While the celebration of Mardi Gras is associated with the city of New Orleans, French settlers first celebrated the holiday in Mobile, Alabama, in 1703 as they explored North America. This little-known piece of history has left its mark on the identity of southern Alabama and its people, including Louisiana native Rocky Fremin of Rock & Roll Offs.

After working in telephony for 10 years, Rocky and her husband, Keith Fremin, opened a commercial contracting business called FCS Facility Maintenance. It started as a roofing company and, over the years, expanded into a full-service facility maintenance and repair provider, operating in 23 states with 20 employees and hundreds of licensed contractors. All of their children and later their spouses were also involved.

“We operated 24/7, 365 days a year. If a store, like a Walgreens, called with a plumbing issue or they had a break in, we secured and replaced the windows,” explains Fremin.

As the business progressed, FCS split into two sides, FCS Facility Maintenance and FCS Property Services, which led the couple to transition their son, Hunter Rodriguez, to manage FCS Property Services to help support the growing family business. “He joined us on the property services side, doing land clearing, mulching and demolitions.” 

This included working on the city of Mobile, Alabama’s blight program, boarding the windows of abandoned homes with plywood and painting them white to give them a better appearance. Some of the homes were in such bad condition that they required demolitions.

“We won many of those demolition contracts. But we were renting our dumpsters. Hunter suggested that we buy a truck and a few dumpsters to save on costs,” explains Fremin.

This move to save on construction costs birthed the beginning of The Can Man, the original name of what is now Rock & Roll Offs. The business quickly expanded beyond their own dumpster needs and served construction businesses just like FCS Property Services across southern Alabama.

ON BRAND

That was 2019. As Rock & Roll Offs serviced the roll-off needs of construction sites, county fairs and community events, the Fremin’s noticed that where there was a need for roll-off dumpsters, there was typically also a need for portable restrooms.

But the market was crowded. There were eight other companies offering portable restroom services in and around Mobile. As they brainstormed their action plan, they thought about how to stand out from the crowd.

Fremin explains, “The consensus was we needed to come up with branding and marketing that would blow everybody out of the water.”

Rock & Roll Offs derives its branding from a mixture of both Mobile’s and New Orleans Mardi Gras history. Every one of their portable toilets is purple with accents of green and gold, as well as their trucks display wraps of their branding.

They created a logo that started with a drawing contest between two brothers: Stephen and Hunter Rodriguez. Stephen drew a dumpster with a depiction of Hunter’s face and beard sporting a tattoo that represents the call letters of the Mobile Airport and the year that Mobile was established: “MOB1702.”

“We found a brand of portalets (Satellite Industries) that we were able to custom design,” says Fremin.

In addition to memorable colors, Rock & Roll Offs has a logo that changes with the seasons, local events and holidays.

“We started putting costumes on the original logo and now we’re up to about 28 different costume changes. There’s an election soon, so we have one for the voting season.”

Inspired by other industries, Fremin then got the idea to make a mascot costume of the Rock & Roll Offs logo. “We’ve used that at several events. It’s hot to wear, but that’s been a great thing for Rock & Roll Offs exposure. We’ve gotten a lot of recognition from people.”

Rock & Roll Offs went a step further with their branding by identifying each of their trucks with a number that signifies an historical period in American history. Their pump trucks represent such years as 1607, 1776, 1789 and 1702. The Hook lift trucks represent historical events in 1971, 1787, 1773 and 1963.

This brand recognition also includes a sizable digital footprint. Rock & Roll Offs’ Facebook page has 1,400 followers, where they consistently post about community events they sponsor, company activity and job postings.

While brand visibility is important, Fremin recognized service would be the main business driver. Looking at the local market, there was a trend of portable toilets being poorly maintained. Fremin saw this as an opportunity.

CLEANLINESS

Rock & Roll Offs trains its employees to uphold the highest standard of portable toilet sanitation.

“People tend to avoid using portable toilets at events. It’s one of those necessary evils,” says Fremin. “We said, Let’s do something different that stands out in the community.”

The company cleans every one of their portable restrooms inside and out after each use. “This is what the community has come to expect from Rock & Roll Offs. We scrub the roofs, the sides, everything.”

Rock & Roll Offs says they were also the first PRO in the region to offer an on-site attendant during events, to ensure toilet paper, hand-wash stations and paper towels are always fully stocked. Every portable restroom holds three rolls of premium tissue as well as a hand sanitizer dispenser in the unit.

Within six years of starting the portable toilet aspect of their business, Rock & Roll Offs is becoming one of the largest portable restroom providers in southern Alabama.

“I would say we’re probably responsible for 70%, if not higher, of the events in the Mobile County area.”

