Ruston Ueckert says he’s not entirely comfortable using computers but he’s not afraid of them and loves what technology can do for his business endeavors. For 20 years, Ueckert owned an ironworking business, but during the pandemic it became difficult to operate. After looking for a business opportunity that made more sense at the time, he started Flush It Portable Toilets in Texarkana, Arkansas.
The company has had great success and he’s very happy with the decision. He has one employee to help him but has also embraced technological help.
One recent purchase was ServiceCore software to handle routing, billing and inventory. Ueckert says it was costing him not to have it. “I’m not an excellent bookkeeper,” he says. “I might forget to send out a bill for months, and I realized I was losing enough money to pay for a program.”
The problem was that the process was unduly tedious. “Before I got ServiceCore, if somebody ordered a unit, I had a Google spreadsheet and would put in their name, date, address, delivery date and GPS coordinates,” Ueckert says. “Step two was I’d have to enter that same information into routing software. Then when it was time to send a bill, I had to enter the same stuff again in another program.”
Ueckert only had to enter everything once to set up ServiceCore. All the services are tied together and the program transfers everything into QuickBooks.
Another program Ueckert uses is from AirVote. They provide him with stickers he puts in his portable restrooms so users can scan green, yellow or red QR codes to rate the service (or they can leave a Google review) — green if everything’s good, yellow or red if something needs attention, which sends him an email almost instantaneously.
Ueckert knew this was a good idea from his ironworking days dealing with unclean portable restrooms on job sites. “The problem is, the people paying for restrooms are usually not the same people using them,” he says. “I would have loved being able to tell somebody, ‘This toilet needs servicing.’ Calling the number on the units didn’t work. So, this has been a great tool.”
AirVote also provided further assistance setting up a Google account, a website, and launching online marketing efforts on Ueckert’s behalf.
Read more about Flush It Portable Toilets in this month’s issue of Portable Restroom Operator magazine.
