warm afternoon, or because they are selling the house and the buyer asked a question they cannot answer.

It is tempting to read that as people being careless. It is not. Ask a homeowner when his tank was last pumped and watch what happens: he thinks, he guesses a year, and then he says he is not sure. He has no record, because nobody ever gave him one. You cannot schedule maintenance from a date you do not have.

The two blanks in his head

The first is the date. The second is the location — and that one is worse, because it costs money in front of him. The truck arrives, and then somebody walks the yard with a probe bar for forty minutes looking for a lid under six inches of grass. He is standing there watching the clock run on a search that has nothing to do with the work.

Both blanks are filled in by your visit. Neither of them costs you anything to write down. And neither of them exists anywhere else in the world if you do not.

Example measurements. Two distances from two corners of the house put the lid back on the map for good.

Why two corners and not a description

Because “about fifteen feet out from the back door, near the old stump” stops working the day the stump comes out. Two measured distances from two corners of a permanent structure are a fix in the mathematical sense: there is exactly one point that satisfies both, and anyone with a tape can stand on it in five minutes.

Leave it with him on paper and photograph it before you go. In ten years, when someone else owns the house, that sheet is still true — and the number on the bottom of it is yours.

What the website does with this

It asks the question first. Not “book a pump-out” but “do you know when yours was last done?” — because for most readers the honest answer is no, and a page that says so out loud is the first one that has described their actual situation.

Then it tells them what happens when they do not know: what you look at, roughly what it costs to find out, and what they will have in their hands afterwards. That is a smaller decision than booking a service they cannot justify, and it is the reason the call comes to you and not to the number in the phone book.

Five sections and what each prevents. Our own reasoning, from why these calls arrive as emergencies.
What the page says	What it prevents
“Do you know when yours was last done?”	A page that assumes a decision the reader is not ready to make.
That you locate the lid and leave the measurements with him	Forty minutes of probing that he pays for and resents.
That you write down the date and hand it over	The same conversation, from the same blank, in three years.
What you can and cannot tell from an inspection	The expectation that you can promise a tank will not fail.
What to do right now if it is backing up today	The panic call that goes to whoever answers first.

The record block — copy it and fill the brackets with what you actually leave behind

Heading, in his words: “Do you know when yours was last pumped?”
The honest opening: “Most people don’t, and it isn’t carelessness — nobody gave them the date. Without it there is no way to know whether you are due.”
What you leave, item one: “When we finish, you get the date in writing, [on a card / by email / on a sticker inside the utility room door].”
What you leave, item two: “We measure the lid from two corners of your house and write both distances down. Next time anyone needs it — us, another company, a buyer’s inspector — it takes five minutes to find instead of most of an hour.”
Why that matters in money: “Searching for a buried lid is time on the invoice. Two numbers on a sheet remove it permanently.”
What you will not claim: “An inspection tells you the condition today. It is not a guarantee about next winter, and we will not pretend otherwise.”
If it is happening right now: “If it is backing up today, [what to stop doing, what is safe, how fast you can be there].”

Notice that not one of those points is a claim about quality. They are all about what the customer walks away holding. In a trade nobody thinks about until it fails, being the firm that leaves a record is the whole difference.

What this page should not put a number on

How often a tank needs pumping depends on its size, on how many people live over it and on local rules, so no honest page prints a single interval as though it were law. Say what it depends on, say what yours would be for his situation once you have seen it, and leave the general rule to somebody who does not have to stand behind it.