Fitting the Pieces Together: A Guide to Office Operations for the Liquid Waste, Portable Toilet & Septic Pumping Industries

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Section Three: The Portable Rental Business

 

Do You Think You're In The Portable Rental Business?

 

When asked what they do for a living, most Portable Rental business owners will initially reply that they rent and clean portable toilets for construction and special events. This is only partially true. One element of the service you provide is the rental and cleaning of a portable rest room, but it is not the only service your company provides, nor is it the activity which takes up the majority of the day.

 

In fact, there are many work items associated with providing service to the customer. These items take time and their costs must be absorbed by your customer service calls. They include:

 

  • Answer the phone

  • Acquire and maintain licenses and permits

  • Purchase supplies

  • Pay taxes

  • Pay bills

  • Schedule the work

  • Invoice customers

  • Call customers for moneys owed using age reports and statements

  • Track profit

  • Maintain DEP compliance records

  • Drive service truck

  • Pickup and deliver units

  • Advertise

  • Maintain/purchase equipment

  • Maintain inventory

  • Handle Payroll

  • Provide customer education on unit usage

  • Maintain customer records

  • Track receivables

  • Keep records to track state of business, sales, type of services provided

  • Do Marketing

  • Manage employees

  • Relocate units

  • Dealing with regulations

 

You can see from the list that cleaning units is only a part of your business day. Let’s take a closer look at the work directly linked to cleaning units and in terms of time and money.

 

If you have a typical portable rental business, you service between 25 to 35 units per service route in an 8 hour day. Typically, it takes about 5 minutes to actually clean a unit, so let us look at some of the major items used to support a portable rental unit for a customer.

 

Portable Toilet Unit

This item costs approximately $500.00 and has an expected life span of four years or $125.00 per year in capital. Assuming a 10% borrowing rate, you need to add $50.00/yr in interest expenses. Assuming the unit is 50% utilized or rented 180 days of the year, this comes to about a $1.00 per day or $7.00 per week in unit costs.

 

Cleaning the Unit

The actual cleaning time for each unit is about five minutes. This is the time to vacuum waste, brush down unit and wash out. Assuming a loaded salary of $20.00/hr., which includes taxes, insurance and other overhead, it costs about $1.67 to clean the unit in direct labor.

 

Service Truck

A service truck costs approximately $40,000 to $50,000 and has a five year life span of $10,000 to $12,500 capital dollars per year in capital costs. Maintenance, insurance, etc., run between 5 and 10% of capital cost or $4,000 to $5,000 per year in expense dollars. Truck cost is $15,600 per year or approximately $300.00 per week or $60.00 per day.