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

I was talking with one of our long time customers, Shawn Casey at the Pebble Beach Company. We were discussing some of the additional site services we were adding, as we try to do with our customers from time to time.

I explained that we are now offering portable toilets with weekly service in the area and that we were trying hard to grow this new business. Shawn listened and responded with,”We currently have a portable toilet on a trailer and would consider changing to you guys, since we know you will do a good job and the products are brand new”.

I quickly told Shawn that it would be great and that we would get back to him ASAP.

The toilets are no problem, but the trailer was going to need to be a perfect fit for this kind of application. Believe it or not the trailer needs to be stable not just on the back of the truck, but more importanly when someone is inside and the trailer is not connected to the truck.

We found a great fit and our toilet is “getting a set of wheels” as we speak. the trailer is a bright red in color and is licensed by the Department of Transportation and is street legal.

We thank Shawn for his business and look forward to seeing more toilets on trailers in the near future.

Hanson & Fitch installs GPS units in portable toilets

The iButton is a computer chip enclosed in a 16mm thick stainless steel can. it is unique and durable and can travel with a person or object anywhere they go. The steel iButton can be mounted virtually anywhere because it is rugged enough to withstand harsh environments, indoors or outdoors. It is small and portable enough to attach to a key fob, ring, watch, or other personal items, and be used daily for applications such as access control to buildings and computers, asset management, and various data logging tasks.

This technology has allowed us to grow on top of a platform that is smart business. It allows us to do inventory control, distribution of product and services, and control over billing. We can grow as large as we want and still manage to see the details that each customer sees on their respective job site and or event.

This will save the company thousands of dollars a year. The whole system is digitized now - we know where they are at all times and it is all integrated into our billing system.

Temporary Fencing and Toilets isn’t what many would consider a sexy business, but it’s a solid, stable business and with all the construction, our temporary fence panels and portable toilets are always in demand.

We just recently added portable toilets to our temporary services because it seemed like more often than not on most job sites there was a problem for the client with coordinating the delivery of fencing and toilets. This detail would probably seem insignificant to the average person, but for event coordinators or construction site foremen it is a major fly in the ointment.

We at Hanson & Fitch are dedicated to growing our business into the best temporary services company in the San Francisco Bay area. When we say best we mean quality - in product and service.

We will be using this blog to showcase our products, job sites and events throughout the Bay area as a means of familiarizing our potential clients with our temporary fencing and portable toilets. But more than that, we want this to be an open forum where we can acknowledge our clients and invite their feedback to help us achieve our goals of best in product and service.

Temporary Fence & Portable Toilets - not something you ever think about until you need them!