PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Running a Porta Potty Business

From Owner-Operator to Manager: Getting Out of the Truck in a Porta Potty Business

Most portable toilet companies start with the owner in the truck. He delivers the units, pumps them every week, picks them up, and does the office work at night. That is how good companies get built. It is also how owners burn out. At some point the business needs the owner to run it, not to run a route.

Why It Is Hard

With cash flow steady, as covered in Cash Flow in a Porta Potty Business: Monthly Account Billing and Card on File, you can afford to pay someone else to drive. Affording it is the easy part.

The hard part is trust. The owner knows every site, every gate code, every picky super. He knows the work is done right because he did it. Handing that to someone else feels like handing over the business. Many owners stay in the truck years longer than they should for exactly that reason.

The way through is not to trust blindly. It is to build systems that let you see the work without doing it.

Get the Knowledge Out of Your Head

Before you hand off a single route, the knowledge on that route has to live somewhere other than your memory. For every active site, make sure the job has:

• The address and site contacts
• Gate codes and access notes
• Unit type, quantity and unit numbers
• Placement notes that say exactly where the units go
• The weekly service schedule with the right minimum days between visits

This is tedious. Do it anyway. Every note you write is one less phone call from the truck when you are not in it.

Hand Off in Order

Do not hand off everything at once. A common order:

• First, the simplest weekly service route, to a tech you trust
• Then deliveries and pickups on easy sites
• Then the office work: answering texts, scheduling, billing
• Last, the difficult accounts, crane jobs and big events

Keep the hardest work yourself the longest. Hand it over once the notes on those sites are good enough that anyone could do them.

See the Work Without Doing It

Once you are out of the truck, you need a way to know the work is happening. The Waiting List shows every service that is due or overdue on a live map. The driver app sends Start, Skip and Complete from every tech, so the office sees each stop as it happens. Crew GPS from the driver app shows on the office map. Photos stay with the job. Automatic on-the-way and arrived texts tell customers the tech was there.

That is more information than you ever had when you were in the truck yourself. You knew where you were. Now you can see where everyone is.

What the Manager Does

When you stop running a route, fill the time with the work only the owner can do:

• Sell: visit contractors, follow up with event organizers, ask for referrals
• Price: review rates, quote large jobs, decide on discounts
• Watch the numbers: the weekly review of overdue sites, extra days, past-due balances and work per truck
• Hire and train: find the next tech before you need them
• Plan: trucks, units and the season ahead

If you fill the time with more office work you could have handed off, you have only changed seats. Hiring Office Help for a Porta Potty Business, and What Each Role Does covers handing off the office.

Stay Close to the Work

Getting out of the truck does not mean losing touch. Ride along with each tech once in a while. Visit your biggest job sites. Call your top contractors. Read your reviews. Customers like knowing the owner still cares, and you will catch problems the numbers do not show.

Expect Some Mistakes

Your techs will not do everything exactly the way you did. Some of it will be worse. Some of it will be better. Fix the things that matter to customers and let the rest go. If you step back in every time something is not perfect, you will be back in the truck within a month.

Tell Your Customers

Your longtime customers are used to seeing you. When a new tech starts showing up instead, some will wonder whether something changed. Tell them before they ask. A short call or text to your biggest accounts saying you are spending more time on the office and on growing the company, that their sites are in good hands, and that they can still reach you directly goes a long way. Introduce the new tech by name on the first visit if you can. Then let the automatic on-the-way and arrived texts and the steady weekly service do the rest. Within a few weeks, most customers stop noticing who drives the truck, as long as the units are clean and on time.

For the tools that let you manage from the office, visit the Porta Potty Business Software page.