The benefits of portable sanitation and septic pumping companies offering customers “bolt-on” complementary services are on display at Geiger Septic & Portable Toilet Service in Valley, about 25 miles northeast of Auburn in east- central Alabama.
Owners Cindy and Mark Geiger decided to add portable sanitation services to their septic pumping business in 2009. Steady growth followed; employment on the restroom side grew to five workers from one, service trucks expanded to three from one, restrooms jumped to more than 300 from 10 and revenue increased by 70 to 80%, says Cindy.
At the time of the acquisition, Mark, 60, was pumping septic tanks and installing septic systems while Cindy, 57, worked in a plant where she’d been employed for 17 years. (The company no longer pumps septic tanks.)
“We got to talking and I told Mark that I wished there was something I could do that would benefit what you do, so we could work together, yet apart,” she explains. “Then a local operator went out of business and said he’d sell me his 10 restrooms.
“I delivered them on my days off,” she adds. “But soon it got so busy that I couldn’t do both jobs, so I took an early retirement.”
After renting out those first 10 units, Cindy ordered a truckload of 28 more restrooms from Satellite Industries — and rented out all of them the following week.
“Business just kept booming and booming,” she says.
Today the company owns mostly Satellite restrooms as well as 10 Satellite hand-wash stations, plus the three trucks, all equipped with slide-in units: a 2019 Ford F-550 with a 600-gallon waste/300-gallon freshwater steel tank built by Pac-Mac (built by Keith Huber) with a Masport pump; a 2016 Ford F-550 with a 500-gallon waste/275-gallon freshwater stainless steel tank from Robinson Vacuum Tanks and a Conde pump (a brand owned by Westmoor Ltd.); and a 2009 Isuzu HD 3500 with a 400-gallon waste/200-gallon freshwater stainless steel tank from Progress Tank and a Conde pump.
“We like slide-ins because if we have truck issues, it’s so easy to slide the unit onto another truck and keep on working,” says Mark. “Plus it’s so hard to find help these days that we try to stay away from larger trucks that would require a commercial driver’s license.”
The restroom division primarily serves construction customers within about a 30-mile radius of Valley. Auburn University is one of the larger clients, she says.
1 | MAKING HAPPY CUSTOMERS
Great customer service with a personal touch has contributed heavily to the division’s growth, Cindy says. “My daughter, Haley, and I get out there and talk to customers,” Cindy explains. “You have to have some personality and then talk to customers like you’d want to be talked to. You have to sell your services, like in any other business.
“You also must treat customers with respect,” she continues. “Customers want honesty and they want you to do what you say you’re going to do, as well as respond quickly to emergency cleaning requests. Sometimes that costs us extra fuel and we have to reroute our guys, but it keeps customers happy. And if you have happy customers, then you have repeat customers.”
2 | TAKING A CONSERVATIVE APPROACH
When it comes to building the business, Cindy believes in small but steady growth as opposed to exponential growth that can compromise customer service, work quality and stress out route drivers. The company co-owner takes the same approach to finances. For example, Cindy says she always tries to pay off the balance due on new restrooms before she places an order for more. “We don’t want to stretch ourselves financially,” she says. “We take a very conservative financial approach.”
3 | PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE
The long-term plan is to have Haley, 26, take over the business in a few years. Currently Haley — who earned a business degree from Troy State College in Troy — handles the books and customer inquiries.
“You want your kids to carry on a family business,” Cindy notes. “I’ve asked her many times if this really is what she wants to do. If it’s not, I’ve told her it’s not going to hurt our feelings. And if it turns out she doesn’t like it, she can sell the business. But whenever I tell her that, she gets mad and says, ‘We’re not selling anything.’ ”
What advice would Cindy give others about grooming children to take over a portable restroom business? Start them out with cleaning restrooms, she advises. “Portable restrooms aren’t for everyone,” she says. “If they can clean restrooms and clean them good, they’re good to go. I’d make them do it for a month without any complaints from customers.”
4 | EMBRACING CHANGE
Cindy says she has no problem with Haley making operational changes — often a flashpoint within family-owned businesses — when she takes the reins. “If she has new ideas and wants to make changes, that’s her business,” Cindy says. “I’ll back her 100% – as long as we don’t lose customers. She has a good head on her shoulders and she can multitask, speak with employees and customers, not to mention go and pump restrooms.”
In fact, Haley has already implemented a big technological change by subscribing to ServiceCore, a cloud-based software platform. Drivers use iPad tablets to access the platform, which handles everything from invoicing and service-route optimization to GPS and asset management (such as tracking restroom locations), she says.
“ServiceCore helps us stay on top of things and keep organized,” Haley says. “For example, I can pinpoint on a map exactly where customers want their restrooms located. And drivers can pull up their jobs on a GPS map.”
5 | FINDING SUCCESS THROUGH MENTORSHIP
Cindy also credits a fellow portable restroom operator — Rhonda McMichael, the owner of Wise Environmental Solutions in Oxford, Alabama — for helping her and Haley grow the business.
“I met her at a trade show in Gulf Shores and we struck up a friendship,” Cindy says. “She’s helped us a lot. For instance, she suggested we bill customers every 28 days instead of once a month, which results in losing several weeks of revenue a year.”
McMichael also was instrumental in helping Cindy select effective cleaning products and chemicals. She’s also helping Haley, who’s considering selling cleaning products to generate another revenue stream, she says.
