To enhance profits from the industrial branch of his portable sanitation business, Jim Willison took a cue from the fast-food industry and supersized his product offerings.
By emphasizing restroom trailer rentals for certain customers instead of individual standard portable restrooms, the sales manager of Service Sanitation Inc. in Gary, Ind., boosts profits and increases customer satisfaction. A good case in point is the 10 custom-made trailers, built by JAG Mobile Solutions Inc., that Willison rents to a British Petroleum refinery in nearby Whiting, Ind.
Willison worked with JAG to develop a unique design for the 28-foot-long trailers. Refinery employees, mostly office workers, have been using the trailers for the last three years while working in temporary mobile offices during a large project that includes refinery expansion and facility upgrades.
“We knew trailers would be out there for at least five years, so we designed them to withstand a more industrial environment,” Willison says. Each of the 10 trailers is used 150-200 times between pumping, Willison says, so durability features like non-skid, diamond-plate stairs, industrial-grade faucets and sprayed-on floor lining are smart additions.
The heated and air-conditioned fiberglass trailers feature three toilets in stalls and two sinks for the women’s facilities and two toilets in stalls, two urinals and two sinks for the men’s facilities. In addition, the trailers include two stalls in an independent center section accessible from both the men’s and women’s restrooms, which allows Service Sanitation to offer flexibility to suit various customer needs. In this case, because more men use the facilities than women, the door to the women’s side is locked, allowing more toilets for men, Willison says.
Service Sanitation, which employs about 80 people and does business in metropolitan Chicago and northwest Indiana, cleans the trailers daily and replenishes paper towels, toilet paper and soap dispensers. Two employees mostly dedicated to servicing the refinery pump out the trailers three times a week, Willison says.
The company has a 28-year relationship with BP, but didn’t use restroom trailers at the refinery location until the expansion project started.
“They wanted better facilities for their office personnel, just because of the sheer number of people who would be using them,” he says. “I showed them one of the restroom trailers in our inventory and they fell in love with the idea. They decided it was better to have things such as temperature control, hot water for washing hands and flush toilets.”
The trailers cost between $50,000 and $60,000 each, but Willison says that the return on investment more than justifies the price.
“Generally, a $50,000 trailer will rent out for a weekend for about $4,000,” he explains. “So I can safely say that every restroom trailer I’ve ever purchased has paid for itself within one year.”
That explains why Service Sanitation – which gets about 60 percent of its business from construction restroom rentals, 20 percent from industrial sites (including some of the Midwest’s largest refineries) and 20 percent from special events – now owns more than 60 restroom trailers, up from three eight years ago.
“The trailer market has evolved dramatically over the last 10 years as the public slowly realized this type of product was available,” Willison says. “Restroom trailers have substantially contributed to our success, year after year. We buy at least three to four new trailers every year and will continue to do so if demand continues … they’re definitely good revenue generators.”
Service Sanitation still relies heavily on individual portable restrooms, with more than 10,000 standard units in its inventory. “There are times when we’ve sat back and joked that we should just be in the restroom trailer business because it’s very profitable,” Willison says. “But we still need our core business.”
Along with a little supersizing on the side.
