When Nathan Johnson hit the exhibit floor at the Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo last year, he was on a mission. He’d watched his parents’ part-time venture grow into a full-time business supporting several employees. Now the operations manager for Port-Able John Rental & Service Inc. in Bemidji, Minn., knew it was time to develop a long-term management plan.
“As we grew beyond a business that only employs family members, we needed to get a better handle on how we stored and retrieved service data,” Johnson, 29, says. So he walked the Expo in search of an enterprise software package to handle data volume that had grown too large to manage manually. It would also come in handy in managing service contracts and allocating resources.
“I believe we’re successful because as much as possible, we plan our whole next year over each slow winter period,” Johnson explains. Here, he shares his strategies for professional business planning and enterprise management, including properly shaping the vehicle fleet and beginning succession planning.
STARTED AS SIDELINE
Wayne Johnson and his wife, Marlene, handle sales and administrative duties. Their sons and co-owners Jeremy and Nathan Johnson manage shop maintenance and operations, respectively.
Wayne Johnson began moonlighting as a portable restroom operator during a lag in the area’s construction business in 1986. To supplement his income as a plumber, he and a friend built six portable restrooms from plywood with poly liners and tanks. In 1988, he incorporated and bought 12 PolyJohn standard units. By 1996, he and his wife added another dozen units. Over the next 10 years, they doubled their inventory again.
That growth started with a 1997 flood on the Red River that almost destroyed the city of Grand Forks, N.D. The Johnsons bought a truckload of Satellite Industries units and drove them to the stricken area to serve recovery crews. “It was probably then that our company started taking on a life of its own,” Nathan Johnson recalls.
In 2001, Port-Able’s contract with Moondance Jam Classic Rock music festival took off. They’d had the job since 1992, when it started as a private birthday party using six restrooms. By 2008, it had grown into an annual event requiring more than 300 units. “I’ve seen a direct correlation between their growth and ours. Three years ago they started a country jam and we serve that one, as well. They probably account for 10-11 percent of our annual revenues,” Johnson says.
He feels confident that Port-Able can maintain a high level of service while keeping an eye to the bottom line. “We’re very conscious not to extend ourselves too far and carry a lot of credit debt. We try really hard to pay cash for new (equipment),’’ he says. Financial liquidity means that even with a large customer like the music festival, “no one account is ever so important we’d be hurting if we lost them.”
BY THE NUMBERS
Port-Able’s business splits out at about 60 percent portable sanitation, 25 percent septic pumping and 15 percent plumbing. Restroom rentals are about evenly split between special events and construction.
Those events include several outdoor music festivals and concerts annually, for which Port-Able services restrooms backstage as well as at campgrounds. The company places 150 to 300 units at each event. The Concordia Language Villages hold their annual International Days — a camp for kids to learn about different cultures — on Bemidji’s Turtle Lake. This program is open to the public, and campers serve cultural food, put on plays and music programs, and plan arts and crafts activities. The one-day event calls for 40 units.
Port-Able has served the Bemidji Dragon Boat Festival for the last three years. The weeklong race events have doubled their request for units each year, now up to 32. The company also provides all portables for tailgate parties and other outdoor events at Bemidji State University’s football stadium, and currently 20 units for construction of its new Regional Events Center. Other customers include the Alberta Clipper pipeline expansion to bring Canadian oil supplies to the U.S. — 150 units spread over 90 miles with twice-per-week service — the Bemidji Jaycees’ Fourth of July Water Carnival, and some area American Indian powwows.
HIT THE ROAD
These are serviced with a fleet of vacuum service trucks: a 2010 Ford F-550 with a 650-gallon waste/300-gallon freshwater steel tank and Conde pump from Satellite Industries Inc.; a 2009 Ford F-350 with a slide-in unit; a 2001 International 8100 tandem axle carrying a 3,500-gallon steel tank; 1991 International 4900 with a 2,000-gallon waste/250-gallon freshwater steel tank; a 2005 Chevrolet Kodiak 5500 with a 1,000-gallon waste/250-gallon freshwater steel tank; a 1985 GMC 3500 with 1,600-gallon steel waste tank and 225-gallon freshwater tank; 1997 Freightliner with a 1,600-gallon steel waste tank and 250-gallon TOICO Industries poly freshwater tank; and a 2002 Ford F-350 with a Dyna-Vac slide-in unit. Most service rigs carry Masport pumps.
