The Team

It’s all hands on deck when AAA Porta Serve employees travel to Live Oak, Florida, to handle Suwannee Hulaween, a huge annual music festival that also features mind-blowing lighting effects and intriguing displays of artwork. Ross Ambrose, managing partner at Porta Serve, leads a team of nearly 30 people — including about two dozen friends and family members hired as temporary employees — during the four-day extravaganza held over Halloween weekend.

Key team members during the 2021 event included Robert Lynch, operations manager; David Wyrick, mechanic; and lead drivers Sam Arnett, Clint Fletcher, Lee Fletcher, Darren Fout, Ryan Fout, Michael Jenkins, Steven Lopez and Mark Poirier. They were joined by temporary crew members James LaPoint, Codey Fletcher, Tyler Schultz, Joseph Price, Darrick Parker, Mike Mathis, Will Davis, Cody HonCoop, Jaya Gendleman, Barbara Jenkins, Dana Fout, Deanna Fout, Justin Fraddosio and Michael Sapienza. Ray Gerner and Rebecca Fletcher served as camp cooks, and former Porta Serve owner Woody Jasper rounded out the squad.

COMPANY HISTORY

Ambrose, 58, bought the company in 2014; it was founded by Jasper in 2000. The business is based in High Springs, a town about 25 miles northwest of Gainesville in northern Florida. It employs 14 full-time employees and services about a 7,000-square-mile area of North Central Florida. Before Ambrose bought Porta Serve, he worked for years in the film and television industries. He occasionally would help Jasper, an old friend, handle large special events. Facing a career crossroads in 2014, Ambrose decided to buy Porta Serve from Jasper, who was retiring.

The company’s business mix is about 80% monthly rentals (primarily construction-, recreation- and agriculture-related clients) and 20% special events.

EQUIPMENT MATTERS

Porta Serve owns about 2,000 restrooms from Satellite Industries and PolyJohn; approximately 120 hand-wash stations from Satellite and PolyJohn; 90 holding tanks from Kentucky Tank and Satellite; and eight trailers for transporting restrooms from Liquid Waste Industries.

The company also owns 10 service trucks, built on Hino, Dodge 5500 and Chevrolet 3500 chassis. The tanks are made of aluminum and stainless steel and most of them were built by Imperial Industries, Best Enterprises and Arthur Custom Tank (a division of Mid-State Tank). They range in size from 200 gallons waste/100 gallons freshwater to 1,600 gallons waste/450 gallons freshwater. The trucks are equipped with vacuum pumps made by Masport, Condé (Westmoor Ltd.) and Jurop. The company expects to take delivery of two new Dodge 5500 trucks equipped with 900-gallon waste/350-gallon freshwater stainless steel tanks with Masport pumps from ITI Trailers and Truck Bodies.

THE MAIN EVENT

The festival is held at the 800-acre Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, a small town about halfway between Tallahassee and Gainesville and roughly 50 miles northwest of Porta Serve’s yard. It gets its name because it’s adjacent to the Suwannee River. The jam-band String Cheese Incident started the festival in 2015 and the lineup of music acts during the four-day event is as diverse and eclectic as the group’s blend of psychedelia, country, electronica, funk, rock and jazz.

In 2021, more than 80 bands played on five stages, with String Cheese Incident playing two sets a day Friday through Sunday. The record for attendance at the event is about 30,000 people, but attendance was capped at 20,000 this year, Ambrose says. Thousands of attendees camp out in the park for the duration of the event, which also features a dazzling light show around the park’s Spirit Lake.

BY THE NUMBERS

Porta Serve provided 243 restrooms for the concert grounds, 216 for the campground and 74 private restrooms rented by campers. The company also deployed 20 ADA-compliant restrooms, from Satellite and PolyJohn; 19 urinals from KROS International USA; 31 holding tanks (250- to 300-gallon capacities and used for food vendors and backstage trailers); two 4,000-gallon plastic bladders from Husky Portable Containment (used to hold wastewater from two shower trailers supplied by a subcontractor); 30 hand-wash stations; six self-fabricated hand-sanitizing stations and four self-fabricated hand-wash trailers; Ambrose says. The company also utilized eight service trucks. There were 62 points of service throughout the park and each location was serviced an average of 2-1/2 times a day, he says. “It’s a big stretch for us,” he says. “It can get stressful, but it’s also very cool.”

READY TO ROLL 

Porta Serve starts delivering restrooms a week before the event to accommodate many campers who arrive early, not to mention the hundreds of workers assembling event infrastructure around the Spirit Lake area — things like stages, three-dimensional projection stations, art exhibits and catering facilities. “We have the campground toilets in place by Friday night, six days before the event,” Ambrose explains. “We learned a long time ago that it’s better to claim a space first, which eliminates those you-put-a-restroom-next-to-my-campsite phone calls. It’s also much easier to move around when there’s not a lot of people around.”

By the end of the Monday before the event begins (it starts on Thursday afternoon), most of the restrooms are in place; they’re ready for use by the end of Tuesday, which is when Porta Serve crews start to service them, he says. “Logistically it’s very challenging,” he says. “If you don’t deliver the restrooms early enough, you’ll find yourself fighting the fences the event promoter puts up.”

Waste is stored in an on-site, 22,000-gallon frac tank and 1,200-, 2,500- and 3,000-gallon auxiliary holding tanks. Porta Serve keeps them on site year-round, he says. A local hauler removes and disposes of 4,500 gallons of waste at a time; the event generates about 160,000 gallons of waste, Ambrose estimates.

FAMILIAR SURROUNDINGS

The company provides restrooms for all special events held at the park. “We pay a licensing fee for our own radio frequency and we all communicate via Motorola and Kenwood walkie-talkies,” he says. “We also have our own entrance to the park.”

Employees start working at 7 a.m. and are on stand-by until about 9 p.m. every day. “We all camp on-site during the event,” he says. “You can’t work this event and not be here all the time.” Breaking camp and cleaning and removing all the restrooms is also a big task; work starts on the Tuesday after the event and is mostly completed by Friday. But a good number of restrooms remain on site for a while longer to accommodate the many workers taking down the infrastructure erected the week before. “We slowly phase out those restrooms,” Ambrose says.

TRICKY BALANCING ACT

Overall, the event demands three weeks of intense focus by most employees. To maintain service to other customers during the festival, some employees handle routes on Saturday or Sunday. “Or some drivers will do Tuesday’s routes and half of Wednesday’s routes on Tuesday, then on Wednesday do the rest of the usual Wednesday routes so they’re free to help out on Thursday and Friday,” Ambrose says. “It’s a big juggling act.”

The festival is the biggest special event Porta Serve handles and it can be a challenge at times. But given the music and eye-popping light shows, it’s also a pretty cool atmosphere, and employees feel a deep sense of camaraderie. In fact, Ambrose says one temporary employee actually uses vacation time to work the event. “It can be stressful,” he continues. “But it’s also very gratifying when we’re finished. We really like working it with everyone together.”