Out of the Squad Car, Into the Truck

A knack for education and a sharp public image help Jerry Scarborough to succeed in a second career as a septic and portable restroom professional
Out of the Squad Car, Into the Truck
A technician from Hall’s Septic Service pumps the bilge from the tug “Night Hawk” at Salisbury Towing on the Susquehanna River in Havre de Grace, Md. This is one of four tugboats the company services.

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Take a look at this Hall’s Septic Service and Hall’s Honey Pots article featured 10 years ago in the September 2003 issue of Pumper magazine. We spotlight the company again in a follow-up story to see how the business has evolved over the last decade: “Sticking to ‘Hall’s Way.’” 

You might say Jerry Scarborough has always been dedicated to making life a little cleaner and people a little smarter. 

He began his career as a Maryland state trooper, keeping the dregs of society off the streets and counseling wayward drivers on better road behavior. Now, as the owner of Hall’s Septic Service, Inc. in Street, Md., Jerry makes sure his customers have clean septic systems and the information they need to keep them efficient and fully functional. 

If his choices seem a bit incongruous, you wouldn’t be the first to ask him how he made his unlikely career change. But Jerry finds parallels between his two vocations. Aside from cleanliness and the need for education, he stresses a high level of customer service and exercises the same innate curiosity about every aspect of pumping that he did when he was in law enforcement. 

“I want to know about everything,” Jerry admits, with high energy and a playful demeanor. “I still have the mind of an investigator.” That attitude has obviously paid off.

When he retired from the Maryland State Patrol, Jerry first looked for security work at the nearby Peachtree Nuclear Plant. When the results were disappointing, he approached one of his father’s service station customers – a man he remembers only as Mr. Hall – who had become a friend over the years. He had heard that Hall was planning to retire, and so asked about how he made his living. 

“Mr. Hall always impressed me,” says Jerry. “He looked sharp, wore wingtip shoes, dress pants and a tie to work. Very clean.” Hall told Jerry he ran a septic pumping business and invited him to ride along on his route to see if he thought the business was for him. They rode around in a 1976 GMC truck. Jerry liked the spiffy white-and-blue paint job with lots of chrome. 

“I saw that Mr. Hall stayed clean and tucked a hundred-dollar bill in his pocket at each job, and people always said to him, ‘Now you come back!’ ” he recalls. “I thought, ‘I can do that!’ ” 

A clean break

So, in July of 1991, Hall sold the business to Jerry, who inherited the 1976 GMC along with a 1980 Chevy with dual chrome stacks. Each truck could only haul one load at a time, so he converted the GMC to a portable toilet hauler for the Hall’s Honey Pots part of the business. 

Then he took classes about septic hauling and how to do it right. Eight months later, he became certified in septic system inspection in a National Association of Wastewater Transporters (NAWT) course during his first Pumper & Cleaner Expo in Nashville. He never looked back. 

Today, Jerry operates Hall's Septic Service and Hall's Honey Pots, a portable restroom rental company. His septic pumper truck fleet includes:

  • A 1988 Chevy Kodiak with 2,500-gallon Lely tank and Masport pump.
  • A 1999 Chevy 7500 Series with 2,000-gallon tank and Jurop pump.
  • A 2003 Peterbilt 330 Series with 2,000-gallon Abernethy Welding tank and Masport pump. 

He also owns three combination septic pumping and portable restroom service trucks:

  • A 1997 Chevy 6500 with 1,350-gallon waste tank, 250-gallon freshwater barrel and Jurop pump.
  • A 1991 GMC Topkick with 2,000-gallon Wee Engineer tank, Bationi pump and 400-gallon freshwater barrel.
  • A 1970 GMC with 1,250-gallon tank, 100-gallon freshwater barrel mounted on the side, and an antique pump. 

Hall's Honey Pots owns 315 Satellite standard restrooms, 10 Satellite ADA units (with four more on order), and one 14-foot special-event trailer. 

Septic 101

Mindful that a customer’s first impression comes through contact with his employees and fleet, Jerry maintains a clean impression throughout his business. He enforces a uniform dress code consisting of standard-issue blue shirts with Hall’s logo on them, and clean blue jeans without rips or frays. All trucks are identically painted, to offer a consistent visual image to the public. Jerry believes these efforts enhance public perceptions of Hall’s while instilling pride and self respect among employees. 

