Bullish on Portable Sanitation

Despite an economic slowdown, some contractors look to bolster their restroom inventories

If my conversations with pumpers are any indication, there’s a movement afoot to either diversify into portable restroom rental, or to enlarge their presence in that market if they’re already there. A few contractors tell us here what’s happening with the portable sanitation side of their businesses.

Bobbie Reppa and her husband, Dwight Reppa, have owned Macy’s Services since 1999, but the business has been in the family for 20 years. The company specializes in septic tank pumping and inspections, drainfield restoration, sewer jet service and video line inspection. They also have a healthy portable sanitation business in the tourist-oriented ski town of Jackson Hole. Restroom rental accounts for 40-50 percent of their annual billings.

Jackson Hole is famous for its challenging, well-groomed ski slopes. Along with luring the usual tourist traffic, the area is a vacation home to many celebrities and business executives. That makes it “a community with a lot of money,” Bobbie Reppa says. “There’s so much second home building and golf course building going on,” that the construction bubble hasn’t burst there yet. “You’d think they’d run out of land, but they just keep finding little corners to build. And at Teton Village — the ski area — they’re putting in a lot of very high-end hotels, very big ones.” To serve all the building contractors, Macy’s has about 400 Satellite Industries Tufway and PolyJohn Enterprises Corp. PJ3 units. Currently, 90 percent of their portables business is with contractors.

Then there are the special events. “We serve a lot of weddings,” Reppa says. “There’s a big wine auction in the summertime, a fundraiser. We use the restroom trailers for that one.” Macy’s has a large ACSI Inc. restroom trailer, a mid-size unit from JAG Mobile Solutions, and a two-station unit from an independent company in Salt Lake City, Utah. “There’s also the Snow King Hill Climb,” the largest snowmobile event of its kind in America, according to Reppa. “It takes a lot of units, attracting 15,000 to 20,000 people a day, easily. We put out 60 to 90 units for that one.” Macy’s supplies Satellite Maxim 3000 units for events, including six ADA models.

Reppa anticipates that the portables side of Macy’s will continue to grow, since she believes its specific market is mostly insulated from the kind of economy-slowing influences most of the country is currently subject to.

Julie and Chip Heffern took over the family septic-pumping business in 1979, started by Chip Heffern’s father in the 1960s. Located 40 miles south of Erie, Heffern provides pumping, drain cleaning and portable restroom service to their region of northeast Pennsylvania. Julie Heffern says about half their business comes from the portables side, and she anticipates the segment will continue to grow.

Currently, Heffern’s rental ratio splits out at about 40 percent construction and 60 percent special events. Though Franklin’s building boom has slowed, Heffern has noticed a growing demand for special events units. “Everybody’s picking up on (portable restrooms) for reunions, outdoor picnics; all the ball fields have them now.”

Despite the slowdown in building, Heffern believes construction unit demand will also increase. “With a lot of the laws changing on the contractors now, a lot of the smaller jobs that didn’t have one will now be needing them. A lot of contractors are more apt to have a portable toilet on site now. Like the gas and oil well drillers, if they were way back off the road before, it wasn’t necessary that they had to have one. But now they do with new environmental codes from the state.”

Cindi Brown and her husband, Leonard Brown, began their business as a septic pumping firm in Del Norte, Colo., about halfway between Colorado Springs and Durango in the southwestern part of the state. About 10 years ago, they got into portable restrooms as well, when they learned of the wide need for on-site sanitation by farmers in the agricultural region. Workers needed restrooms so they wouldn’t have to be transported back and forth from the fields. Such transport was a time and money waster for the farmers, as it interrupted productivity.

The Browns now field more than 180 Satellite Tufway units. About 150 of those serve agricultural customers, and the rest are reserved for events. “We don’t have many events in our area,” explains Cindi Brown. “Generally, we do a few weddings and the annual Mountain Man Rendezvous.”

Portables account for half the company’s annual billings, and Leonard Brown believes the demand for portables will continue to grow. They’ve already had enough demand for the trailer-mounted units they’ve built, and though the growth is slow, it remains steady.



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