The summer season for portable sanitation revealed several challenges and trends for restroom contractors working hard to serve customers. Consider these stories:
MARKET CONDITIONS THWART GROWTH IN CANADA
An explosion of construction and post-COVID special event work overwhelmed the crew at Jack’s Expert Flush in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. So reported the Saltwire Network news outlet, which interviewed the company’s owner, a weary Jack Werry. The PRO with 16 years in the industry, said the 2022 workload has been unprecedented — and there are several causes.
“I work seven days a week – not six, not five – I work every weekend,” he said in an interview. “And ‘cause I can’t get enough employees, it makes it hard on me. ... More trucks on the road, more employees, and I cannot get people to go to work in this business. Nobody will do it.”How does Werry’s experience match your own over the past few months?
Werry said the top driver keeping his 400 restrooms out on the job is a large volume of construction work around Halifax. The second is a growing number of special events and outdoor weddings crowding his calendar.
“Now that everything’s wide open, everybody’s calling for parties — toilets — and there’s just too many going on,” he said. “I was busy year round as it was before COVID, and when COVID came, my business increased 110%. With difficulty hiring more workers and running low on inventory, Werry said he’s pulled back taking on new customers. Also, spiking fuel costs have also had an impact on the bottom line.
RAISING WAGES IN ALASKA
Speaking of the difficulty of finding workers, this has been a huge challenge for Alaska Porta Potty, reported the Anchorage Daily News. The company’s owner, Frank Perez, told the newspaper he looked for several months without finding anyone to pitch in. He said the perception that portable sanitation is a dirty job (He says it really isn’t dirty) has made it hard to compete for a dwindling workforce. So Perez raised wages by $2 per hour, making starting pay as high as $44,000 per year for experienced workers. He said six people accepted jobs, but then didn’t show up for work. Additionally, two workers who showed up quit soon after. That left the owner pulling more of the weight on service runs.
How does your experience compare to Perez’s? What’s your starting wage these days? Are you sweetening the deal with more benefits like health insurance, retirement contributions and signing bonuses? Drop me a line at editor@promonthly.com and share your strategies for hiring new workers. Maybe we can solve this problem together.
WITH RISING COSTS, SOMEONE HAS TO PAY
Officials in the small town of Naples, Maine, recently balked at the rising costs of portable restrooms for their parks. This summer, the price to place and provide biweekly service for restrooms nearly doubled, from $187 to $350 per month. That came to a total cost of more than $14,000 for service for eight units between Memorial Day and Columbus Day, Town Manager John Hawley reported to the board of selectmen.
The Bridgton.com website reported that price increases would prompt the community to consider permanent bathroom facilities at a popular causeway location. It also meant the town would seek bids from more restroom companies in search of a lower price.
“It’s now more evident than ever that we need to consider a brick-and-mortar bathroom facility for the causeway area,” Hawley said.
How are you passing along rising costs for labor, fuel and equipment to your customers? It can’t be easy breaking the news of inevitable inflationary price hikes to municipal customers that have shown loyalty to your companies with service contracts year after year. But the harsh reality is your business exists to make a profit. And if you don’t have profits, you no longer have a business.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE RESTROOMS GONE?
Have you had a restroom out on a job and it mysteriously disappeared? Reports of stolen restrooms this summer begs the question.
• In Goshen, California, eight restrooms were stolen along with four trailers at a local orchard. Sheriff’s deputies put out a call for information about the whereabouts of the equipment.
• A New Zealand PRO reported several restrooms were stolen the day of a Christchurch running race, shortly after the crowds passed by. Other equipment was also reported stolen the day of the race, including speed signs, stop-sign paddles, kilometer markers and traffic cones. Total value was $4,000.
• And one unit turned up. According to the Miami Herald, officials were mystified to find a portable restroom planted on a sandbar on Lemon Bay in Englewood on the state’s Gulf Coast. At the last check, Charlotte County Public Works Department was still trying to identify the owner of the unit.
What is your lost or stolen restroom story? Take off in a tornado? Lifted in the middle of the night from a construction site? Park pranksters loaded it on a pickup and moved it to another location?
In the New Zealand case, race organizers were miffed because they had to pay for the stolen units and were hoping police could locate and return them. Are your contracts written to hold the customer responsible for lost or stolen restrooms? Many PROs require a damage waiver to cover vandalism, but straight-up stolen restrooms have to be a rarer occurrence.
AND WHAT ABOUT PINK RESTROOMS?
Many years ago, several portable restroom manufacturers promoted the concept of gender-specific units by introducing pink units at the Pumper & Cleaner Expo, now called the WWETT Show. It seemed like the idea was a hit with PROs looking to please women who were less than enthusiastic about restrooms at special events. Typically the pink units do not have urinals found in the units for males.
Apparently the idea continues to take hold in the construction trades in Canada. According to a recent survey by the BC Construction Association, women make up a larger percentage of the construction industry workforce today. As reported in the Journal of Commerce by ConstructConnect, women now represent 6.2% of British Columbia construction crews, which is up 35% in five years.
Chase Henituik, of Alberta-based Handi-Can, said his company offers discounts for gender-specific restrooms to create awareness of their availability.
“It is something being adopted more and more. We have specific pink toilets — it is a unit that only women use,” he told the business publication.
There is another benefit to gender-specific restrooms, according to Kyle Frederkind, of Maple Leaf Disposal in British Columbia. He doesn’t carry pink units, but does offer women-only units with hand-wash sinks, paper towels and a garbage can.
“I’ve never had a women’s unit come back with graffiti,” he said.
Have you had more requests for gender-specific or pink restrooms this summer? If so, did they come more from construction or event clients? Is the trend impacting how you develop your inventory?
