When we met Frank Perez for the first time back in 2023, it was a one-of-a-kind experience. Like every new entrepreneur, he was fielding challenges from every direction and, like all who go on to great success, he was overcoming them at a feverish pace. But, that’s where his similarities to recognizable business management end. We learned that Perez and his Anchorage-based team go “anywhere anytime” to provide service in “almost any environment of The Last Frontier” by “any form of motorized transportation.”
The Alaska Porta Potty, LLC service area is the entire state of Alaska, which is comparable in land size to the whole eastern seaboard of the US. When the techs get to customers’ remote outback locations, they deliver excellence, every time. Two years out from our original interview, snowballing growth now has the company rolling out operations in distant locales far from the northern frontier.
Unusual Alaskan Service Alternative
Frank had left a good regional job in the industry to launch his own niche service to outback customers in the mountains, on the tundra, everywhere regular portable restroom rental companies do not dare approach. In mid-2018, he opened the new family business with his wife Sarah, his daughter, Persasis (Pur-say-iss) staffing the office, and his Labrador Retriever, Duke, as his partner running routes through the Alaskan wilderness. By the time we met him in 2023, he also had one part-time and two full-time employees.
To fund his new business in 2018, Frank had cut expenses, sold off a lot of his off-road toys, and used the proceeds to buy porta potties, including handicap units, handwashing, and hand sanitizing stations, maintenance equipment, etc. He paid cash for the porta potty trucks to avoid financing costs.
He recalled that the first year had a rough start, opening very late in the season. Then, revenues were up and down for a while. He thought he was going to have to get a part time job. But, 7 months after opening, a 7.2 earthquake hit the area, causing a surge in new orders due to the urgent demand for services.
Doubling in Size Every Year
While the physical coverage area of Alaska Porta Potty, LLC has remained roughly the same (because of the state’s natural boundaries limiting it), the business has doubled its income and inventory each year since its startup. Frank attributes his competitive success to his equipment. In 2023, he explained, “That is what sets us apart. We can go places our competitors can’t.
A small tank I have can be put on the back of a pickup and taken into terrain that regular tank trucks cannot access. We’ve gone down some goat trails with that truck. I didn’t realize it was a thing until the tank inspector had to do an inspection (regarding the tariff charge to empty the liquid waste). The inspector said the tank I was using was the smallest he had ever seen.
That was by design, specifically to service areas that cannot be accessed with a larger tank. For example, the State of Alaska hired us to go down a cliff trail. And, the smallest tank I use is the only one light enough to cross some bridges that have low maximum weight limits.”
A large percentage of Frank’s revenue came from those remote customers for the first few years, but eventually, he picked up more urban accounts, including various municipal government accounts. However, he said he still enjoys serving in the most remote North Alaskan areas of off-grid users accessible only by 4-wheeler, snowmobile, cargo sled, airplane, or boat.
Viability of Serving Wilderness Customers
Frank noted the benefit of learning from experience, including understanding how to protect yourself as a business owner with such a specialized service model, “I’ve been in the industry so long I’ve done every single porta potty on every back area, every goat trail. I’m prepared for the bad ones. I get a $300 – $400 security deposit up front, and I bill in advance instead of in arrears. We bill remote customers early so that if the payment doesn’t go through, we know it before delivering. You have to learn how to protect yourself. Having a big cash deposit prevents losses.”
Per Frank’s 2023 broader characterization of the sales model for remote customers, “The customer has to be willing to pay for the six hours of driving time, for example, and the fuel, and that’s how we justify our pricing. We don’t say — you’re out there in the middle of nowhere so we need to increase our rate. But we’ll charge you for our time, costs, and fuel surcharge like we do with any other customer, and you’ll pay for the service. When you break it down that way, it seems more fair, instead of saying we could make more doing it down the street, so we will charge you more for being farther away.
These people need sanitization as well. We’re not losing money, but we’re not making a lot from that. We don’t charge them additionally from our office. We only charge an added amount from the point where the coverage area ends. Yes, I’m driving a long distance to go there, but I know I’m always taking care of a community out there.”
