Richard Davis feels like he’s swimming upstream a lot of the time, fighting a bad economy, extensive regulation and less-than-scrupulous contractors. But the owner of Quick Response Septic Services keeps moving forward.
The Grass Valley, Calif., businessman keeps his septic trucks busy. He is expanding his portable restroom business and looking for other ways to diversify operations, such as turning his grease collections into biodiesel fuel.
“You’ve got to branch out and diversify or you’re not going to make it,” Davis says.
Eighty percent of his septic business is residential pumping and 20 percent commercial work. A decline in home construction and consumer concern about the economy slowed residential pumping, but commercial business and portable restroom contracts take up the slack, he says.
FLEET FACTS
Overall, his business is equally divided between septic and commercial pumping work and portable restrooms. The latter includes construction, fire camp and special events clients. He has 450 portable restrooms, about 150 of which are out permanently. He expanded into portable sanitation five years ago and now is pushing beyond his home in Nevada County into Placer County and closer to Sacramento.
Davis’ inventory includes restroom units from Five Peaks Technology, PolyJohn Enterprises Corp. and Armal. The company runs four vacuum trucks most of the time, though during the fire season the entire fleet of six service vehicles is kept hopping. In addition to pumping, he provides potable water for firefighting.
“Most of the fire camps are owned by the forest service or Pacific Gas & Electric. We have contracts for pumping those and rest areas along the highway,” he says. “The contracts keep us going through the wintertime, which makes it nice.”
When fire season business picks up, Davis takes on three or four extra workers who are nephews and other family members. His wife, Jeanette, works in the office.
“She and the secretaries go to the contractors’ meetings and stuff like that,” he says.
He’d rather be out in the field than sitting in meetings.
His fleet consists of two Chevrolet TopKicks with 2,500-gallon stainless steel waste tanks (1991 and 2000 models), three Freightliner 5,000-gallon tankers (1988-1991 models), four Ford F-450s that he uses for portable sanitation, two with 550-gallon tanks and two with 750-gallon tanks (2000-2004 models) and two International 4900s with 1,650- and 2,500-gallon tanks (1991 models) used for potable water.
He also has four trailers to haul portable restrooms, with two more under construction. The trailers carry four, 10, 16 and 16 units, respectively. The two being built also will carry 16 units each.
BUILDING TRUCKS
Davis gets vacuum tanks from Best Enterprises, but builds the trucks himself.
“It’s something to do during the slow period,” he says.
Davis also builds his own portable restroom trailers, saying that’s what he does for weekend relaxation. He once borrowed a flatbed trailer from a competitor that secured the portable units by a strap over the skids. That made him nervous. “I didn’t care for those because of the wind. That’s a lot of stress on those rivets,” he says.
He chose a different design in his own trailers. They have high sides that can be lowered and used as ramps for unloading. “You don’t have to lean the toilets way back to get up under them,” he says of the easier loading and unloading process.
Davis continues to seek ways to diversify, a task given more emphasis by a slowing septic market. He and a fellow pumper are considering whether to start a biodiesel plant near Echo, Nev., using the brown grease they collect for raw material. Davis says the plant would solve several problems.
“We’ll make a profit off of it, but it also gives us a place to get rid of (grease), “he says. “Now we take it to our disposal plant, but you have to let them know it’s coming because they process it differently. They’ll do it, but they won’t mind if they don’t have to.”
Davis says they hope to get started soon, though they haven’t decided on design or equipment, yet. They do know they will build it in Nevada because the regulations and red tape are less than in California.
Davis says there are four pumper companies in his area and they often share work. He got out of sewer and drain work six years ago — “I couldn’t find any good employees” — and refers that business to one of the other companies.
“GIVE ME THE TANKS”
“I tell them ‘give me the tanks, I’ll give you the drain cleaning.’ If they know it’s a tank repair, they know they have to give it to me. If they give me a job to pump, I do the same for them if the line is broken,” he says.
California law requires point-of-sale septic system inspections, and Davis says he gets a lot of work through real estate transactions. Also, the law requires every system be inspected annually and monitoring reports made.
Davis has three employees who’ve been with him between three and 15 years. He says he pays his employees “on the higher end,” but does not offer health insurance or retirement benefits. He hires older workers — the oldest is 65 — because they have more pride in their work and take the time to do the job properly.
“As far as the portable restroom side goes, the older guys are better. They are not in a hurry. It takes an hour or two longer than the younger guys, but that’s all right,” he says.
He likes the older workers because they are thorough and generally have fewer family issues.
Davis was born in Shreveport, La., but his parents moved to Northern California when he was seven. He worked for a Roto-Rooter franchisee, and then started his own sewer and drain business. He acquired the septic business from an owner who became disabled when a pole he was handling touched a power line.
DISPOSAL DILEMMA
Quick Response’s service area is Placer and Nevada counties, northeast of Sacramento. Placer County extends from the suburbs of Sacramento to Lake Tahoe, 105 miles, end to end. With Sacramento bedroom communities expanding in the county, Placer’s population grew from 248,399 in 2000 to more than 300,000 in 2004.
Nevada County, where Grass Valley is located, has a population of more than 90,000, and is about 90 miles from west to east. Sacramento is near the western edge of the county.
Davis says the large rural areas are all served by septic systems, which makes for plenty of work. But after he pumps the tanks, disposal is the more difficult issue, he says.
His trucks drive to Lincoln in Placer County — 37 miles from his yard and a good deal farther from the far end of his service area — to a private wastewater treatment plant.
“The only time they let us dump (at municipal plants) in Placer or Nevada counties is if we are doing work for the city or county,” he says.
Davis says that at one time he was charging $85 to pump a septic tank. The going rate now is about eight times that amount, and he charges slightly less than average for the area.
PLANT EXPANSION WOES
Davis says pumpers are pushing developers of gated communities, which have their own sewer systems and treatment plants, to expand those plants so they have capacity to accept septage from area pumpers.
“The state told them to give us a place to dump and that was three or four years ago and they haven’t done it,” he says of the gated communities. “They say they can’t afford to expand their plants, but they do expand them to add more houses.”
He’s trying to get Nevada County to expand a county- or city-owned plant closer to his office.
“You have to prove to them that they can make money. Then we have a chance of getting it,” he says. “Then we can dump within four or five miles instead of having to go 80 miles round trip.”
Davis says California does not require a license for pumping tanks, but you do need a contractor’s license to repair them. He says one unscrupulous repair contractor was convincing people to give him power of attorney so he could take out building permits as an owner/builder, which allowed him to get around the licensing requirement. Davis says he was later called to fix many of those repair jobs.
“When times are hard, there are a lot of unlicensed contractors going around putting systems in. The problem is California OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administra-tion) will only come around every five or six years. No matter how much you complain about the unlicensed contractors, they just don’t follow up,” he says.
MAKING A REPUTATION
Marketing for Davis is primarily by word-of-mouth. He relies on his reputation to increase business. “We have ads in the phone book and people see our truck and call,” he says. “I believe word-of-mouth and your reputation is what’s going to get you business.”
Davis says his part of California, which is in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, requires a wide variety of septic systems because terrain and soil types vary so much. “A lot of the flat area is where they build the house, and the rest is pumping up and down,” he says.
The bulk of his job satisfaction is helping homeowners deal with issues they fear will be serious and costly. Davis received an insurance premium cut for going 15 years without a claim and passed that savings on to customers.
“It’s a lot of fun to go to people’s houses when they are in trouble and you can solve (a problem), especially when you don’t cost them a lot of money,” he says.