Part of what has made Hall’s so successful is Jerry’s insistence on top-flight customer service. That includes a proactive approach to educating people about their septic systems: how they work, what helps them, and what might hurt them. 

After repeating the same things to his customers and training employees to do the same, he came to a realization. As with the reports he used to write as a trooper, his septic reports began to contain the same educational language over and over again. It was becoming a tiresome and inefficient task, but he knew it was very important that people get the information. So, he came up with a tool that is now a hallmark of the business: Septic 101. 

An ingenious marketing piece disguised as an educational flyer, Septic 101 offers tips on taking good care of residential septic tanks. It shows traces of Jerry’s droll sense of humor, containing such wisdom as “Other than toilet paper, if you don’t eat or drink it, it doesn’t go in the septic tank.” It gives people straightforward information they need while also reinforcing the value of Hall’s service and expertise. 

Repeat business

Clearly, Jerry understands the public relations value of customer education, perhaps another vestige of his law enforcement experience. Along with the Septic 101 piece, he dispenses lots of advice to those interested and willing to listen, and encourages his employees to do the same. 

They explain why Hall’s always back flushes every tank at least twice, and how failing to do so can leave solids buildup that might later cause trouble. They explain how each truck carries a 10-foot metal pole to check the depth and viscosity of tank liquid, in addition to the standard visual inspection crews perform during each pumping. 

This personal interaction involves the customer more in the system’s care by making it understandable. It also reinforces the status of Hall’s technicians as experts. Apparently it works: Hall’s maintains a repeat business rate over 50 percent. 

Jerry is also savvy about the need for sound business ethics. When asked about his business philosophy, there is a thoughtful pause, and then: “Just do the right thing, and it’ll pay you back tenfold. I really believe that.” 

For instance, Hall’s provides septic system inspection services for new homebuyers and purposely shies away from owning a backhoe because of that. Without the backhoe, there is no temptation to “find” anything wrong with a system that’s really not a problem, just to keep the backhoe busy. “This way I don’t have any conflict of interest with our inspection services,” he says. “What we find is what’s really there.” 

Stringent rules

Jerry gets recertified through NAWT every two years at Georgetown Tech in Delaware. He has stringent rules for how Hall’s inspections are to be done. Technicians pump the tank first to get old solids out for a clear visual inspection. They inspect to see if a bad drainfield is causing water to run back into the tank. 

He educates customers in the value of an inspection if they suspect there may be a problem, because he believes in saving an existing system instead of replacing it. “It’s a lot more affordable for a customer to have us take a close look than to have to replace their system,” he says. “By the time we’re done, they usually thank us for suggesting it.” 

SIDEBAR: ANOTHER NICHE

Jerry Scarborough had owned Hall's Septic Service for two years when he noticed one of his residential customers had a rented portable toilet on her lawn. 

“I’m hurt!” he teased her. She said her daughter was having a wedding that weekend, and that if Jerry had offered portables, she would have rented from him. He resolved to look into this potential business niche. 

At the very least, Jerry decided, he could offer portables pumping and maintenance. He mounted a 100-gallon aluminum freshwater storage tank on the 1970 GMC 1,250-gallon pumper that came along when he bought the business, converting it to his first portables service vehicle. 

Then he called around to locate a supplier of portable restrooms. He found that Satellite Industries Inc. was offering a two-day course at its Virginia plant, so he and his wife went down to learn the basics of the business. Hall's Honey Pots was born. 

On returning, he began planning to buy his first units. On the way to his bank for a business development loan, he mentioned this plan to a retired friend, who promptly took Jerry into his backyard. There, the friend dug up a coffee can, took out an amount of cash equal to what Jerry needed, and handed it over. Stunned, Jerry thanked him and promised to pay it back in a year – which he did. 

Jerry put his first 14 Satellite 101 and 102 toilets and a single ADA unit to work at a Beach Boys concert in Havre de Grace, Md., swabbing them down between songs. Since then, he has built the business to about 350 Satellite Maxim 3000s, eight ADA units, and an Olympic Fiberglass Honey Wagon party trailer. 

“On word-of-mouth alone, I could get bigger if I wanted to,” says Jerry, “but I’m comfortable where we are.” He pulls about a third of his annual gross sales from his portables operation, splitting the business pretty evenly between residential rentals for yard parties, pool and workshop use, and large special events.



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