If you run a water distribution company, you’ve probably experienced this: you send out water jugs, customers don’t return them, and by the end of the month, you don’t know exactly how many are out in the field, how many are in the warehouse, and how many have simply disappeared.
It is one of the most common—and most costly—problems faced by any water utility in Latin America.
How much money are you really losing?
Let’s do the math. A returnable container costs between $3 and $8, depending on the country and the supplier. If you have 300 active customers and each one has an average of 2 containers on loan, you’re managing 600 containers in the field.
Now imagine that 10% of those containers aren’t returned each month—whether because the customer forgot, because they were lost or broken, or simply because no one came to pick them up. That’s 60 containers a month. At $5 each, that’s $300 a month down the drain.
Per year: $3,600 in lost jugs alone.
And that’s not even counting the time you waste looking for them, calling customers, or buying new ones to replace them.
How Most Distributors Keep Track of Things
The most common answer is: badly.
Some people use a notebook to keep track of how many containers each delivery person took out. But that notebook doesn’t show how many each specific customer has, when the last return was, or which ones haven’t been returned in over 30 days.
Others use Excel. It’s a little better, but just as labor-intensive: someone has to update the spreadsheet every time a container is sent out or returned. And when there are 3 delivery drivers and 400 customers, that spreadsheet becomes outdated in a matter of hours.
The result is always the same: no one knows for sure how many containers each customer has, and the ones that aren’t returned are simply written off as a loss.
The Right System for Managing Your Jugs
To have real control over your returnable containers, you need a system that automatically does three things:
1. Record each container dispatched to a customer. Every time a delivery person delivers an order, the system must record how many containers were dispatched and to which customer, without relying on someone to record this information manually.
2. Record each return. When a customer returns a container, the system records it immediately. The inventory is updated automatically.
3. Show you in real time who owes you jugs and how many. With a single click, you should be able to see—for each customer—how many jugs they have in their possession, how long they’ve had them, and the monetary value of those jugs.
With that information, you can take action: call the customers with the most outstanding containers, send a delivery person to pick them up, or make the return a condition of their next order.
How Yaku Handles the Management of Loans for Use
Yaku has a specific module for managing returnable containers and assets that does exactly that.
Each order automatically records the containers that are dispatched. Each return updates inventory in real time. And from the main dashboard, you can instantly see which customers have outstanding containers, how many days they’ve been overdue, and the total value of your assets in the field.
In addition, the system calculates the container debt separately from the monetary debt. This way, you can see at a glance who owes you money and who owes you containers—two different things that most distributors mix up and end up losing track of.
The result in actual numbers
Distributors that implement a formal system for tracking loaned containers report recovering between 60% and 80% of the jugs that were previously lost within the first 60 days.
If you used to lose $300 a month on plastic bottles, with the right system you can reduce that loss to $60–$120. The difference—between $180 and $240 recovered each month—already covers the cost of any management software.
Do you own a water refill business in Mexico or a seltzer delivery business in Argentina? See how container tracking works in our software for water refill businesses and in our software for seltzer delivery businesses.
Conclusion
Tracking jugs isn’t a disciplinary issue—it’s a systemic issue. When you don’t have a system that automatically tracks every movement, loss is inevitable, no matter how organized your team is.
If you want to stop losing jugs and money every month, the first step is to implement effective controls.
Sign up and try Yaku free for 7 days at yaku.app, and start managing your loans from day one. No credit card required, no strings attached.
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