What happens when an event demanding a bunch of portable restrooms lands in your back yard? You go out and shoot photos, of course.
Last summer, Three Lakes, Wis., the home of COLE Publishing — which publishes this magazine — was named the Single Best Town in America in a contest conducted by Kraft Singles and Disney ABC Television Group. Runners-up were Bell Buckle, Tenn., and Gastonia, N.C.
As a prize, the sponsors picked up the tab for a block party in the northern Wisconsin town. On Aug. 3, downtown’s Superior Street was closed and stages were erected for visiting performers, country music bands and stars of ABC daytime soaps. According to estimates, 8,000 to 10,000 people showed up in a town with a population that amounts to a small fraction of that number.
I arrived as the festivities were under way and was fortunate to hang out with Pat Volk and his crew from Chain O’ Lakes Septic Service, which goes by the name Outback Portables when it places restrooms. The PROs had operations well in hand at the Tuesday afternoon/evening event.
OFF THE BEATEN PATH
Volk, a member of the park commission in Three Lakes, and a seasoned veteran of the portable sanitation business, took a somewhat unorthodox approach to handling the restrooms for the block party. Rather than scatter units throughout downtown, he suggested placing three banks of 10 restrooms along the same side street, well away from the bulk of the crowd.
“I think we could have spotted some around town, but I think, honestly, people feel embarrassed using portable restrooms in front of a crowd,’’ Volk explained. “I’ve been to golf tournaments, and they usually isolate (the restrooms), putting them in a traffic pattern where people are only going to use the portable restrooms.’’
Having the restrooms set up off the beaten path served a couple of purposes, Volk said. First, they were located at least a few hundred yards away from food and drink vendors, which created a helpful sanitary buffer. Second, it took the units away from heavy foot traffic so they could more easily be monitored and serviced if necessary.
And restroom servicing — even though this was a single-day event — was a potential issue for Volk. The local PRO had only 30 units available for the event, so he made his proposal for service based on 28 standard and two handicap units. Based on crowd estimates, he could have recommended placing 50 units, Volk said, but he decided that he could place fewer units and clean them mid-day if it became necessary.
Volk and his crew — Joe Herman, Jeremy Kerins and Lee Koehler — stood by throughout the day with a service rig, a Chevy 3500 with a 250-gallon waste/100-gallon freshwater tank from Imperial Industries Inc. They also brought a second truck, an International 4300 with a 4,000-gallon aluminum tank from Wee Engineer Inc. The crew checked the units every 20 minutes and serviced one occasionally. The banks of restrooms were placed a few hundred feet apart, so they could close off 10 at a time for service and leave the other 20 operational.
Though the weather was beautiful and the crowds grew, there was never a need to service an entire group of restrooms. They stayed clean, and the sponsors weren’t shy about checking them. During the course of the event, a representative of Disney occasionally performed a spot check of the restrooms.
FRIENDLY COMPETITION
The 30 units proved more than enough to handle the mid-week crowds; Volk may have proposed using more if it were a weekend event, which would have encouraged heavier partying. Volk did have a backup plan for obtaining more units if he needed them: Go to the competition.
It turns out portable sanitation competitors are neighborly in this northwoods resort area. Volk said he has good relationships with direct competitors and he could have called on them for additional restrooms. He is happy to have a “gentlemen’s or ladies’ agreement’’ with a number of companies in the region, and they trade restrooms and/or pumping equipment in a pinch.
“It’s a decent competition where we don’t cut each other’s throats,’’ Volk said of his closest competitors. “Most of the guys in this business are good people and we get along really well, and that’s the way it should be.’’
Volk said his hometown may consider making the block party an annual event. He’s already thinking about ways he could improve on his own service should that happen.
“One thing we could have done is put a sign up in the middle of (the crowded areas) with an arrow pointing to the portable restrooms,’’ Volk said.
