It’s HOT! and not just the temperature, business is hot. The kids are back in school, but business is still booming for us.

During the summer, we get a lot of our business from summer concert, fairs, sporting events, festivals and other fun events that help make summer - summer.

Here are just a few of the places we could be seen this week: Alameda, Oakland, Treasure Island, Hollister,Del Monte Golf Course, Berkeley and Ft. Mason.

Business continues to boom to the point where we needed to get another new truck. With service yards in Pleasanton and Gilroy, we needed more wheels to get the job done.

We’re having a lot of fun growing this business and meeting our clients’ needs. Give us a call we can help you with temporary fencing and portable toilets in the following communities:  Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Brisbane, Burlingame, Cupertino, Daly City, Danville, Dublin, Emeryville, Foster City, Fremont,Gilroy, Hayward, Castro Valley, Livermore, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Milpitas, Mountain View, Oakland, Pacifica, Pleasanton, Redwood City, Richmond, San Bruno, San Jose, San Francisco, San Leandro, San Mateo, San Ramon, Santa Clara, Saratoga, South San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Union City, Walnut Creek, and Watsonville.

Portable Toilet News You Don’t Want to Miss

Tampa, Florida (The Weekly Vice) — Lorenzo Earl Knight, a 22-year-old Florida man was arrested on burglary and theft charges after police say he broke into a vehicle and then hid in a nearby portable toilet. Before police arrived however, Mr. Knight discovered why a port-a-potty is the last place a burglar wants to hide.

Investigators say the incident began when Lorenzo Knight broke into a 1999 Ford F-150 in a mall parking lot Saturday and allegedly stole a $500 digital camera along with it’s owner’s manual.

Knight was attempting to break into a 2nd truck, when the automobile’s owner and a friend spotted him and gave chase, according to the police report.

Knight fled the scene to a nearby construction site and attempted to hide in a portable toilet that was also on the site. The truck’s owner and his friend soon caught up to Knight and tipped the portable toilet over, trapping Knight inside the toilet until police could arrive.

When officers arrived, they found Knight still inside the toilet, soaking wet in the toilet’s contents. Authorities also recovered a screwdriver that Knight used to jimmy the truck’s lock and a shoe he left at the scene, according to Tampa Police.

Knight was arrested on the “spot” and charged with two counts of burglary and one count of grand theft. He was booked into the Orient Road Jail and then released Sunday morning after posting a $6,000 bond.

Wille gives San Francisco portable toilets his 5am seal of approval!

Nicole at A-1 PortableToilets in Conway, Arkansas provides us with another case of “portable toilet blown to hell.”

The need for portable toilets seems to be growing in the San Francisco Bay Area. any thoughts on that???

At least our business is growing. The new site in Pleasanton is helping us cope with increased demand and helping us keep our feul costs down - which is good for our customers.

The summer season continues to keep us extremely busy. It’s hard to find 15 minutes to post something pithy on our blog. Suffice it to say, that customer service comes before blogging!

With the recent growth of our business that provides the temporary fencing and portable restrooms to special events and construction sites, we decided to open an location in Pleasanton.  I personally wanted to have a location in the bay area for some time.  It will allows us to answer their needs of our customers in a timely manner and it will finially allow me me to work in my community.  It is very exciting for us and I can already tell that our business is going to benefit directly from this new location.

We have watched fuel costs double and the driving times increase during the peak hours, which can make it difficult to be on time if the customer has requested us to be there at 7am.  Additionally, we find that we service our customers each week and it becomes critical to be within a 30-40 mile radius to meet their expectations.  I have quicky learned that telling someone you will be there to help them in 30 minutes or less can make them a life long customer.  We look forward to being a part of Pleasanton!

When Disaster Strikes - Portable Toilets are Needed

The recent fires in California remind me of how portable toilets are one of the key resources needed in disaster situations. Whether it is California wildfires, an earthquake, a mudslide, flood or even a typhoon - when disaster strikes, sanitation is a major concern.

In such situations, we have hundreds of single portable toilet units available. Our VIP Temporary Restrooms are mounted on trailers for portability and convenience. They’re solar powered and can be delivered to the front lines for emergency crews.

Clean drinking water is also a concern in disaster situations. Our potable water tanks fill that need.

A couple of other situations that may require a portable toilet or temporary restroom.

• Bathroom Remodel
• Family Reunions

Portable Toilet Art

No post on portable toilets would be complete without a picture of graffiti artist, Banksy’s - Stonehenge made of - you guessed it - portable toilets!

