PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Running a Porta Potty Business

Seasonality in a Portable Toilet Business: Construction Season vs Event Season

Most portable toilet companies run on two calendars at once. Construction work keeps units out for weeks or months, with weekly service that comes due like clockwork. Event work comes in bursts, mostly on weekends in the warmer months, with deliveries late in the week and pickups early the next. Both pull on the same trucks, the same techs and the same units. Planning around that overlap is a big part of running the business well.

Two Kinds of Work, One Fleet

Your rates for each kind of work were covered in Pricing Extra Pump-Outs, Extra Days and Add-On Services in a Porta Potty Business and the article before it. This one is about timing.

Construction work is the base. It is steady, it pays monthly, and it keeps trucks busy every weekday. In many areas it slows in deep winter and picks up in spring, but long commercial projects often run year-round.

Event work is the peak. Fairs, festivals, races, weddings, graduations, family reunions and sports tournaments cluster in late spring, summer and early fall. They pay well per day, but they demand a lot of units and trucks at the same time, usually Thursday through Monday.

When the Calendars Collide

The hard weeks are the ones where both are running hot. A big festival needs thirty units delivered Friday morning, the same morning your weekly construction route is due. If both go out late, you upset two sets of customers at once.

The Waiting List helps here. Weekly service sites come due on their own based on each service's minimum days between visits, and their pins change color as they go from not due yet, to due now, to overdue past the 7-day grace. On a heavy event week, the office can see early in the week which construction sites can be serviced Monday through Wednesday, before event deliveries take over the trucks. On the dispatch board, filter by truck to see who has room, and use auto-routing to tighten each day.

Planning the Event Season

Events book ahead. Use that. As soon as an event is confirmed, put the delivery and pickup on the schedule. Then look at each weekend as a whole: how many units, how many trucks, how many hours. If a weekend is full, you know it weeks ahead, not on Thursday afternoon.

A few habits help:

• Book event deliveries early in the week before when the site allows it
• Group event pickups by area on Monday so one truck clears a part of town
• Keep a few units in reserve on big weekends for last-minute calls
• Price event service during the event high enough to justify pulling a truck off regular work
• Hire weekend help for the peak months so full-time techs get a day off

The Slow Months

When construction slows and events stop, the trucks get quiet. This is the time to do the work you cannot do in season: truck maintenance, unit repairs and cleaning, updating site notes and procedures, reviewing prices, and chasing old invoices. It is also the time to sell. Builders are planning spring projects, and event organizers are booking next year.

Use your tags. In PortaPottyBossPro you can tag clients as Contractor, Events or Homeowner, and filter by tag. In the slow months, pull up last year's event customers and reach out before they book someone else. Two-way texting from the office makes that a quick message instead of a round of phone calls.

Cash Flow Across the Year

Seasonality hits the bank account as much as the schedule. Event money comes in a rush in summer. Construction money is steadier but slows in winter. Card on file and auto-charge on completion help event money arrive quickly instead of trickling in over months. Monthly account billing keeps construction money arriving on a schedule. Plan the slow months by setting aside money in the busy ones. A truck repair in February should not be an emergency.

Know Your Own Calendar

Every area is different. A company in the South may have its event peak in spring and fall, avoiding the hottest weeks. A company in the North may see construction drop off hard in January. Look back at your own last year: which weeks had the most deliveries, which had the most service, which were quiet. Your reports tell you, and once you know the shape of your year you can plan trucks, techs and units around it instead of reacting.

Hiring Around the Seasons

Seasonality also decides who you hire and when. Hire before the peak, not in the middle of it. A tech hired in the second week of June is learning routes during your hardest weekends. A tech hired in April has six weeks of normal service to learn the sites before event season starts. Because PortaPottyBossPro is never billed per user, adding a seasonal tech to the driver app costs nothing extra.

For the scheduling and dispatch tools that handle both seasons, visit the Porta Potty Business Software page.