A Restroom Resurgence

Signs point to a strengthening portable sanitation industry, both through a rebounding economy and an awareness of the need for professional standards

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“The worst is behind us,” says Jeff Wigley, owner and founder of Pit Stop Sanitation Services Inc. in Atlanta. He figures it’s time for the economy to finally recover, and he hopes portable restroom companies are prepared for it.

He has seen the ups and downs of the industry since leaving the corporate world for the portable sanitation business in 1995. “I had read that portable sanitation was going to be needed for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics,” he says. “We got enough business from that to make a name for ourselves and here we are in 2012 and the doors are still open.”

Wigley started with a truck and 30 portable units. He now has a dozen employees. Pit Stop has about 800 units in the field, which is about half from the company’s peak in 1997. Even though he has about 1,200 units in the yard, he is optimistic about his company’s future. Wigley, president of the Portable Sanitation Association International during the trade association’s 40th year, has the same positive outlook about the industry.

Pumper: What’s your forecast for portable sanitation?

Wigley: I have good friends in the industry in different parts of the country. The consensus seems to be that we may have taken that first step toward an uptick in business. It might have to wait until after the gridlock of the presidential election, but I think we’re pointed in the right direction.

Pumper: Have you done anything at Pit Stop to be ready?

Wigley: We’ve spent a lot of time refurbishing units and maintaining our inventory. Our units are ready to go when the phone starts ringing. When customers want your units out in the field, it’s not the time to start cleaning and fixing them.

Pumper: Slow times sometime make people take stock of their situation. What should they look at?

Wigley: The core is getting down to knowing your actual cost. We have to offer value and we need to treat our industry as a valuable service, not a commodity, so when business starts to take off, we can get the prices we need to operate successful businesses.

Try to break costs down so you know the cost of a service call, and that includes more than salary and healthcare and the cost of goods. You also have property tax, vehicle insurance, utility costs and other overhead. Small operators may say they don’t have that much because they do it themselves, but you also have to place value on your own time.

Over the last two years, PSAI has presented a lot of seminars about analyzing the cost of your business. We have spreadsheets on the PSAI website anyone can download. It asks all the questions to analyze all your operating and equipment costs so you can make a profit and make enough to invest back into your business.

Pumper: Is any new equipment in the industry capturing your attention?

Wigley: As we all try to get more efficient, we can use things like GPS and other technologies. We have GPS in all our trucks so we can evaluate a route and help drivers, instead of having them parked on the side of a road looking at a map.

Pumper: Being president of PSAI, you get an early view of the regulatory environment. What’s on the horizon?

Wigley: Certification of portable restroom operators is becoming much more common. It will be required here in Georgia later this year and we won’t be the first. The PSAI certification course is recognized in all the states that require certification and many states recognize PSAI functions and the Pumper & Cleaner Expo Education Day for continuing education credits.

Pumper: What’s involved with the PSAI certification?

Wigley: Each student gets our Certification Manual, which is roughly 100 pages. Classroom instruction lasts four to five hours and all items in the manual are covered in detail with time for questions. There is a 50-question, one-hour, multiple-choice test. The manual and tests are available in Spanish.

Passing the test certifies the person for three years. You renew your certification by reviewing a copy of the latest version of the manual. After three more years, you must sit in another classroom session but do not have to take the test again. Certification is on an individual basis and if someone moves from one company to another, certification goes with them.

Pumper: You were one of the pumpers who organized a small association, and then teamed up with the Georgia Onsite Wastewater Association. What drove that?

Wigley: We started in the spring of 2007 with six portable restroom companies when sales tax for portable restroom companies became an issue. Are we providing a service, which is not taxable, or providing a product that is taxable?

Also, some municipalities in the Atlanta area didn’t look too kindly at accepting our waste at that time. Then the possibility of certification of portable restroom operators came up. We came together to try to help our industry, so we figured we needed a lobbyist, which is expensive. GOWA approached us about forming a portable restroom division. GOWA has a lobbyist, a legal team, and they’re well entrenched in the state.

And it worked. GOWA has been a blessing for us and helped make us more of an established industry; any portable restroom operator can join now.

The state ended up passing a law that specifically exempts portable restroom companies from sales tax. GOWA has helped us on the certification issue because they had experience with pumper and installer certifications. And we’ve been able to educate wastewater plants about our wastewater so they understand it better and are more accepting of it.

Pumper: Do you see the same increase in acceptance from the public?

Wigley: Our industry is looked on more favorably and people are realizing that portable restrooms are an integral part of special events. We’re seeing more hand sanitizing units and restroom trailers being used. We can offer flush units, restrooms with sinks, standalone sinks, units with lights; people like those options. Special events have helped us diversify from the construction and commercial sectors. Handicapped accessible units, I think, are going to increase in popularity.

Portable restrooms have even become more popular in public parks, especially during festivals and big events when the permanent bathrooms aren’t enough. People are more agreeable to supplement those permanent restrooms with our portable units.

Pumper: You’ve done some work on portable restrooms and the impact on conserving water. Tell us about that.

Wigley: We had a tremendous drought two years ago in Georgia and we provided portable restrooms to parks that closed down permanent restrooms to save drinking water. One hundred people can use a portable restroom that starts with five gallons of water, and that’s 100 times they aren’t flushing drinking water down the drain.

PSAI is working with some agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine how many gallons of water portable restrooms save. I have heard something like 125 million gallons a day across the world; that’s 45 billion gallons a year. We’re trying to fine-tune that number. A lot of the manufacturers are telling me their business has increased in some of the developing countries where they are saving a lot of drinking water.

We really need to let the world know that we are a green industry. We really are part of the recycling business. We need to tell people that and blow our own horns.



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