What is the single most important thing to establish before the first job?

Who signs the daily ticket, and what happens when that person is not on site. For a large share of traffic control work the signed ticket is the billing document, so an unresolved signing arrangement is an unresolved invoice. Get a named person, a backup, and an agreed procedure for an unsigned day before you mobilize.

Should we do a credit check on a new commercial customer?

For anything beyond a small one-off job, yes, and it is normal in this trade rather than insulting. Traffic control frequently involves fronting labour and equipment for weeks before payment. Knowing whether a new prime pays in 45 days or 95 changes what the work is worth, and it is much easier to ask before you have started than after.

How detailed should the rate sheet be at the start?

Detailed enough that the first disputed line is already answered. Standby time, minimum call-out, after-hours rates, equipment rental basis and duration, damaged-device charges, and what constitutes a billable day for equipment left on site. Every one of these gets argued eventually; agreeing them in advance costs one conversation.

What should the first job look like?

Ideally something small and typical rather than the largest thing they have. A first job is a test of the handoffs — ticket signing, communication, invoice format, payment. Running that test on a job where a dispute is survivable is worth more than the extra revenue from starting big.

When do we raise a problem with a new customer?

Early and small. A ticket-signing issue raised in week two is a process conversation; the same issue raised in month four, with nine unbilled days attached, is a dispute. New relationships have a grace period for fixing mechanics, and it closes.

Do we need a written agreement for repeat work?

For anything recurring, yes — a master agreement with a rate sheet attached, so each job references agreed terms rather than renegotiating. It also stops rates quietly staying flat for three years, because a document with a date on it invites review in a way a verbal understanding does not.

Onboarding a New Traffic Control Customer

The first ninety days with a new account decide whether it becomes a profitable relationship or a slow-paying argument. Here is what to establish before the first job runs, and what to fix while you still can.

New accounts fail in a predictable way. The work goes fine, the crews do a good job, and four months later there is an unpaid balance, an argument about standby time, and a relationship nobody enjoys.

Almost none of that is caused by the work. It is caused by mechanics that were never established, during a window when establishing them would have been easy and uncontroversial.

Why the first ninety days are different

A new customer relationship has a grace period. Everyone expects some setup friction, nobody has habits yet, and asking a procedural question reads as professionalism rather than as a complaint.

That window closes. Once thirty jobs have run a particular way, that way is the norm, and changing it becomes a negotiation. The specific things that harden fastest are the ones that matter most: who signs, what gets billed, how changes get authorized, and when invoices go out.

Companies that onboard deliberately are not being bureaucratic. They are using a window that expires.

The commercial checklist

Establish these before the first job, not after the first problem.

Credit and payment terms. Terms in writing, and a credit check for anything beyond a trivial job. Traffic control often means fronting labour and equipment for weeks. Retainage and cash flow covers the structural version of this problem on public work.

The rate sheet, in detail. Not just day rates. Standby and show-up time, minimum callout, after-hours and weekend rates, equipment rental basis and duration definitions, damaged and lost device charges, mobilization. Pricing standby and show-up time and traffic control device rental rates are the two places most disputes originate.

What counts as a billable equipment day. Placed-to-retrieved, calendar days or working days, how partial days are handled, and what happens when devices sit between phases. This single definition is worth agreeing explicitly because both parties genuinely believe their reading is obvious.

Change authorization. Who can authorize extra work, in what form, and what happens at 6 a.m. when the person with authority is not answering. Change orders on traffic control jobs covers the mechanics.

Invoice format and destination. Which reference numbers they need, whether tickets attach, which portal, which email, and who approves. A technically correct invoice sent to the wrong place is an unpaid invoice.

A master agreement for anything recurring. Master service agreements and rate sheets covers the structure, and a dated document is also what makes raising rates with existing customers a scheduled conversation rather than an awkward one.

The operational checklist

Who signs the daily ticket — and the backup. The most important item on either list. A named person, a named alternate, and an agreed procedure for a day when neither is present. The failure is not usually refusal; it is absence. A crew that leaves without a signature because nobody was there has produced an unbillable day, and it will happen in the first fortnight.

