The Team

As one of the largest portable restroom operators in the area, it makes sense that Cesspool Cleaner Company & Portable Toilet Rentals, LLC, provides and services portable restrooms for one of Wisconsin’s biggest festivals, the Warrens Cranberry Festival. Owner Troy Dresel grew up working at the event that his parents, Randy and Linda Dresel, provided portable restrooms for, starting 40-plus years ago. It was just one of many businesses the Dresels owned and operated.

In 1997, Troy Dresel bought out another portable restroom business before buying his parents business in 2001. Since then, he’s bought and added several more restroom businesses and grown to 1,800 plus units, 7 restroom trailer units, 150-plus hand-wash stations, 16 trucks and 10 employees that serve the Chippewa Valley area around Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

THE MAIN EVENT

In 1973, residents of Warrens, located in the heart of Wisconsin’s cranberry production, decided to host a festival celebrating the crop they are known for. There were 75 booths and 3,500 attendees.

Now the small town — population 543 — swells to more than 120,000 when the community hosts the world’s largest cranberry festival the last full weekend of September. More than 1,700 food, arts and crafts, flea and antique and farm market vendors set up throughout the town and for 3 miles along the road from Warrens to the back entrance of Jellystone Park, a family campground. Residents welcome visitors to set up booths and camp out in their yards, and in return, profits benefit them, area schools and scholarships, the fire department and many local organizations.

In addition to the vendor booths, visitors can take cranberry bog tours, attend cooking classes and purchase food made with cranberries, and enter a variety of contests from photography to the biggest cranberry. Churches hold fundraisers and the whole town pitches in, Dresel says.

Sunday, the third and final day of the event, includes one of Wisconsin’s largest parades, that features middle school, high school, and university band competitions. Other bands, such as the U.S. Army Band in 2022, and choirs also provide entertainment throughout the weekend.

BY THE NUMBERS

The event requires 200 standard and 14 ADA-compliant portable restrooms from Satellite Industries. Dresel takes all orange event units that can be easily spotted. All units have hand sanitizers, mirrors, coat hooks, corner shelves and the capacity to hold four jumbo rolls of toilet paper. Cesspool employees transport them on five 20-place Johnny Mover Trailers, that Dresel manufactures. The ADA units are hauled with a Ford F-450 flatbed truck pulling a 45-foot gooseneck trailer from Midsota Manufacturing.

Finally, a 2018 15-stall restroom trailer from Ameri-Can Engineering, hauled with a 2021 GMC 3500 dually pickup, is an important part of the fleet.

“Some people won’t use the portables, so the trailer is lined up 20 people deep all the time,” Dresel says. He has two attendants who stay with trailer making sure it is cleaned and supplied for the duration of the event.

To efficiently service the rest of the units, 10 Cesspool employees team up to run five service trucks through the weekend. Four trucks are Ford F-550s and an F-650 (2004-2022) with aluminum and stainless steel tanks ranging from 500-gallon wastewater/300-gallon freshwater to 1,500-gallon wastewater/250-gallon freshwater. They were built by Prime Industrial Tank, PortaLogix and Satellite Industries. The fifth truck is a 2022 Dodge Ram 5500 with a 500-gallon waste/150-gallon freshwater stainless steel tank built by Imperial Industries.

In case of a breakdown, Dresel also added a sixth truck, a 2019 F-350 with 450-gallon wastewater/150-gallon freshwater aluminum tank from Imperial Industries. All service trucks include 80-gallon freshwater side saddle tanks to run 3,000 PSI Honda pressure washers and all have Masport HXL4V vacuum pumps.

After servicing the restrooms, the trucks pump their loads into a 2011 Sterling Quad axle truck with a 6,500-gallon aluminum tank from Advance Pump & Equipment.

A 2015 F-550 box truck and a 2009 Ford E-450 cube van tool truck hauled paper, chemicals, supplies and parts.

In addition to the equipment needed to service the event, the crew require two campers and a five-stall shower trailer built by Cesspool, to use while staying throughout the festival. Dresel and his wife, Tricia, also stay on site.

LET’S ROLL

With many huge tents and because of extremely tight quarters, the Cesspool team is the first in and out of the event.

“We set up the weekend before the big event and haul in two trips,” Dresel says. The first 90-minute trip from Chippewa Falls is the biggest with 12 trucks hauling restrooms, restroom trailer, and campers that the crew requires. Restrooms were set up in 15 banks, including the trailer located close to main street activities.Though the event doesn’t officially start until Friday, booths open on Thursday so one service is scheduled that evening. During the rest of the weekend, the five teams do two rounds of service daily, working for three or four hours due to large crowds, starting around 10 a.m. and after 7 p.m. when the booths close down. In years past, servicing started about 11 a.m., but with bigger crowds gathering at 6 a.m. this year, toilet paper ran low and restrooms needed earlier servicing.

“It’s like a funnel; our trucks just creep along. As they go down the street people open and close the gaps,” he says. Workers work on half of the units in the group at a time so people can continue to use the other half of group of restrooms. The night service is less congested.

“This year during record crowds we went out between pumps with golf carts to add toilet paper around 2:30 p.m.,” he adds.

Service truck tanks are pumped into the 6,500-gallon quad axle, which is unloaded daily at a waste facility 25 minutes away.

WRAPPING IT UP

By Sunday evening most vendors have packed up and left Warrens. The Cesspool team avoids the traffic and waits until Monday morning. After pumping and pressure washing the units, they are loaded on the trailers and taken back in two trips to the Cesspool lot in Chippewa Falls, where most are stored for the winter as the festival is the last big event of the year.

Servicing the 2022 festival went well, Dresel says. The only issue they had was that some vendors dumped used cooking oil into the restrooms at night because no barrels were available to them as had been in past years. He will work with organizers to resolve that issue next year. Also, another 20-plus restrooms will be added to accommodate the growing crowd.

Despite the crowds and extra hours, the festival is a good way to end a busy season.

“Our crew looks forward to going down there. My wife and I cook for our crew. We take care of them to show our appreciation,” Dresel says.

They 2023 festival may be even more special, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.