When people call for portable toilet or temporary restrooms, one of the first questions we get is - how many portable toilets for my event will I need? There are several factors that need to be considered:

• How many attendees do you expect?
• How long will the event last?
• Will alcohol be served?
• What is the weather likely to be?
• What level of physical activity is involved?

We are specialists in providing toilets for all types of events whether it involves a small group or a large crowd. We serve the entire San Francisco Bay Area including: Monterey, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Danville and all the surrounding communities.

Here is a chart to help you begin your planning.

I’ll bet most people don’t track news about portable toilets, but when you’re in the portable toilet and temporary restroom business, you need to stop every now and then to smell the roses! Providing temporary site services throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to communities like San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco can be challenging at times, but some of the stories in the news about portable toilets this week made me thankful for small blessings.

There were about 200 mentions of portable toilets this past week on blog postings. Isn’t that wild??!!! Most of them are posts about local events mentioning that portable toilets will be available at the event. From rock concerts and political rallies to boy scout jamborees - where you find people, you need to find toilets.

Here are a few of the portable toilet stories I came across:

• From South Africa - Portable Toilets being used to threaten the poor
• Up in Washington - Teens arrested for blowing up portable toilets
• In Brooklyn - Thieves beat up a guard and stuff him in a toilet
• In Rancho Cordova - Portable toilet fire destroys little league equipment

We are in the midst of our busiest summer. This year we added over 100 portable toilets to our inventory and we could probably use 100 more. Our temporary VIP restrooms are getting us a lot of positive feedback from clients.

We are working 7 days a week now to meet the demand. Customer service and satisfaction are always at the top of our list.

The summer of 2008 is turning into a summer of challenges in the temporary fencing & portable toilet business for us at Hanson & Fitch.

First the good news!

Business is booming. We are working 7 days a week to service demand from our clients. Some of our competitors have gone out of business or downscaled their business as a result of the ripple effect in the construction industry. This coupled with the success of our marketing efforts has helped our business to explode.

The bad news is, of course, GAS PRICES. Soaring fuel prices are hurting everyone and we are no exception. We are endeavoring to keep our prices stable. We are not planning on charging for checked baggage, but some adjustments may need to be made.

We remain committed to providing the best temporary site services at competitive and reasonable rates. Our clients are our business!

On the lighter side of the portable toilet business -

• Pa. Crews Rescue Nude Man Stuck In Portable Potty
• Man naps in portalet
• Fox’s Smith: People who get stuck in toilets are ‘a little crazy

Ora Thornton placed a call to us today and ordered for our portable restrooms and hand wash station for the exciting event that is coming up this weekend.  She explained that the Bayview Opera House will be celebrating phase one of the historic building renovation this Saturday from 1-4pm.  There will be performances by Dance Team and will be welcomed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Sophie Maxwell.  Ora is expecting a fairly large crowd and needed additional restrooms to accomodate all of the people that will be attneding the event.  The Bayview Opera House is located on 4705 Third Street in San Francisco.  We look forward to working with Ora and being a part of this historic event.

With all of the anticipation of the Olympic torch coming to San Francisco, our phones have been ringing consistently for the last several days.  We have received calls from local event coordinators to the Chinese Consulate looking for temporary site services for their last minute parties that seem to have just sprung up. 

There is a lot of buzz in the air and certainly in the media of what we might expect with the spectators that will be crossing lines with the protests that will be going on along the course of the event.  Toilets, temporary fencing and barricade are all items that are being ordered on an emergency basis in preparation of tomorrow’s event that starts at 1pm at Willie McCovey Cove in San Francisco.  We currently have four (4) separate events going on at the same time and we know that there will be a few more as we get closer to tomorrow.  I am also talking to my colleagues whom are also scrambling to keep up with the requests for services.  It is pretty exciting.

Over the last several months our company and employee’s have gone through the growing pains of learning a new business and keeping faith that we made the right choice when we decided to add sanitation services to our customer base.  We always thought it would be great to do more for the people we served and that it might be an easier method of growing our revenues, than trying to just do more temporary fence.

There are only a few companies that offer both services and we thought that we could do it better!  This week I heard from Bill Kelleher at Stuart Rental Company in Fremont and he was coordinating an event on Treasure Island in San Francisco, CA.  He wanted to know our availability for a certain weekend and that he wanted to rent some of our popular green bicycle barricade for crowd control.  I told him that we were certainly available and appreciated the business and that we also could provide the portable toilets and VIP toilet trailers at the same time if they were on his list of things that were needed.  Bill almost fell out of his chair, “You do that also”?  I explained that we did and that it was a new service that fit just like cake and ice cream.  We were hired that same day by and it confirmed in my mind that we are definitely on to something. We look forward to more desert!