For teen jobs, we typically think of retail, fast food, pet sitting and lawn care. Founding and owning a successful portable restroom rental business before graduating high school is far more unusual.  

Brody Solomonson, age 19, grew up working hard and part of his journey was the typical lawn care. “I used to run around with flyers offering lawn-mowing services in the neighborhood. I was the neighborhood kid that would muck horse stalls because we lived in a ranch area.” 

At age 15, he transitioned from scooping horse manure to working for his father at Nationwide Waste Services. Brian Solomonson, Brody’s father and president of Waste Rentals in Mesa, Arizona, had been in the brokerage space for years, connecting businesses with site and sanitation services. Brody took to the work immediately. 

“At 15, Brody was doing over a hundred phone calls a day and over a couple of million dollars a year in sales,” says Brian.

Brody didn’t just make sales; he listened carefully to customers, which turned into crafting a business plan. When he was 17, he approached his dad with an idea. “Brody came to me and said he would like to open up a local portable restroom operation here in Arizona,” Brian says. “So we started Waste Rentals and it’s been very successful. Brody was instrumental in that.” 

INTRODUCTION

The company opened its doors in 2022. It started with 250 PolyJohn portable restroom units. They also bought two 2022 Ford 550 trucks. Today, the company has 1,500 PolyJohn portable restroom units. They own 12 trucks and 20 JAG Mobile Solutions restroom trailers that come in two, four and 10 stalls. 

The trucks include Fords and Kenworths but the majority are Mack trucks with a 2,000-gallon tank with 500 gallons of freshwater and 1,500 gallons of wastewater. Most of the tanks are from Tank World, which is based in Phoenix, Arizona. Waste Rentals serves the entire Phoenix metro area including Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale, Chandler, Gilbert and Queen Creek. They serve about an 80-mile radius but on occasion, travel up to 120 miles. 

Every truck is mounted with a garden hose on a reel and a 1-inch high volume hose. This allows drivers to fill large tanks or multiple restrooms instead of putting a bucket into each. The trucks are also mounted with pressure washers. 

“This makes our driver’s job a lot easier and it keeps the customer happy,” says Brody. “It’s easier to clean restrooms.”

SERVICE AT A HIGHER LEVEL

When Brody came up with the idea for opening a portable restroom rental business it wasn’t because the area was lacking in companies. He believed the companies were limited in their capabilities. 

“There’s a lot of really small rental companies that do a wonderful job. They have great service, but they’re very limited on what they can do, whether that’s how many toilets they have to rent or how many trucks they can service or how far they can service,” he says. 

Brody had a big business plan in mind. He wanted to build a business that was scalable to the Phoenix market. The family not only focused on building a company with an ample number of rentals, but they also focused on the best service possible. 

“Whether that’s quick delivery, clean toilets, quick pickup, better billing, whatever that looks like, but also be able to provide that to as many people as possible without having constraints on toilets or trucks or service areas or other things like that,” says Brody. 

“We buy everything brand new, nothing’s used. That is actually something that the industry really needs to put a focus on,” says Brian. “We feel like, even if it’s a construction site, nobody wants a toilet sitting on their construction site that’s 20 years old.” 

AGE IS AN ASSET

Waste Rentals brings new equipment and youthful leadership to the Phoenix market. Brody believes his age is a huge asset to the industry. He’s built a business that uses new technology and focuses on a more youthful company culture. He says his generation is willing to work just as hard as previous ones. However, they tend to focus on a different type of company culture. 

“There may need to be different incentives, or it needs to be structured to where they want to get up in the morning and come to work. Culture is huge for us. So, we built our company on a really good culture where people are appreciated,” says Brody. “We don’t yell at people when something goes wrong. We figure out how we can do better the next time. We try to aim for rewarding good behavior rather than disciplining bad behavior.” 

Today the company has 26 employees spanning all generations. “We have a lot of younger pump drivers and younger people working in our office,” says Brody. “We’re very diversified too. We have older people and we don’t treat them any differently. We treat everyone the same.” 

A FAMILY OPERATION

At its core, Waste Rentals is very much family owned and operated. It’s owned by Marcy Solomonson, the matriarch of the family. “My mom has been with us from the start and she does almost everything,” Brody says. 

Noah Solomonson, 21, is also part of the team. “My two sons were running the equipment by themselves. On top of running the business itself, they started at the bottom” says Brian. “They were running the toilets, doing the services and it was all self-taught. 

At the start, it was just the Solomonsons and Joe “Smiley” Campisi, head of business development. “He’s been a huge factor in our growth. He comes from the construction industry,” Brody says.  

OBSERVATIONS

Surprises: Just because they’re in the waste industry doesn’t mean they have a dirty job. “I was surprised by how dirty people can be. However, I would say an even bigger surprise is how not dirty this job can be if you do it right,” Brody says. “When you have the right tools, the right gloves, when you have a wand, you can actually avoid getting any waste on you. You can avoid going home super dirty.”

Best Thing About the Job: Despite being part of the waste industry for many years, launching a new business opened up new opportunities within the industry. The Solomonsons started attending industry events like the WWETT Show and WasteExpo where they quickly connected with a community. “The community in the industry has probably been one of the best things,” Brody says. “The networking and the people that we’ve been able to meet and connect with. 

“It’s a commonly known thing in our industry where people are very friendly. They’re always willing to help,” adds Brian. “A lot of companies do disaster relief, and when disasters hit, everyone’s teaming up together to just work together to ultimately help people.”

Advice: Waste Rentals isn’t just in the portable restroom business; it also offers temporary fencing. “It’s tied to site services,” Brian says. “Going into it, we knew we were going to ultimately get into fencing.” He said that’s because when customers can get multiple services through the same company it makes the contract more appealing. For example, the company provided portable restroom units, temporary fencing and luxury restroom trailers for the Ladies Professional Golf Association Ford Championship presented by Wild Horse Pass in Chandler, Arizona in March 2025.

LOOKING AHEAD

In addition to providing facilities and services to the LPGA, Waste Rentals provided portable restrooms for Arizona Bike Week, a five-day motorcycle rally in Scottsdale, Arizona. These are the two biggest events the company has taken. From a single portable restroom unit to dozens, they’re up for anything. 

In nearly three years, the company has more than six times the number of portable restrooms and trucks. Even bigger growth is planned for the future. 

“We have a lot of big goals. We want to expand outside of Arizona. We want to expand within Arizona. The other two big metros here are Flagstaff and Tucson, which both have fairly good markets that we kind of want to tap into with restrooms and fencing,” says Brody. 

The company already has a blueprint for expansion. “One of the things that we did when we started was, we wanted to create a standard so when we open up a new location, everything is the same from location to location,” says Brian. 

When you create a career as a teen, it’s tough to know what the future holds. But for someone with Brody’s entrepreneurial grit, it’s exciting to think about. 

“I really enjoy the hustle and I enjoy the growth of a business,” Brody says. “I enjoy the complications and I enjoy working through them. I can’t say for certain that I’ll be in the portable restroom space forever, but I think it’s always going to be a part of me.”