THE TEAM
Troy and Tricia Dresel are the owners of Cesspool Cleaner Company & Portable Toilet Rentals in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Twelve technicians were involved in the Wisconsin Farm Technology Days event under team leader Michael Burger.
COMPANY HISTORY
Troy’s grandparents, Ken and Arlene Dresel, established Cesspool Cleaner Company in 1955. “It was just septic,” Dresel explains. “Then 10 years later they added portable toilets for a hydro-dam project. My grandfather hand-built them, then eventually started buying them.”
In 1981 Dresel’s parents, Randy and Linda Dresel, took over. Meanwhile, in 1997 Dresel and Tricia started their own septic and portable sanitation business, Affordable Septic and Portable Toilets. In 2003 they bought Cesspool from Dresel’s parents, but kept Affordable to handle septic work until 2016 when they sold it.
Today the company works in a 100-mile radius — more for festivals or for their restroom trailer customers. Inventory includes 2,000-plus units, 11 restroom and shower trailers and 14 vacuum trucks.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Wisconsin Farm Technology Days is a state-sponsored event held in a different county each year. Organizers use local vendors when possible. The company has been the sanitation vendor five times over the years when it’s been held in their county or neighboring counties. The company still must bid on it but there was only one other bidder for 2024 and they were from outside the area.
THE MAIN EVENT
The 500 exhibitors at the 70th Wisconsin Farm Technology Days brought in everything from heavy farm machinery to animal care and seed products, high-tech drones, solar equipment, insurance and banking offers — anything related to agriculture.
The event took place Tuesday through Thursday, Aug. 13-15, 2024, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Chippewa Valley Music Festival grounds and adjacent Close Family Farms near Cadott, Wisconsin.
The estimated 45,000 attendees enjoyed crop exhibits, field demonstrations, equipment test-drive opportunities, educational seminars, a view of the latest advancements in the industry, as well as kids’ activities and food truck alley.
BY THE NUMBERS
The company attended a couple of meetings with the organizing board to discuss numbers and locations. “They know approximately how many portable restrooms are needed every year,” Dresel says. “They expected this year’s event to be one of the larger ones — and it was — so we prepared for that.”
The company provided 150 Axxis units recently purchased from Satellite Industries in the company’s new color scheme — lime green with dark gray doors. They also brought in 18 Satellite Freedom ADA-compliant units and 30 Satellite Tagalong hand-wash stations.
A total of 20 four-station company-built hand sanitizer stands were strung out along food truck alley with six 300-gallon Satellite graywater holding tanks.
LET’S ROLL
Dresel says most years it takes a couple months to set up the venue as workers build out a road grid, electrical wiring and several buildings. But the music facility already had a lot of that infrastructure so in 2024 setup only took about three weeks. The company brought in 10 standard units and two hand-wash stations for setup crews.
The remainder of the equipment was brought in on Aug. 3 and 5 on 20-unit Johnny Mover transport trailers (another company Dresel owns) using a couple of Ford F-450 pickups and their vacuum trucks. Units were placed in 18 locations along roads or end caps throughout the venue, most in groups of six to eight, each with an ADA-compatible unit and hand-wash stations.
The company was able to leisurely remove equipment which they did the following week, other than the equipment left for teardown crews.
KEEPIN’ IT CLEAN
Using six vacuum trucks and two techs per truck, the company serviced everything daily after the crowds left, around 5 p.m. “I had a map for each driver who was responsible for the same units all three days,” Dresel says. “Everything got serviced in less than an hour.” The equipment for setup and teardown crews was serviced once a week.
Two vacuum trucks stayed onsite in case of an emergency, but were not used. Four service techs also stayed on site and used Polaris and John Deere utility vehicles to periodically run around and spot check everything. “They hand-wiped the units down and made sure there was no paper or garbage in them,” Dresel says. “They added paper towels to a couple of sinks that ran low. Without alcohol being served, everything stayed clean.”
For servicing portable restrooms the company used five 2022-24 Ford F-550 and F-600 PortaLogix trucks built out by Robinson Vacuum Tanks with 800-gallon waste/350-gallon freshwater aluminum tanks and Masport pumps, and a 2011 Peterbilt 330 built out by Progress (Powered by Garsite) with a 1,000-gallon waste/800-gallon freshwater stainless steel tank and Masport pump.
The hand-wash stations were serviced with a 2022 Ram 5500 built out by the company with a 500-gallon stainless steel Imperial tank, a Masport pump, a 100-foot electric hose reel with a 2-inch hose to pump the sinks out, and a 600-gallon water tank to refill them.
Waste was transferred to the company’s Sterling quad-axle 6,000-gallon Advance Pump & Equipment aluminum tanker with a Wittig pump (Gardner Denver) and taken to the waste treatment facility in Chippewa Falls.
The company uses REZ Packaging deodorizers. “Our chemical is premixed at the shop,” Dresel says. “We have what we call ‘chemical delivery’ on our trucks. All our trucks have gas-powered 3,000 psi Honda pressure washers. The same wand that sucks out the waste puts in the premixed blue. It’s just two different valves on the wand. And we have a 100-gallon custom-made water tank for the pressure washers.”
Their cleaning agent is Action Detergent, a product normally used for car washes. “We’ve used that for years,” Dresel explains, “because when my dad was in this business he also had a service station and car wash.”
AN OVERALL SUCCESS
Organizers were very happy with the event. “They put some posts on social media for the vendors and thanked everybody,” Dresel says. “It was noted on there that we did an excellent job. I talked to the head guy on the board and they were very impressed with how nice and clean the portables were.”
The Dresels attended the event, which held a special place in Tricia’s heart as it was the location of her family farm where she grew up. In 1986 her parents joined three other couples and converted the acreage to a performance venue.
It eventually became a corporation, Dresel says, and Tricia and her family are still shareholders. “Tricia and I met shortly after it was started and have been part of it for years.”
