If you need proof that hard work pays off, look no further than Florida’s Davis Portable Toilets.

Founded by brothers Kaleb (then 22) and Eli (then 16) Davis in January 2024, the company started with one lime-green portable toilet, a five-gallon bucket, a Shop-Vac and their mother’s old pickup truck.

Today, through long hours seven days a week, a commitment to customer service and a bit of financial help from family, Davis Portable Toilets, based in Fort Myers and Sarasota, has six employees and roughly 500 pieces of equipment. The inventory is mostly Armal and PolyJohn portable restrooms, along with PolyJohn restroom trailers, hand-wash stations and holding tanks. They also have three Mack vacuum pumper trucks; one outfitted by FlowMark and the other two by National Truck Center.

“We’re pretty proud of that growth,” says Kaleb Davis. “It’s not the biggest by any means, but that’s where we’re at.”

Willing to work

The Davis brothers grew up without much money, offset by an incredible willingness to work that runs through their family. “We grew up doing deep-well injection jobs with our grandfather when we were young,” Davis says. “So we learned about metal fabrication and other skills, plus the importance of a solid work ethic and getting the job done no matter what it takes. And we did that.”

Fast-forward to 2023, when Kaleb was working for a construction company and Eli was still in high school. “I saw just how difficult it was to find reliable, trustworthy portable toilets on the job site,” says Davis. “That’s what inspired me to get into the business in my off-hours, along with Eli when he wasn’t in class or doing homework.”

A barebones operation

As mentioned, Davis Portable Toilets started off with minimal inventory and equipment. Even when they added a second toilet, the brothers didn’t have much to work with.

Still, what Kaleb and Eli lacked in resources, they made up for through hard work. They saved what they made and bought more portable toilets. To haul them all, “we ended up buying a trailer from Harbor Freight,” Davis says. “I’d pull it with my minivan and we would stack ’em two high. It was scary and it was dangerous, but that’s what we did when we first started out.”

Soon after, the Davis brothers got their first vacuum truck. To be precise, they scraped together $18,000 to buy a used Isuzu truck. “It was all the money that we had,” says Davis.

They then put an old 500-gallon propane tank on the truck bed. The brothers then installed an old go-kart motor on the Isuzu, connected it to a vacuum pump and presto! They now had a vacuum truck, which sure beat using a Shop-Vac.

“Our friends thought we were crazy for doing this,” he says. “But as far as Eli and I were concerned, it was as big a deal as discovering the internet.”

These were tough times. The brothers were living together in a small house that Kaleb had bought at a foreclosure sale (Eli was finishing high school), putting as much of their earnings as they could back into the business. “At one point we had a hundred bucks for food for the week,” says Davis. “Fortunately, we have a relative who saw how hard we were working and helped us get that first truck, which was monumental. After that, we just kept pinching pennies and working long hours seven days a week, and the business just grew from there.”

Quality is key

As of October 2025, Davis Portable Toilets has served about 1,250 customers and achieved a 99% client retention rate. The company has a five-star average online rating based on more than 150 customer reviews.

Two years in, “portable toilets are still our company’s bread and butter,” Davis says. “But we also do water tasks that can be hooked up to our flushable toilets and waste removal. We have done a couple of septic jobs, but we prefer to stick with toilets because your whole day can be sucked into a septic job if it goes wrong.”

As for the secret to their success? “It’s super cliche, but it’s just consistently doing a good job and providing a positive customer experience every time,” says Davis. “To figure out how to provide this kind of ‘white glove service,’ we just ask ourselves how we would like to be treated and then deliver that level of quality.”

Effective marketing also helps. Not only is their website well-formatted and credible, but it is also witty. Scroll down to the bottom of their homepage and you’ll find Davis’ messaging form for requesting service calls. It is headed by this simple yet direct call-to-action: “You have already made it this far, might as well.”

Employees matter

Now that they have grown their company into a two-location operation, the Davis brothers are protecting their reputation by hiring the best talent. “I can’t remember who said it, but it is true that A-grade standards attract A-grade talent,” Davis says. “This is why we pay our people very well and do our best to treat them well because we want A-grade talent on our team. This is why we have a rigorous hiring process and why we are always looking for team players. It’s not easy making it work, but it pays off in the end.”

It is certainly fair to say that the Davis brothers lead by example. Both of them put in 12-to-14-hour days as needed (Eli has graduated high school, while Kaleb has left construction) and even did a 48-hour marathon shift during their first Christmas season to keep up with demand. When asked what keeps him going when he’s exhausted, Kaleb replied that it is his brother Eli. “We are 50/50 partners who constantly push each other, and I would never want to let my brother down,” he says. “As they say, iron sharpens iron. We both really propel each other.”

What’s ahead

Two years into its lifespan, Davis Portable Toilets has gone from being a bare-bones startup to a serious family business. This would not have happened without the Davis brothers’ willingness to work as long and hard as possible for their business to succeed.

Davis attributes their shared work ethic to their upbringing. “We have the best parents this world could have ever offered,” he says. “We also come from a mixed family: I have three biological siblings, two steps and one half. We faced a lot of real hardships growing up. And because of that we grew together and learned that however tough things may become, they can never be harder than the things we went through together in the past. That’s why we are all such hard workers and why we are able to go through the toughest times together. It’s why we never quit.”

As for the future? “I am not too sure where the company will go next,” Davis says. “My brother and I have always talked about it like, ‘Hey, we want to do this,’ and ‘Hey, we want to do that.’ But we’ve never really been like we want to achieve these X, Y and Z goals by a certain time. It was always just, and it always will be like, ‘Hey, let’s work as hard as we can on this. Let’s learn as much as we can. And when we fail, we will pivot accordingly.’ So we don’t really have any expectations for growth or the future or anything like that. We’ll just continue to do the best we can, work as hard as we can and where the chips fall, they fall.”