Alaskan Porta Potty is also a U.S. military contractor, supporting the vast armed forces serving the Arctic and the Gulf (Gulf of Alaska) regions to help them be “mission-ready.”
Organic Growth – Zero Marketing
Initially, Frank spent a couple of hundred dollars on advertising, but, he said he then discovered he preferred to generate new business by drinking coffee and just starting up conversations. The company uses only magnetic signs with the logo on its trucks, because, as Frank explained, “It’s not practical to invest in custom-painted lettering and artwork, etc. Because our vehicles, like all others here, are the famous Alaskan dirt color. You can’t see anything on them but dirt anyway, so we don’t spend much for labeling them.”
Today (2025), Frank explains, “We’ve been bringing in new customers every day. We’ve grown a lot since the last time we talked. Alaska is weird when it comes to advertising. Billboards and other traditional advertising stuff you normally see on or around commercial buildings are not allowed here. Our advertising is all still by word-of-mouth. I haven’t spent any more money on marketing over the years.
During the previous federal administration, the Alaskan economy was really hurting, due to what basically amounted to a shutdown of a lot of oil and gas industry operations here. Everything in the state is tied to oil and gas. Things slowed down for a while throughout the whole state, including our business. We’ve now recovered our previous level of business activity. Now we’re completely out of porta potty units, and I have ordered 32 more. We have grown by about 7 to 9 percent since the last time we talked, and it’s still growing.
Our customer base is growing, and we have more of the customers we want most — the annual renters, vs. only those renting for a few months or shorter terms. We have got some much bigger customers now too, including major construction firms. And, a couple of cities outside Anchorage want us to take over their municipal accounts, which would require more manpower.
We have gotten a couple of new employees, including a new driver we hired to do our events, but we’d need more right away to handle large new accounts.
Different Service Environment, Different Priorities
Frank noted in our original talk, “We’ve gone everywhere from Seward, Alaska to Fairbanks. We don’t have those periodic highway rest stops open year-round up here. The road-side pull-outs we have are unlighted, often with no cell phone signal. We take everything for vehicle breakdowns, and you can expect to lose your cell signal for long distances. You have to be prepared.
I do my traffic reports when I can (to help inform other drivers of conditions), and I like to put it online when I run across ducks, geese, lynx, bears, moose, coyotes, wolves, wolverines, mountain goats, or other animals.
My dog (Duke) is my constant work companion, and he’s my security system. He alerts me to any other animals in the vicinity while I’m servicing a porta potty unit.”
Biggest Challenges of the APP, LLC Service Model
As Frank explained in 2023, “The major challenge is equipment maintenance in this climate. If you’re on the road system, we’ll get there. We can go anywhere. The weather is a challenge. The temperatures can make things difficult, causing frozen vehicle components, from doors to mechanical parts, etc.
The wildlife is also a challenge. For example, if you get cherry- or banana-scented oils to make the units smell nice, those can attract bears and other wildlife, like wolves or wolverines. It’s too dangerous.
Other challenges include the stuff off-road, fuel diesel gel, and oil, for example. You have to keep inverters and heat guns in the vehicles, in case the pump veins freeze up. When we’re out that far in the middle of nowhere, we don’t have excuses. We’ve spent all the money on the equipment, so it has to get done.”
On the budgeting end, Frank explained that getting portable toilets to increase inventory is comparatively very expensive, “There’s the shipping cost. Nobody here makes them. You’ve got to order a bunch of them to get volume savings, so you have to wait to order till you build up a sizable amount. To order 6, 10, or 32 may seem like small potatoes to companies down in the states, but shipping cost could get me 40 in the Lower 48 vs. the 30 we purchased on our last order. And then there’s the labor to build them, because they ship to Alaska unassembled. Freight on an assembled porta potty would be astronomically expensive to ship all that by air!
Expanding Into the Lower 48
Back in 2023, when we met Frank, his oldest daughter, Alaska, was 21 years old and traveling the world. His youngest was in high school, and Frank viewed her departure for college within a few years as a “turning point” for him and his wife. Their plan was to expand by launching operations in one or more of the lower 48 states where Frank has family or close friends (including either Texas, Florida, or Washington state, or ultimately perhaps all of those, (and Wisconsin potentially)).