On top of capturing their region’s market, portable restrooms have overtaken the business’ initial service of roll-off dumpsters, now making up roughly 60% of Rock & Roll Offs revenue.

CREW AND EQUIPMENT

In the midst of Rock & Roll Offs’ fast success, the Fremin family received bad news in 2021. Keith Fremin was diagnosed with Stage 4 nasopharyngeal cancer. He continued to run FCS Facility Maintenance and advised on Rock & Roll Offs, until he stepped down to focus on treatment. The Fremin’s daughter, Tia, and son-in-law Garrett, took over FCS in 2023, and Rocky and Hunter continued on with Rock & Roll Offs.

“They’re still operating FCS and it’s growing fast,” says Fremin.

Rock & Roll Offs is staffed by Kera Mareno, the roll-off administrator and Sarah Duren as the portable restroom administrator. Hunter Rodriguez, Robin Mareno, Trace Miller and Chris Dees handle the delivery and pick up of roll-off dumpsters and portable restrooms.

“We’re not the cheapest. We don’t claim to be, and we don’t want to be,” says Fremin. “There’s a lot to be said about being on time. When we scheduled you every week or twice a week, we’re there. We also educate the customer. If we see they only order eight toilets for a job site, but they’re being used tremendously, then we’ll let the customer know that they don’t have enough restrooms.”

Rock & Roll Offs has eight trucks, four for dumpsters (Kenworth) and four for restrooms (Isuzu/International). The Isuzu trucks were built by Progress (Powered by Garsite) and the CV International by Satellite Industries. The outfit has 700 portable restrooms (Satellite Industries), holding tanks, hand-wash units and cleaning supplies (PolyJohn).

“We offer the single units, the handicap-accessible units. We have 10 restroom trailers ranging from two to 10 stalls for private parties and industry.”

FUELING GROWTH

Like most small portable restroom operators, Rock & Roll Offs wants to grow, but cash flow can limit the speed of that growth. At the 2025 Water & Wastewater Equipment, Treatment & Transport Show, Hunter came across portable toilets that would win the business a big project. But the down payment was too high.

“We’re still a small mom-and-pop business. A Small Business Administration loan takes too long, the project would have passed,” explains Fremin.

Fortunately, Hunter met Verdant Financing at the conference. The financier offered the loan and advice on ancillary equipment that goes with expanding portable restroom inventory. Rock & Roll Offs received the money quickly enough to purchase the potties in Indianapolis and won the contract.

“We’ve had so many opportunities and we just didn’t have the cash. This company went above and beyond and was fast,” Fremin says. “They understood our needs, where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do. And we made the customer happy and we kept our contracts, so that was fantastic.”

PASSING THE TORCH

After a full career building multiple businesses, Rocky is now eyeing partial retirement. Full of energy and purpose, Rocky wants to be involved and ensure she’s passing something on to her son. But she wants to get away from any desk work and focus on being the face of Rock & Roll Offs.

“I’d like to stay on in on the parts very dear to my heart, which is not paperwork,” Fremin says. “I used to love being in the office and doing all the financials and things like that, but what I love more than anything is being out in the community.”

“I’m part of six chambers of commerce locally in Mobile and surrounding areas. I’m on several nonprofit boards,” adds Fremin. “The networking is incredible. I find it rewarding to connect people together.”

That drive, smart branding and commitment to community has already earned Fremin and Rock & Roll Offs much recognition in Mobile in only six years of operation. In the past five years, they have been awarded:

• The Semmes Small Business of the Year, Semmes Chamber of Commerce
• The Southwest Mobile Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year 
• Alabama Small Business of the Year presented by BCA and CCAA
• PNC Bank’s Business Woman of the Year
• Contributor of the Year awarded by Semmes Mayor Brandon VanHook
• Named grand marshal for the Semmes Christmas parade
• The Perseverance Award presented by The Grind Awards
• Outstanding Citizen Award from the Saraland Chamber of Commerce

In addition to these awards, Rock & Roll Offs was recognized for its commitment to a local cleanup initiative, People Against the Littered State, or PALS, by receiving the Governor’s Award for three years. 

“We go out and volunteer and clean up litter as well as offer the dumpsters and the portable toilets, we have been recognized three years in a row. So that’s been a great honor.”

All of this recognition and hard work went on as Keith Fremin fought cancer. Unfortunately, he passed away on June 6 in 2025. “We did a celebration of life for him while he was living. I have been reached out to by so many people, telling me how he’s touched their lives. He had reached so many people, I had no idea.”

As the family’s businesses are passed onto the next generation, Rocky feels accomplished.

“I enjoy seeing something grow. I enjoyed that with the FCS company and now Rock & Roll Offs. And I think that’s Hunter’s vision as well.”