At the Cutting Edge of the Portable Restroom Rental Industry

Inspiration to Pursue Quality in Entrepreneurship

When I was a kid I would always see portable bathrooms. My mother, father, and everybody else had the same thought about those — you don’t use portable bathrooms. They’re dirty, smelly, just gross.

I remember my father working on construction sites. They always had portable bathrooms on the sites. They smelled bad. When I saw one, I wouldn’t want to use it. They were always gross. My brother is in the construction industry as well. He was telling me about the portable bathrooms on the job sites where he works. His comments were the same as I had always heard, that those smell bad and are too dirty to want to use.

So, I thought, where is there a company that provides good portable bathrooms? I researched a bunch for a solid year. But Research & Development is finding how to do things. It’s finding better solutions. It’s finding ways to make a better value for the customers. It’s figuring out something that can be done that hasn’t been done before.

Reliable – A League of Its Own

I joke that we don’t have competitors. You can call and someone will bring you a portable bathroom. But, what we do is completely different. There are things portable bathroom rental companies do to save costs. That often includes using only brief inspection processes that meet the basic standard. What we do is very different. Every time a unit is delivered, it is first inspected by two supervisors, and they both have to say it’s ready to go out.

Many portable bathroom rental companies settle for sending out units with graffiti, tar, or grease marks. We make sure that every unit is in brand-new condition. When we deliver units in that condition, people respect that. It’s of such high quality that people respect it. That’s a very different kind of experience for them than they’ve come to expect.

Dallas’s choice of the beautiful soft pink porta-potties also just presents the company’s customers with something unique and unexpected. The units just look exceptionally fresh and comparatively pretty.

The Reliable Difference

There is one guy I know who has been in construction for five years. He said the condition of the portable bathrooms on the work sites is always terrible. Again, what we do compared to what our competitors do is very different. We begin with training our drivers by having them start out cleaning in the yard. They clean the units that go under inspection from our supervisors. That goes on for about two weeks. Then they can start driving the trucks.

We use an inspection tracking sheet to track how much time we spend on inspections. The industry average is about 3 minutes per unit. We give our guys 15 minutes. That means we spend 500% longer on inspecting each unit. We’re detailing it like a car at a car wash.

One kind of fun thing we do is called “good water.” Because we use that, the units dry spot-free. Over time, you get calcium stains, as you can expect on anything unless you attend to preventing that. So, with our good water process, our units are always shiny, vibrant, and look new. I’ve probably ordered 40 different soaps to clean the units, degreasers, solvents, etc. The soap we use is the best.

Quality Assurance Systems at Reliable

Two supervisors split the valley. They have different Before and After routes, and shadowing routes. Shadowing is performed according to a set calendar for that. We have hand sanitizer checks, other stock checks, and GPS checks. Each of those is assigned. Those could all happen on the same day.

The supervisors take notes on different Before and After conditions. We take very thorough and detailed notes on every unit we clean. If a unit is already clean at the Before stage, it should be extra clean at the After stage. That means wiping it, even if it looks clean, to remove any dust particles, refresh the soap, hand sanitizer, tissue, etc. 

We’re continuously reaching out to our customers to see how things are going, making sure they are happy with the service and that everything is perfect for them.

Going the Extra Distance for Incomparable Quality

When someone says, “I have portable bathrooms, people usually have an image of an outhouse type of unit. We’ve tested every single portable bathroom from all the big providers. We were looking to determine, for example, which cleans the best, which holds the most toilet paper, and is the best based on various other criteria. Many only hold 2 rolls of tissue. The industry average is 2 rolls. Ours hold 3. We were also looking for the tank design that is the easiest to clean and the most hygienic. That was an issue, finding a tank that is easy to clean.

Another feature we were looking for was strength in the unit. Some types that are not very well built may jiggle like jello when they’re moved.  You want one that is sturdy and adds value to the customer’s site. We don’t want some amateur-built units.

At one point we had 16 different types of units and we settled on the best one. It’s a dual-insulated unit and very easy to clean. It wasn’t the cheapest, the most convenient, or the most readily available. But, we invested in the best units, and we chose the best chemicals, the best hand sanitizer, cleaner, disinfectant, etc. — and the best crew.

We maintain very high standards for everyone who works here. We clean the trucks immaculately. The yard is organized. The drivers are organized. Every aspect of the operation is well organized, including billing, sales, management, human resources, and all other functions. We run every part of the business rigorously and professionally.

Reliable Sales Distinctions

When you try ordering portable restroom rental units, most of the time you get an answering service, or you order online. This is another way we do things differently. Here, 24/7, when you call for information or to rent portable bathroom units, you will always talk with a real person.