Johnson says the fleet is well-planned for efficient service. “We’re making a conscious effort to buy the right trucks and get rid of some of the older, homemade vehicles that were built out of necessity so we’d have enough vehicles to cover our major customers. We used to run exclusively one-ton trucks because our routes were smaller, and they maneuver well in tighter areas like campgrounds. But for our regular service route, they’re a little small.”
VARIED INVENTORY
The vehicles must be able to transport a significant inventory of restrooms, including 500 standard units, most of which are PolyJohn PJN3s with about two dozen Satellite Industries Tufways and a dozen PolyPortables Integra units. Two PolyJohn We’ll Care IIIs and 22 wheelchair accessible PolyJohn Comfort Inns and Satellite Industries’ Freedom units cover ADA needs.
The company has a 2008 Comfort Elite II restroom trailer from Wells Cargo, along with two 4- by 8-foot steel-frame trailers from Northern Tool & Supply in Duluth, Minn., to which the company mounts groups of portable restrooms..
Cold Minnesota winters prompted fabrication of a cabana unit (required on union construction sites). It consists of a PolyJohn PJN3 unit with a 110-volt wall-mounted heater. Two walk-through men’s room urinal units are made from PolyPortables and PolyJohn restrooms.
The company also has 24 sinks — 20 PolyJohn Applause units and four PolyPortables TagAlongs — and four PolyJohn Sani-Stands. Two PolyJohn Fleet Hot Shower Cabanas are joined by a homemade shower trailer made from eight PolyJohn Fleet shower units running four 75-gallon LP gas water heaters and low-flow showerheads. “I can rent this more cheaply to organizations who otherwise might not be able to afford showers,” Johnson explains. “It really helps us service our best customers.”
BUILDING PRODUCTIVITY
Several years ago, Johnson knew the family had to set some goals for the future. “After our growth burst in 2002, I knew we needed to stop thinking of this as a mom-and-pop business, and start taking ourselves more seriously. We needed to make some real plans. So we began succession planning, and it’s a lot of work.”
That planning prepares for the day when he’s ready to retire and the business will pass to new owners. Johnson knows he’ll need detailed records for any future valuations, so the first thing he did was begin to automate recordkeeping.
To start, he took a hard look at daily operations, and realized that succession planning was also going to help in everyday procedures. “When you own your own business, you’ve got to put in a lot of hours. But keeping a balance is so important, and maintaining a productive, constructive work atmosphere is easier when you plan,” he observes.
“I’m constantly looking for ways to become more efficient. Tracking paperwork is a challenge, because I’m not always here in the shop. My in-box has often become really stacked up and it just seems such a waste of my time and resources to do this all by paper,’’ he explains. “If someone calls and wants information about what they did last year, I have to put them on hold, find a file, pull it out and then tell them what they need to know. It’s so much more efficient to be able to pull it up onscreen and so much more personable not to have to cause a break in the conversation while I look.”
So through his research at the Pumper & Cleaner Expo, he eventually purchased The Service Program by Westrom Software. The program runs on Microsoft Access to manage all aspects of the business, including customer contact information, service records, scheduling, reminders, and more. Johnson couldn’t be happier to ditch the paper records.
“I don’t have to worry about illegible handwriting from the field technicians. It provides maps of each property. I — or anyone else taking an order — can just pull it up onscreen and immediately see the parameters of the job. It’s more efficient and professional.”
What’s next on the horizon for this growing family operation?
“I’m seeing a trend in greater demand for high-end trailers and accessibility,’’ Johnson says. “And there will continue to be increased emphasis on hand care. We’ll be adding more hand-wash stations. Especially with the H1N1 flu virus, it’s definitely impacting our industry.
You can benefit from people’s concerns, by providing that service.”
Sounds like a plan.
