The Ultimate Pool Route Start Checklist

Your pool route doesn’t fall apart because you “forgot something big.” It falls apart because you didn’t have the small, everyday essentials when a simple problem showed up at the worst possible stop. We break down what we keep on a pool service truck to stay fast, consistent, and ready, whether you’re starting pool service for the first time or tightening up an established route. 
 
We dig into the core pool chemicals that make weekly maintenance smoother, including how much liquid chlorine and muriatic acid is practical to stock, plus why cal-hypo bags can be worth it for transport and flexibility. We also talk through smart backups like keeping trichlor tablets on hand for those moments when a customer runs out, and why carrying DE helps you recharge DE filters properly instead of cutting corners that hurt water clarity. You’ll also hear my take on raising pH with 20 Mule Team Borax, tile cleaning products that actually help with scale, and the simple value of silicone lube for O-rings and seals. 
 
From there we move into the gear that saves your time and your body: a purpose-built pool service caddy, vacuum hoses and vacuum heads for spot cleaning, brush options for algae, and the poles, nets, and leaf rakes that make route work less painful. We finish with testing choices like Taylor test kits, the spare parts that prevent repeat trips, and when it’s time to step up to a true vacuum system like portable units or cart-style setups. If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a pool pro who’s building a route, and leave a review so more techs can find the show.

• liquid chlorine and muriatic acid quantities that make daily service easier
• cal-hypo bags versus buckets and why carrying both helps
• trichlor tablets as a backup when customers run out
• DE for proper filter recharge and clearer water
• using 20 Mule Team Borax to raise pH with less clouding
• tile soap and silicone lube for faster maintenance and fewer leaks
• practical algae options and why some old products disappeared
• caddies and totes that fit real-world service

