Temporary Fencing Helps Support San Francisco Bay Area Economy

It’s not sexy and you won’t find it in the Victoria’s Secret catalog, but temporary fencing is being Googled. Okay, there weren’t 100K searches for temporary fencing this week, but it was mentioned on over a dozen blogs.

Temporary fencing isn’t at the forefront of most people’s minds unless they have a construction site that needs securing, a sporting event coming up, a parade, a traffic reroute or some other need. Last time I added it all up we had about 1.31 gillion miles of various temporary fencing panels to supply the greater San Francisco Bay Area with (just kidding). We have miles and miles of fencing, but not in the gillions.

The temporary site service business is one of the many “invisible small businesses” that go unnoticed. And yet, it is the small business network that employ more people and pump more money into the local economies than the big boys.

Searches on temporary fencing in Monterey, San Jose, Mountain View and Fremont won’t burn up the servers at Google, but like everything else - when people want something, the Internet is usually the first place they go to find it and we at Hanson & Fitch are here in cyberspace ready to respond to your temporary fencing needs.

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.

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.

I received a call from Keri Steinberg from Jansport Backpacks this week and they are having an event this Friday night at  the Mezzanine in San Francisco.  Jansport, Om Records & Mezzanine are presenting Spring Sessionsfrom 10pm - 4am.  Artists that will be featured will be the Hudson Supreme Beings of Leisure, Samantha James, J Boogie’s Dubtronic Science & Black Spade.  

Keri had inquired to see if we had  temporary fencing that could be used as a cool way to hang her products from the wall that would be displayed during the event.  She had a very specific size that she needed and that it could only be a 6×6 panel chain link fence.  I explained to her that we did have that in stock and that we would be happy to set it up and deliver it as soon as she needed it.  Apparently, she had called a few companies and they did not have panels shorter than 10′ long.   I explained that we had all different sizes of fence that could accommodate her and that we would be ready for her next call!

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!

I received an enthusiastic call this week from Denise Rocco-Zilber of Green Girl Events of West Marin, CA. She was doing some looking around at how to incorporate portable toilets and VIP Toilet Trailers into their creative event business that is based on protecting the environment. Green Girl specializes in event ideas that use products and services that create less waste! What a great idea and not to mention timely.

Solar Powered Temporary Restrooms

I explained to Denise that we have had a number of customers order our VIP Trailers that are available as a double and or as a quad. These trailers are run entirely on solar power and only use fresh water. Denise mentioned that this would be a big benefit and would fit in nicely with their niche business. Many times Denise designs her events in areas that do not have access to power (like a National Park or forest) and or the noise of a generator is just not welcomed.

More Demand From Green Builders

We are receiving more and more phone calls from green builders and event planners around the San Francisco Bay Area that have caught the green bug. They are looking for more eco-friendly solutions to their needs. Our environmentally-friendly temporary restrooms and portable toilets are one product we offer.

Recycling Temporary Fencing Materials

You might not think temporary fencing can be environmentally friendly or has the capacity to - go green. We do out part for the environment with fencing materials by building all of our temporary fencing panels to ensure minimal waste of raw materials. We also maintain our fencing and give attention to recycling as much of the scrap material as we can.

We look forward to working with Denise and other green organizations and doing our part for the environment.

The Pro Am Golf Tournament is over, but people are still sharing their great Monterey experience!

This years AT&T Golf Event at Pebble Beach drew record crowds. A week of heaven sent weather that made the event extra special.

We met people from all around the San Francisco Bay Area and many mentioned that the energy of the ocean, warm wind, and sunshine put smiles on the faces of most spectators. The best weather was definitely seen on the final days, Saturday & Sunday.

The feedback was that the golf courses were in excellent condition. The announcers of the television broadcast repeatedly said, “…they are in the best shape I have ever seen”.

Along with the manicured lawns of Pebble Beach, Poppy Hills & Spanish Bay, were the friendly staff and employees of all three world class facilities. This year is going to be hard to beat and now it is time to take all the tents, temporary fencing, and grand stands down for another day!

Hanson & Fitch, Inc. was hired again this year to set temporary fence for office for the San Francisco New Years Eve Event.

The event has traditionally brought thousands of people to the Embarcadero to watch the firework/pyrotechnic show at the strike of midnight.

We typically set up the fence a few days before the event to allow the many other vendors that will be bringing their services to the Embarcadero time to set up their booths for this very exciting night.

Our image of the fence panels we supplied was taken a few days before the event. The weather on New Year’s Eve was excellent and all had a great time.

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!