Site access and constraints. Gate codes, staging areas, where trucks can turn, who else is working the corridor, and what time you can actually get in.

Communication path. One named contact for day-to-day and one escalation route. New accounts frequently fail because the crew lead is texting a superintendent who never relays anything to the office that pays you.

Permit responsibility. Who obtains permits, who pays for them, and who is responsible if one lapses mid-job. On recurring work this is the most common expensive gap — see multi-jurisdiction permit tracking.

Plan responsibility. Who produces the traffic control plan and who pays for it. Who pays for the traffic control plan covers the ways this gets allocated, and it is genuinely ambiguous often enough to be worth a sentence in the agreement.

Safety expectations. Their site rules, orientation requirements, PPE beyond standard, and their incident reporting expectations. Some primes have requirements that materially affect your cost, and they surface on day one if you do not ask.

Run a small first job on purpose

The instinct with a new account is to start with whatever they offer. The better move, where you have a choice, is to start with something small and typical.

A first job is a test of the handoffs rather than a test of the work. Does the ticket get signed? Does the invoice reach the right person? Does the equipment come back counted? Does the change process function when something changes? You want to discover the answers on a job where a problem costs a few hundred dollars, not on the one with eleven weeks of barricade rental attached.

Run the first invoice deliberately: send it fast, send it complete, and follow it. An invoice that goes out in three days with tickets attached establishes a standard, and the first payment tells you more about the relationship than any conversation.

Get the documentation habit right from day one

The documentation standard you set on the first jobs is the one you keep. Crews calibrate to what gets checked.

For a new account specifically, three things are worth being strict about:

Photographs of the installed condition. Setup, both ends, anything unusual. This is your evidence on a disputed day and your defence if something happens. Work zone inspections and agency audits covers what gets asked for later.

Counted equipment out and back. Establishing this on job one means the first loss is attributable. Establishing it in month five means the first four months are unrecoverable. Tracking traffic control devices by job site covers the mechanism.

Signed, timestamped, located tickets. Preventing daily ticket disputes covers why the timestamp and location matter as much as the signature.

The safety conversation is part of onboarding

It is worth having explicitly, because a new customer does not yet know how you work and their assumptions may be wrong in expensive ways.

The exposure is real and measurable. The National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse records 763 fatal work zone crashes and 850 work zone fatalities in 2024 from NHTSA FARS data, and BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries data compiled by the same source shows between 82 and 143 fatal worker injuries at road construction sites annually from 2015 through 2024, with an average of 52.7% across 2022 to 2024 being workers on foot struck by a vehicle.

The practical points to make: what you will and will not do outside an approved plan, how you handle a request to deviate, what happens if the zone is compromised, and who has authority to stop work. A customer who learns your position on these during an incident learns it at the worst possible time.

The review at ninety days

Put a date on it at the start. Three questions:

Did it make money? Actual hours and equipment days against what was bid. Job costing makes this answerable; without it you are guessing.
Did the mechanics work? Tickets signed, invoices paid on time, changes authorized properly.
Is this an account we want more of? Some customers are profitable, some are volume that costs money, and the honest answer at ninety days is worth more than the same answer at two years. Winning repeat traffic control work covers what to do with the good ones; bid/no-bid decisions covers declining more of the others.

For public-sector customers the shape is different — the onboarding is largely prequalification, covered in DOT prequalification and bidding municipal traffic control contracts — but the ticket-signing and invoice-routing questions are identical and equally worth settling early.

Traffic OS keeps customer rate sheets, permits, tickets and equipment deployments on the job record, so a new account's agreed terms are applied rather than remembered, and the ninety-day review is a report rather than an archaeology project. Flat monthly tiers — $499, $949 and $1,499 as of September 2026 — with no per-user charge. The features page has the detail; a walkthrough is the quickest way to see how an account's terms flow through to its invoices.

Contract terms, permit responsibilities and documentation requirements vary by state, county and city, and by customer. Verify against your own contract and with the authority having jurisdiction rather than relying on how the last customer worked.