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Transcript

Coaching Program And Download Link

Core Chemicals To Stock

Borax For pH And Tile Soap

Algae Tools And What’s Gone

Caddies Hoses And Vacuum Heads

Brushes Poles Nets And Rakes

Test Kits And Why Taylor

Spare Parts And O Rings

Vacuum Systems To Save Time

Where To Find More Help

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm gonna go over some essential things you should have on your truck. If you're starting out service, this is gonna be really key for you to hear all these things that you probably should be carrying on your truck, equipment, chemicals, supplies, things like that. And if you're a veteran, you may want to add a few of these things to your truck. And I think this startup list, I created it maybe about five or six years ago, maybe even longer. And so it's still pretty good and up to date. And I can also send a link to this list also to you. And I'll put that in the podcast where you can actually get this downloadable Word document. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guide coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. And simply email me at David at swimmingpoollearning.com. Again, that's David at swimming poollearning.com. And I'll send you this word format. These have all of the pool corp part numbers. I believe they're still valid. They don't change their part numbers too often. So not only do I have the product description, but I also have the pool corp, which is superior pool products and sc the part numbers there. You can reference that. And you can of course get them at different suppliers like Heritage and Leslie's by just giving them the product name. And they can look up the product for you on their computer. And I'll start off with the top. I'm gonna go to the top page here. I'll start off with the chemicals that I think you should be carrying on your truck. And of course, here in my area we have the Hasa 4x1 cases. So you would want to get two of their liquid chlorine cases, which is equivalent to eight gallons of chlorine. Having that on your truck each day is pretty good. You probably won't use it all, and it's a good idea to have extra chemicals anyway. And then I have three muratic acid cases. You don't need to carry all three of them on your truck, but getting three at a time saves you time, and the acid doesn't really deteriorate and is something that you can stock up on. I mean you can't, of course, hold it for five years, but basically you want to get enough that you can start off and not have to go back and get more acid right away. And I also have the Calhypo. I really like the bags of Calhypo versus the buckets, but of course you can have both. The reason why I like the bags, because they're easy to transport back to your pool stops in a bag, a little more expensive, of course. Plus, you can leave bags of Calhypo with customers if you need to. You're having a party or something like that. You can put a bag back there. So I always carry both the bags of Calhypo, the one-pound bags, and also the 25 or 50 pound bucket. I think I have this listed as the bags here, and you can get the bucket as well. And I also like having a bucket of tablets on my truck as well. And I like the tablets unwrapped, it just saves you time not having to unwrap them and dispose of the little wrapper. So get a 50-pound bucket of trichlor tablets for your truck as well. However, your customer should be paying for the trichlor tablets. You should have a bucket you leave there. Sometimes you run out, they run out of tablets and you don't really you're not aware of it and you forget. Or sometimes you have a pool that you need trichlor with. And so having those tablets is really something to carry on your truck just as a a way, as a stop gap in case a customer doesn't have the tablets on hand, or if you have a new account and you put the tablets in there, having that is essential. I also carry a 10-pound bag of diatomaceous earth. This is for backwashing D filters and recharging them. So always have some DE on your truck. I mean you can get away with a quick backwash without recharging it, but it's much more effective to recharge it with DE. This is not enough usually to clean filters with. For that, I just get the 25-pound bags and carry those during the filter cleaning season. And I have the part number or the SKU number for that as well. Now I have soda ash on here, but I don't really use soda ash anymore. You can get the soda ash at your supplier. I really like using 20 mule team borax to raise the peach in the pool. It's just much more effective, and it doesn't really cloud the pool like soda ash does. And I find that it it is something that if you switch over to, you're gonna really like it. Just go to Walmart or Target or Home Depot in their laundry detergent aisle, get some boxes of 20 mil team borax. I think they're four pound boxes, and just carry those on your truck. And if you want to know how much to add to raise the pH in the pool, go ahead and go to the poolcalculator.com and that'll give you how much 20 mil team borax to add to the pool to raise the pH in that pool. And I find it highly effective again. Plus, you're adding borates to the pool at the same time. So not only are you raising the pH with it, but you're adding borates to the pool, which is gonna be a good thing regardless. I also have the arrow red tile soap. I like this one, it has a little bit of acid in it, and it's something that I recommend you use. That way you can clean some of that scale off the tile. And of course, you have magic lube, and you have the silicone lube, which some suppliers carry. The bot the boss silicone lube may not be available at a lot of suppliers any longer. I'm not sure what happened. They haven't been sending them out. Maybe they can order them for you, but you can get my silicone lube that the one that you see in my YouTube videos, and I use this on all my filter tank O-rings. You can get any RV-grade silicone lube at the Auto Parts store. I know that was pretty rapid fire, but those are pretty essential chemicals you want to carry on your truck for just everyday service, and then of course for any kind of algae and fighting algae, you can pick your algae side of your choice. But I really like the pool RX and I have them listed here. Those skews may have changed over time because pool rex did change their product, but you could find the newer units as well at your supplier. But Pull RX to me is a pretty good go-to algacyte, it's kind of a one-time, one and done thing in the pool. You can also use it to clean up a green pool and treat pools that have a lot of algae in it. So check that out. I think Polar X is really effective as far as algae treatment. I used to get the yellow, the yellow trin for algae, and I still have it on my list here, just in case they ever bring it back. But I really feel like the sodium bromide has been eliminated from the market pretty effectively by the EPA. But if your supplier does bring it back, I don't know, maybe I should remove this, but I kind of like having it on there because the old school guys like me just put two ounces in the pool and called it a day, and you could pretty much cure all the algae with it. But again, the EPA uh has pretty much eliminated the sodium bromine from the marketplace. Now, as far as pool equipment, I really think you have to find what works for you. And for me, I like the service cart, and I also like having a tote with me. Some guys carry a five-gallon bucket, whatever you know, you can go to the hardware store or go to a supply store and get like a janitorial caddy. But I really find that the specific caddies that are made for pool service are the ones that you would want to use in your pool service. They fit in your truck nicely, they hold in California a gallon of muratic acid and chlorine inside there. Sorry, Florida, you have those two and a half gallon drums that you can't really put in the caddy. So the one that I use and most suppliers carried is the TK caddy box. And this is a blue tote that you see in my videos. The TK is a company that makes it. Valpack also makes a caddy, they make a lot of aftermarket skimmer and pump baskets. So Valpack makes one as well. I suggest you pick one of these up, they're really convenient. You put your pool hole in there, your you know, if you have uh anything else you want to carry back there, these are great. The vac hose, you know. I really don't use