We provide facilities for birthday parties, government grand openings, backyard remodeling, and large apartment complex construction projects… We can help everyone from 1 to 100 units. Whatever the need, we can help you.

Connecting with Customers

When asked about his company’s online marketing and use of web analytics tools, Dallas talks about a different way of thinking about marketing and sales methodologies. Yes, we use website analytics, and I would say our online marketing is very effective. Our website looks very professional. We wanted it to have a good, engaging feeling for our customers. But most of our work comes from word of mouth. For me, it’s about respecting human interaction. You can place orders on the website, but I’m pushing for the phone call.

Unlike many other providers, we have people in the office to take phone calls. It’s fun when all the phones are in use at the same time. I want to connect with the customers. When you tell somebody we have clean bathrooms, they think maybe it’s a sales tactic, but we really do. We offer a different class of customer experience. I could save a bunch of money if we didn’t do that level of work, but we do the work.

Success in the Valley of the Sun

Dallas is very understated about his personal accomplishments. He avoids the usual listing of the standard proof points of his business’s success. It appears uncharacteristic of him to talk about the number of portable restroom units his company has in inventory, the number of accounts the field staff services weekly, annual revenue totals, etc., to indicate the company’s growth status.

He simply shares that the business currently has 25+ employees and is growing. That number includes the administrative team, dispatchers, route supervisors, drivers, and maintenance team members.

The business’s 5-year growth plan involves getting another yard, more drivers, more office staff, and so on. Ultimately, Dallas envisions having a corporate office somewhere as the base of a broader-ranging enterprise.

The thriving company under the leadership of Dallas Zyadet appears ideally positioned for exciting growth rates in the coming years. We look forward to checking in for an ALW update of this initial coverage of the Reliable Portable Bathrooms story in the years to come. 

The Reliable Employer Brand

Adding to the leadership’s depth of commitment to an unprecedented level of quality in pristine rental restroom units, Reliable’s personnel policies further account for the company’s flourishing. The employees are well paid in wages plus benefits. There’s also a sense that something more is at work in the thriving business. A high level of company pride, a rapport of mutual respect with management, and a collaborative environment appears to be at the foundation of the company culture.

We invest in the highest quality of uniforms for our employees. The uniforms display our logo. They’re very professional looking and provide sun protection, and they’re (the employees are) dressed like a million bucks. The uniform is a white shirt and black pants. With the white trucks, it all looks very clean. It presents an image of purity. It doesn’t hide dirt. That’s one reason why we picked the pink portable bathroom units. It (pink) shows dirt like crazy.

From what so many employees have told me, they would go to former employers with problems and ideas for solutions but they, too often, wouldn’t even listen. We do things differently in this regard too. All my employees say, “Thank you for telling me that my ideas are important and actually listening to them.”

Team Collaboration at Reliable

So many of my best ideas come from our employees. We have frequent spitball sessions. Like every business, we’re often faced with questions like: How do we improve this? Or, Hey, what if…? When that happens, we get three people in a room, including employees and management, to work on developing solutions through spitballing.

We try to do that at least once a day. We just set aside 10 minutes and pass ideas back and forth. We get something better together than we would have gotten individually on our own.

Dallas Zyadet, Policy of Giving Back to the Community

We have done events for charitable causes in the past for which we gave away units for free, etc., and we still do that occasionally. We donate to several charities regularly, such as breast cancer awareness and animal rescue. Almost all of my employees, vendors, friends, and teachers, and I know somebody who has suffered from breast cancer. We support animal rescues because those are some of the most underappreciated charities. We did our research and identified organizations that use the majority of donated funds directly for the critical work, and we give them a portion of each dollar earned.

Advice for New Market Entrants from Dallas Zyadet, Reliable Portable Bathrooms, Phoenix, AZ

I would say that, if you’re starting your own company in this industry, you will have a choice. Ask yourself, do you want to save money and cannibalize your resources, etc., or really commit to quality? Or, I’d just say to newcomers, do you want to come and join me at the cutting edge of the industry or follow the old methodology of doing things?

The Reliable brand story is certainly one about the way to the future of the industry, leaving behind the old service paradigm in which the norm was settling for quality standards that are no longer good enough to compete with the Reliable quality management model. It veritably upgrades current industry best practices.

Under the direction of Dallas Zyadet, his company’s approach to sales, product quality, and agile collaboration stand apart in the national market. Add the highly driven business leader’s push to scale, and Reliable Portable Bathrooms offers an extraordinary strategic model for the future of the industry.