PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Running a Porta Potty Business

Hiring Service Techs for a Porta Potty Business

Service tech is not a glamorous job, and everyone in this business knows it. The work is physical, it starts early, and it involves waste. That is exactly why a good tech is worth so much. The tech is the face of your company on every job site, and the one who decides whether a unit is clean or just pumped.

When You Need One

If you are planning a second truck, read Adding a Second Service Truck to Your Porta Potty Business first. Hiring and adding a truck usually happen together, and the order matters.

Some owners hire before the second truck, as a helper on the first one. That gives the new person a few weeks to learn sites with the owner before they drive alone. If you can afford it, it is the gentler way to start.

What to Look For

Experience pumping toilets is nice but rare. More important is a short list of traits that are hard to teach:

• Shows up on time, every day, including the day after a holiday
• Holds the right license for your truck, with a clean driving record
• Is willing to do dirty work carefully, not just fast
• Talks to customers politely, including a cranky super at 7am
• Uses a smartphone comfortably, because the route lives on the phone
• Notices things: a tipped unit, a missing lock, a placement that blocks a gate

Ask about past jobs where they worked alone. A tech spends most of the day without a boss watching, so you need someone who does the job right when nobody is looking.

Where to Find Them

Good techs often come from nearby trades: landscaping, roll-off and junk hauling, delivery drivers, farm work, and septic. Ask your current customers too. Builders know people who want steady work. A referral from a good employee is usually the best lead you will get.

In your job post, be honest about the work. Say what the hours are, what the pay is, what truck they will drive and what license it needs. Say that the job involves cleaning and pumping portable toilets. People who keep reading after that line are the ones you want to talk to.

The Ride-Along Interview

After a short interview, offer a paid half day riding along. Watch how they handle a site with a tight placement, how they talk to a customer, and whether they clean the inside of a unit without being told. You will learn more in four hours on the truck than in an hour at a desk.

Pay and Schedule

Pay is local, and you know your market better than any article. What matters is that the pay is fair for your area, paid on time, and clear. Techs leave over surprises, like overtime that was promised and not paid, or Saturdays that were supposed to be rare.

The time clock in PortaPottyBossPro lets techs clock in and out, so hours are recorded as they happen instead of rebuilt from memory at the end of the week. That alone heads off a lot of arguments.

Be careful with event weekends. If your event work means Friday deliveries and Monday pickups, say so in the interview. A tech who expected Monday through Friday and then works three weekends in a row will be looking for another job by August. Some owners hire one or two weekend helpers just for event season so the full-time techs keep a normal schedule.

Red Flags

A few things are worth walking away from, no matter how short-handed you are. Someone who badmouths every past boss will likely say the same about you. Someone who cannot pass the license and driving record check cannot drive your truck, however willing. Someone who is rude to the customer on the ride-along will be rude when you are not there. And someone who skips the inside of a unit on day one will skip it on day one hundred.

Set Them Up in the System

Before the first day, add the new tech as an employee with a personal PIN and a truck assignment. They log into the driver app with the company login and their PIN. Because PortaPottyBossPro is never billed per user, there is no extra cost for adding a helper, a part-timer or a seasonal hand for event weekends.

Keeping Good Techs

The techs who stay are the ones who feel the job is organized. A clear route on the phone, notes that tell them where the units go, a truck that works, and a boss who does not call every hour all count. When a customer compliments a tech, pass it on. When a tech finds a problem on a site, thank them for writing it down.

Hiring is only half of it. Training a New Porta Potty Service Tech in the First Two Weeks covers how to get a new hire up to speed. For an overview of the driver app and the rest of the system, see the Porta Potty Business Software page.