For almost 50 years and two generations of family ownership, Blue Bowl Sanitation in Fulton, N.Y., has made old-fashioned customer service and a common-sense business mindset the cornerstone of its portable sanitation operation. And Joe El-Hage, the company’s majority owner and son of company founder Hider El-Hage I, doesn’t plan to change that strategy any time soon.
“My dad was extremely strict on a lot of things, especially the quality of work and the cleanliness of our restrooms, and we keep the same principles,” says El-Hage, who owns the business with his brother, Hider El-Hage II. “I’m old-school, just like he was.’’
That means the pair and their crew of service drivers still clean restrooms top-to-bottom with a bucket and a brush, just like the elder El-Hage did when he started the business in 1952. To do anything less than scrub the walls, along with the seat and floor of every unit, is considered taking the lazy way out to the El-Hage family.
El-Hage’s no-nonsense approach extends to how he communicates with customers. In short, there’s no room for stuffed shirts in this company. The brothers are hands-on in the field and like to talk directly to their clients.
“We’re a corporation, but as president, I still service, pick up and deliver units,” says El-Hage, who started running routes for his father when he was 16 years old. “A lot of times, I meet with people face-to-face and discuss what they want. There’s no texting or Twitter or e-mail. Things get misinterpreted in writing. A lot of people I deal with would rather talk to me face-to-face, if they have the time.”
Blue Bowl also serves customers by dealing with complaints quickly and effectively. The way El-Hage looks at it, he’d rather have a customer call with a complaint than call a competitor. And providing good customer service also means being available all the time. “When no one is in the office, calls go directly to my cell phone or Hider’s,” he says. “You can talk to someone no matter what time of day it is. Hider has taken calls at 3 a.m. For us, service is a 24/7 commitment.”
OPEN TO EXPANSION
Despite their old-school stance, the El-Hage brothers aren’t mired in the past when it comes to running the business, which gets about two-thirds of its sales volume from special events and one-third from construction rentals. Their father, who passed away in 2002, believed in keeping the business small, but one of the first things the brothers did after assuming control of the business was buy 90 new restrooms from PolyPortables Inc.
“Then we bought out another (portable sanitation) business that had been around for 25 or 30 years,” El-Hage says.
Today, Blue Bowl owns between 800 and 900 units, most from PolyPortables and the rest a mix of units from PolyJohn Enterprises Corp. and Olympia Fiberglass Industries. About 50 of the units are handicapped-accessible.
To service those restrooms, the company owns a 1991 Ford F-450 outfitted by Keith Huber Inc. with a steel tank (600 gallons waste/250 gallons freshwater) and M2 pump from Masport Inc.; and 1992 and 1995 Ford F-450s, both with steel tanks (500 gallons waste/300 gallons freshwater) and Masport M2 pumps.
The company owns seven other trucks: two 1999 Ford F-550s, a 2000 Ford F-550, a 2000 Ford F-450, 2000 and 2003 Chevrolet 3500s and a 1978 Chevrolet C-60 rollback truck. Blue Bowl also relies on four slide-in pumping units: a homemade unit equipped with a stainless-steel tank (300 gallons waste/150 gallons freshwater) and a Conde pump from Westmoor Ltd.; two built by Crescent Tank Manufacturing with steel tanks (500 gallons waste/250 gallons freshwater) and Masport HVL3 pumps; and one generic unit with a steel tank (750 gallons waste/300 gallons freshwater) and a Masport HCL4 pump.
SLIDE-INS BOOST FLEXIBILITY
Blue Bowl uses the slide-in units — mounted on flat beds — primarily for special events, and the fixed-tank vacuum trucks for service routes.
“We like to use the slide-ins because we can still carry four restrooms behind it — even six if we use the lift gate,” El-Hage says. “If we use one of our vacuum trucks with a fixed tank, we can only haul two units with the fold-down gate, so the slide-ins offer more flexibility … we can also carry an extra tank for water, or put boxes of toilet paper in the extra space behind the slide-in.
“Plus, using the slide-ins reduces the wear and tear on the vacuum trucks,” he adds. “It only takes me 15 minutes to put a slide-in unit in or take it out.”
Blue Bowl services its own vehicles, unless employees don’t have time or a repair involves something major, such as a blown engine or transmission. To preserve vehicle longevity, El-Hage is careful about hiring employees.
“If you’ve got a driver that doesn’t care, they break more things on trucks and beat them up,” he says. “Someone who takes pride in their work does a job right and takes good care of equipment.”
To motivate employees, they’re eligible for the same product discounts the company gets at places where it does business, such as auto parts stores and for heating fuel. They also receive discounted tickets at special events the company services, such as concerts and car races. The company also allows proven route drivers to use their truck to commute to and from work, he says.
STATE FAIR CHALLENGES SERVICE
Every portable restroom operator has a particular even that tests its customer service commitment. For Blue Bowl, it was the 12-day New York State Fair, held in Syracuse in late August — and ending on Labor Day. While Blue Bowl recently lost the job to a low-ball bid, El-Hage says the job still exemplifies what his company’s service ethic is all about.
“For almost two weeks, we lost two vehicles and four workers because they don’t have time to do anything else,” El-Hage says of the event, which is about a half-hour drive away from their home base. “It’s hectic, with a lot of 12-hour days. Plus, there are a lot of other special events we service on Labor Day weekend.”
Blue Bowl had delivered and serviced about 50 standard and 10 handicapped-accessible units at the fair. They also pumped out the waste tanks of hundreds of RVs at the event. For waste disposal, Blue Bowl used on-site dump stations.
To handle the overflow workload, El-Hage typically hired two or three extra workers, who took vacations from their regular jobs to help him at the fair.
“Our trucks drove up, stayed for 12 hours and came back,” he says. “It’s extremely intense. My brother and I typically didn’t talk much during that time. One of us was in charge of the guys up there and the other handles the yard. We flip-flopped jobs to give each other a break from what we were focused on, plus then both of us knew what’s going on at both ends. In either case, one of us was always at the fair so we could resolve situations in a timely manner.”
SERVICE TRUMPS ALL
Overall, El-Hage doesn’t see any challenges that can’t be solved by providing top customer service. It’s a commitment that comes easily for the El-Hage brothers, who are both military veterans and firmly believe in service — both corporately and to their country. Again, that’s an ethic instilled by the elder El-Hage.
“We’ve always differentiated ourselves by providing great service,’’ El-Hage says. “You have to take pride in what you do if you want to go anywhere. I’m old-school and proud of it. It’s been working since 1952, so I don’t see any sense in changing that now.”
