Oil and water can mix quite nicely — and profitably, too. Just ask Russell Adkins, a portable restroom operator in tiny Sonora, Texas.
Adkins took over a family business in 1996 and renamed it Adkins Septic Services. Since then, he’s successfully drilled into a profitable market niche by serving the portable restroom and water needs of drilling crews working the rolling oil fields around Sonora, located about halfway between San Angelo and Del Rio in West Texas.
And amazingly enough, with only 20 or so units in the field, his business generates revenue roughly equivalent to what an urban counterpart might pull in with hundreds and hundreds of restrooms.
How? Let’s just say he makes it up on distance, not volume. Adkins’ trucks usually drive more than 100 miles one-way to deliver a single restroom, two waste tanks and water to a crew. Three or four days later they head back to clean the unit and waste tanks and bring more water, then drive out again to pick up everything three days after that. It’s a necessary service for which customers are willing to pay a premium.
“I remember buying some used portable restrooms from another operator in Fort Worth. While we were talking, he took a telephone call, and I heard him decline a job because it was 10 miles away,” Adkins chuckles. “Heck, we might travel 150 miles one way to deliver a restroom!”
Adkins said his company charges a separate flat fee for the portable restroom rental, 300-gallon waste tank(s) rental, 1,000-gallon water delivery, cleaning the waste tank(s) and restroom in midweek, and picking up the restroom and waste tanks. On top of all that, Adkins assesses a per-mile fee to cover the transportation costs.
STARTED OUT SMALL
The business was much different back when Adkins’ grandfather established Adkins Plumbing in 1934. Adkins’ father, Frank, took over the business in 1968 and added septic tank cleaning to the company’s services. The company expanded its business base after Frank Adkins talked with portable restroom operators one year at the Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo International.
“They said I had nearly everything I needed to get into the portable restroom business because I was already cleaning out stock tanks and septic tanks,” Frank Adkins recalls. “I saw a need for it, so I figured I’d go ahead and give it a try and see if it works or doesn’t work.”
Shortly after the younger Adkins took over the business, the cyclical oil business in West Texas took a turn for the better. The PRO has been riding the gusher of business ever since.
About 85 percent of Adkins’ business comes from serving oil rig crews. The crews drill wells down about 8,000 feet, so they’re typically in one place for six or seven days before they pack up and move to another location. Adkins’ trucks follow them around the wide-open ranchlands with water and portable restrooms, most of them standard units made by PolyJohn Enterprises. Adkins owns about 60 units; he utilizes used units for the oil fields because of the beating they take and saves his new units for the occasional special event.
JUST ADD WATER
In response to customer requests, the company added non-potable water delivery to its services in 1997, Adkins says. Each drilling crew consists of about eight men who work around the clock and live in trailers. And because they work in such remote locations, and towns are so far apart, it’s not easy to obtain water for things such as bathing, washing dishes and doing the laundry.
“The crews might have to drag a water trailer into a small town 25 or 30 miles away, waste hours using a garden hose at a convenience store to fill up the water tank, then drag the trailer back to the jobsite,” Adkins explains.
The water deliveries occasionally pose problems when the drilling site is on a hill.
“Sometimes the weight of the water is so great that a tractor has to pull our truck up to the site, if the hill is too steep or muddy,” he says. For that reason, a drilling company will often rent a tractor and have it on hand if a hilltop site is involved.
Adkins’ vehicles also encounter rough terrain when they head out to ranches to clean out septic and stock tanks, which accounts for another 10 percent of the company’s business. Most ranches are accessible by roads “paved” with caliche, a limestone rock used to form a rough road, and some don’t even provide that, Adkins notes.
“Sometimes our trucks drive on nothing but pastureland,” he says.
TRUCKS TAKE A BEATING
As you can imagine, Adkins’ trucks endure a lot of punishment. The hardworking fleet comes from a variety of truck builders, including Lely Manufacturing Inc., Best Enterprises Inc., Pik Rite Inc., and several built by Adkins himself. Service vehicles include a Kenworth T450 with a 3,000-gallon steel waste tank, several Ford F-series and GMC trucks with steel and stainless steel vacuum tanks in the 400- to 1.000-gallon capacity range. For hauling the 1,000-gallon water tanks, made by Wylie Manufacturing Co., Adkins uses a Ford F-350 Crew Cab and a Chevrolet HD 3/4-ton pickup truck.
“About four of our trucks average 300 miles a day,” Adkins explains. “Our gas bill alone is about $6,000 a month. I’ve raised my mileage fee ever since gas prices started going up. It’s the only way I can recoup my expenses. But I also move that fee down, depending on fluctuations in gas prices.”
The company tries to do as much vehicle repair in town as possible. Doing otherwise would require a trip to San Angelo, the nearest large town, which would take a badly needed truck out of service for at least half a day. Moreover, the vehicles rack up high mileage so fast that warranties usually expire quickly, rendering trips to a dealer a moot point, Adkins says.
“We basically run a truck until it’s dead, put in a new engine or transmission, then run it again until it’s dead,” he says.
The company now buys newer and bigger trucks that can better withstand the beating. Bigger trucks also can carry larger tanks, which reduce the number of back-and-forth trips required to service the ranches — important when you consider the distances involved.
“Before, if we used a 1-ton truck with a 270-gallon waste tank, we might have to come back to town to empty the tank, then go out again and finish the job,” Adkins explains. “With bigger trucks and tanks, we can run to one ranch after another.” That capacity is becoming increasingly important as many large ranches split up into smaller ones. The subsequent new homes being built on those smaller spreads creates even more demand for septic tank pumping, he says.
DISPOSAL ISSUES
Another factor driving vehicle wear and tear is landfill rules that dictate where Adkins can dispose of waste from about a half dozen area mud sumps the company cleans out. While the local landfill accepts septic tank and restroom waste, mud from sumps — which trap waste before it can enter a sewer line — is a different matter.
The mud from these sumps is tested annually to determine what’s being dumped. If tests reveal higher-than-allowed levels of metals — such as nickel and beryllium, for example — Adkins’ disposal trips become much more time-consuming for the next 12 months.
“Depending on the test results, we have to take mud to either San Angelo, which is 76 miles away, or to Odessa, which is about 180 miles away,” Adkins says. “When you have to tie up a guy and a truck all day to take a load of mud over to Odessa, dump it, wash the truck out and drive back, it really hurts.”
The sumps trap a lot of mud annually because of bitterweed, an invasive plant that’s toxic to some livestock. Ranchers concerned about its spread won’t allow drilling-rig vehicles and equipment on their property unless they’ve first been washed of the dirt and mud that can carry bitterweed seeds.
Despite the daunting logistics, Adkins takes pride in the service his company provides.
“If you do a good job at a fair price, you won’t have much competition,” he notes. “But you have to provide good service. If you don’t get out to an oil field when they want you out there, they’ll find someone else to do it … either you find a way to get out there or you run the risk of someone else taking over the work.”
But in the long run, Adkins clearly gets the job done.