the manual vacuum hose much at all anymore, since I have the bottom feeder with the cartridge filter assembly, also the vac daddy. There's really no need for me to actually manual vacuum in a pool anymore with the system with the systems that get the dirt out. But if you don't have these systems, of course, you would need a standard vacuum hose. And I like the smooth bore pool hose. And I mentioned this before. The skew number that I have is for a 50-foot hose, but I really think the 40-foot hose is the sweet spot in my area. And if they have to probably special order it, but I would say a 40-foot hose is easier to carry, and it's something that is gonna be good for just about all the pools here in Southern California, except for the gigantic pools, I guess, in some other areas for vacuuming. And it's much more convenient than the 50-foot standard pool hose. But smooth bore is a brand of my choice. You will need a vacuum head, regardless if you use a pool hose to vacuum it, you're gonna need that to attach it to the automatic cleaners, cleaner hoses, it's a spot vacuum. So you would take off the haywood navigator or the haywood pool cleaner, and you would connect your manual vac head and then vacuum the pool. I like the penthair provac, the smaller one is the one that I use. They also have a giant one for like commercial use, but get a penthair provac and it'll last you for years, and it's a great way to spot vacuum a pool using the automatic cleaner hoses. There's lots of choices when it comes to pool brushes. I prefer the Sweet Bees pool brush, but people like their brushes, so I'll leave that up to you to get the pool brush of your choice. But as far as algae brushes, I really like the 6-inch stainless steel brush by A and B. It's a really great little algae brush, especially if you have really hard to scrub off algae that's really you know, you're having a lot a lot of hard times getting it off the pool surface. The 6-inch brush is perfect, stainless steel brush. You can't use it on a vinyl and fiberglass pool, but for pebble tech and plaster, the A and B 6-inch brush brush is perfect. So we get one of those for any kind of algae. And I do like the Purity Pool tile scrubber. This one here attaches to your pool pole, so you don't have to carry a separate pole back there and get that one as well. And that pretty much covers the basic stuff, except for your pole and your net. Now, this is something that I think people have their personal preference for. So I'm not gonna say much about pool poles, but I do really think you should have an aluminum pole and a carbon fiber pole on your truck. I'm kind of partial to Skimlight. I like all their poles, and I do have some of those listed here. But I do like the primate pole as well. And some suppliers do carry them, but you can order them directly from primate pools, primatepooltools.com and get a primate pole. But having both, I think, is the best best way to maximize your cleaning, the aluminum pole and the carbon fiber pole. I also have the SKU number for the Red Baron Rag Bag by Purity Pool. I think it's probably one of the better leaf rakes out there. And if you want something comparable to that, then the Piranha 2 is also a pretty good leaf rake by the smart company. These two are really great leaf rakes. And if you again want this list, just email me at David at Sonnypoollearning.com. I'm going through this pretty fast, and all this stuff is listed here, and you can of course get these at your supplier. As far as test kits go, I have the Taylor test kits here because those are the ones you're probably going to start with anyway. And the Taylor K2005 or K2006 are pretty good test kits, I would say, for pool service. The reagents are affordable and it's something that you would want to use. I don't think there really is another reagent test kit that I would recommend besides the Taylor kit. And of course, for the more advanced testing, you can get a color Q2X Pro 9. You can probably special order that at your supplier, and they'll get that for you there. This is really more than just a basic startup list. As you can tell, because there's six pages with a lot of stuff on here. This actually is something you can reuse over and over again to get different parts for your supplier. And over the years I found that these are the most essential parts and spare parts that you want to carry carry on your service truck. Now, there are different lid o-rings I have here. Some areas are really pentar heavy, and so of course, you're gonna have some stay right dura glass and the older dura glass model. So I have those O-rings for that as well. And then I have some Hayward pump O-rings for the lid, and so you should have plenty of these pump lid o-rings on your truck because that's a typical fail point of your pool pump. Simply changing the O-ring solves the problem usually right away. So having plenty of these on your truck is essential, and of course, the rainbow chlorinator parts and things like that are also very essential. I have a list of those as well for you here, and some haywood chlorinator parts. I also have just some random stuff that you would need to get once in a while, like the on-off trippers for the intermatic timer. It's good to have extra extra of those on your truck as well. Sometimes they get bent and then they're not effective any longer. And I also have some filter tank O-rings as well for the Hayward tanks, they're pretty common in my area. The Pentair, the other Penthair series, and then the 2000-4000 series tank little rings. Outside of this list, what I recommend you eventually get on your pool surface route. Now, when you're starting out right away, you may not need one of these, but of course, as you get bigger and you expand, you're looking to save time and of course energy out there because these are great time-saving tools, and they also save your wear and tear on your body. That is a vacuum system. I briefly mentioned the bottom feeder earlier. That's a great portable vacuum system. The shrimp is also a really good vacuum system as well. You can get a cart vacuum system. Most suppliers will carry the hammerhead. You can buy that at your supplier, or you can get the riptide SL from their site. Order that if you wanted a full vacuum system with a cart, most people may not need that, and so the bottom feeder and shrimp would be just as good. And in most cases, you know, the riptide, of course, is more powerful, the hammerhead as well with the cart, but it may be something that's overkill in your service area. And besides that, with the new bottom feeder cartridge filter assembly, you can vacuum dirt now with the bottom feeder and shrimp, which I think makes it just basically a one-tool kind of product. You can get the leaves with the bag, and then you can get the dirt out with the cartridge that goes on top of it down to 10 to 20 microns, essentially eliminating the need to manually vacuum a pool, and that's why I mentioned earlier about not carrying a pool hose any longer on my truck. But I'll leave that decision completely up to you on which vacuum system you're leaning towards, either the full cart vacuum system or the more portable vacuum system. And to put on your radar, the Vac Daddy is also a really versatile vacuum. It's not really a vacuum system per se, but it does have a lot of attributes that make it something that you can consider. I like the vacuum to waste feature of it. It's a very robust way to do cleanups. You just use a Vac Daddy with a pool hose, and you're gonna need a pool hose now for the back of it to vacuum the waste. And to me, that's probably the most effective part of the Vac Daddy that you could use it to vacuum a pool to waste. It also has bags in there to pick up debris and some dirt. So it's a very versatile way to vacuum the pool. They have a battery also now to make it kind of cordless. There's a cord still, but you don't have to plug it in. So the Vac Daddy is something that maybe put that on your radar as well. But essentially, when you start to get a little bigger, a vacuum system is something that I highly recommend you get for your pool service route. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, swimmingpoollearning.com. Click on the podcast icon at the top in the banner, and there'll be a drop down menu of over 1900 podcasts for you. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at poolcoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your week. God bless.