He Steps in When Treatment Plants Are Far Away or Inconvenient

Trucker Peter Noonan has developed a transport specialty using large tankers to deliver septic waste on behalf of pumpers.

He Steps in When Treatment Plants Are Far Away or Inconvenient

Peter Noonan, owner of J.P Noonan Transportation

Located in the town of West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, J.P. Noonan Transportation is primarily a bulk transportation company operating throughout the New England states. But the company has also developed a niche operation in transporting sewage wastes for clients and acting as an intermediary transportation service for pumpers.

Company owner and founder Peter Noonan Sr. will tell you that he isn’t in the septic business. He’s in the transportation and logistics business, and to him, septic waste is just another commodity among many. Now hauling any type of load from aggregates to mulch, the company currently offers a fleet of 300 trucks, of which three are pumpers dedicated to transporting liquid and septic waste.

At 78 years old, Noonan continues to maintain an active hand in the company and gets behind the wheel of a transport every working day.

Pumper: How did you get started in the trucking business?

Noonan: From my early childhood, I was around the gas and oil industry. My grandfather owned and operated a house-to-house oil delivery service and gas stations while my father worked alongside of him his whole life. As a young boy, I watched the Mobil tank trailers off-load product at Grampy’s bulk plant and I promised myself that one day I would own a truck and be Noonan’s delivery man. After graduating high school, I bought a tractor and an old 3,800-gallon tank trailer and went to work. In 1959, I bought my first new truck, an Autocar single-axle tractor and began hauling for Noonan Brothers Oil and Mobil.

Pumper: When did you discover there was an opportunity to add transportation of septic waste to the list of business services you offered?

Noonan:  In the early 1990s, I was approached by Wastewater Solutions, a small septic company with one 5,000-gallon trailer. They needed a hauler to transport liquid waste to a treatment plant in Templeton, a facility located about 70 miles away. I was eager to take the business but would need to convert an oil trailer into a single-compartment septic trailer. Our first endeavor was to alter 8,500-gallon fuel trailers and outfit them with septic valves. Every day or so, I would leave an empty trailer at the Wastewater Solutions site and remove a full trailer for transport to Templeton.

Pumper: Did you encounter any challenges in the conversion of oil tank trailers so that they could accommodate liquid sanitary waste?

Noonan: We thought we knew what we were doing, venting them and cutting out the middle of the baffles. One day I went to one of our mechanics and told him there was something rattling in the trailer, but I couldn’t figure out what. All we had on the tank was one dome cover and a 6-inch valve. The next morning on my way to a plant in Grafton, I saw the tank was leaking. I arrived at the plant, dropped the load and returned to Noonan’s welding shop where the mechanic found that every baffle in the tank had fallen out of the trailer. Gas weighs 6.3 pounds per gallon; oil weighs 7.3 pounds per gallon; and septic weighs 8.34 pounds per gallon. Those trailers were not built for this heavy, heavy stuff. I quickly decided that I was all through making septic trailers out of oil and gas trailers.

Pumper: What type of vehicle did you start using instead?

Noonan: I started with Fruehaufs, buying only 8,500- to 9,000-gallon single-compartment trailers for septics. Now, I buy clean-bore tankers from Stevens Tanker Division in Texas (all with National Vacuum Equipment pumps). We began buying vacuum trucks and stopped exchanging tanks at the contractors’ sites. Instead we suck out the contractors’ trucks, which they leave in the yard. For one client, we leave a 21,000-gallon frac tank in his yard.

Pumper: How many pumping companies does J.P. Noonan Transportation currently count among its clients?

Noonan: We have about 10 contractors who leave septic waste at a site for us to pick up.

Pumper: What is the range of liquid wastes that you transport?

Noonan: It can include septic wastewater, sludge, and leachate. Some grease. Together, these loads represent about 10 percent of our overall business.

Pumper: What is the value proposition that you offer to your septic pumper clients?

Noonan: Many town waste treatment systems have been taken over by private companies. In many instances, they don’t like to take outside septic and often it’s just too far a distance for the pumper to travel to deliver a small load. If they’ve only got a 3,000-gallon pumper, we can deliver three loads to their one. We also complete the manifests for them. They can do more pumping for their clients while we’re delivering.

Pumper: Who are your other clients for hauling liquid septic waste?

Noonan: Cities, towns, and municipalities want us to pick up waste from their utilities. Some of our clients are also housing projects with septic systems.

Pumper: How much do the treatment plants in the area charge per gallon for accepting septic waste? 

Noonan: Like I said, I am not in the septic business, but in the transportation business. I don’t make any money on the disposal, only on the transportation; so I charge the client what the plant charges me, and the cost varies from a low of about 4 cents to a high of 10 cents.

Pumper: Is septic transport a growing business?

Noonan: Overall it is. However, we’re not seeing a lot of growth as an intermediary for pumping companies.

Pumper: What is a typical day like for you, working on a septic route?

Noonan: I get to work at 2 a.m. and finish my runs about 2 p.m. I will work at the office for two hours or so and then head for home. Bedtime is early for me. Our septic trucks work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 



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