He reflects, “The idea was to have an operation in another state up and running by year 10. This is year 7, and we now expect to have 6 to 7 months of revenue in Texas by the end of next year.” Today (2025), Frank has put Washington plans on the “back burner” due to what he calls “huge increases” in taxes in that state, which he describes as “through the roof.” Thinking in terms of business operating cost, he said the property taxes alone now on a suitable building are “almost as much as someone’s salary.”
Frank mentioned that he has a truck and equipment ready to start up the Texas branch and that he has already scheduled a flight to that state for early July, to meet with an associate of his who lives in the target market area, “We’ll go look at the property he’s secured. Then, we’ll start drawing up contracts.
I have a family member there who will be involved. So, we’ll figure out the details. For example, we’ll work on how to iron out ownership arrangements. Lawyers will need to draw up a contract for an employee type role and another for percentage of ownership of just that location (including a non-compete agreement). Then, I will have to train him.”
(Frank has a right-hand management protégé whom he describes as “fantastic.” He’s training him to take on more responsibilities and eventually take over the Anchorage operation.)
Frank points out that there are not even a million people in the state of Alaska, whereas just one town in one of the lower 48 states may have 4 million. So, for a growth-minded industry expert like him, looking southward for expansion is the most logical course.
Quality Management at Alaska Porta Potty
Frank Perez previously explained his ingeniously simple quality control system, and it well bears repeating here, “We have a 10-point system for our porta potty sterilization and sanitization system. We cover all the high-touch areas and do our best to keep the exteriors and roofs clean. But we train our guys to do it consistently the same way every single time. That way, we can guarantee the quality of the work we do to pump them and clean them.
To maintain consistent quality, we gauge it this way. If you go to the first unit someone services in the morning, then to the very last one, the last one that the technician does should look exactly the same as the first. We can expect that the first is pristine because a person is feeling fresh and energetic at that point in the day. But, by the last one, they may be fatigued. So, meeting the expectation that the last looks exactly like the first is a simple system for helping measure quality.
I train the employees myself. We’re very thorough in making sure the units are clean, and we don’t leave waste in them when they come back, ever. Every porta potty of ours that you go into smells clean. The service is seamless for the customer. There’s not one service ticket involved. When you go into the unit, the whole thing speaks for itself.”
2025 Advice for Industry Newcomers from Frank Perez, Alaska Porta Potty, LLC, Anchorage AK
Franks’ original advice to ALW readers has held up well throughout the U.S. portable toilet rental industry. We’ve heard the same wisdom repeated by other successful owners over the past couple of years, since Frank emphasized this in 2023: “It can be a huge unnecessary expense to buy new equipment.”
He suggested that you “may be better off putting your investment in other areas of a startup business to support your goals for growth.” He said make your purchases of new items in the area of the rental products, the porta potties, hand sanitizing stations, etc., not in pumps and other service or maintenance equipment.
On the Unique Perez Experience
“Despite the employment market problems and the financial risks in the startup, it was the best decision of my life.”
As we noted in 2023, Frank Perez has lived on the edge. We can’t help reflecting on that point again today. Not only does he persist in grappling with the usual daily obstacles to running a business in an industry fraught with its special challenges (as all such physically and financially demanding industries are), he does it in the world’s most severe cold climate, in the Alaskan wilderness, among a comparatively dense population of ferocious wildlife. And, in that circumstance, he demands of himself and his team the highest quality of service and rental products.
If all that wasn’t altogether much more than enough to do, he’s now embarking on interstate expansion into the distant Lower 48 — just as he had been planning to do when we spoke two years ago. He’s making it happen now. We’re not surprised. His somehow measured but at the same time boundless seeming energy and his consistency of focus on goals are a perfect framework for his strategic advancement into the great unknown of national corporate management.
We are sorry to report that Duke died. Some time later, Sarah brought Frank a new dog, a Great Dane pup the family named Solo. He has become Frank’s new pal, and, as he and Duke had done for so long, they now travel the backroads of the great state of Alaska together, where only the most dauntless of men and their dogs dare to go.
Clearly, as we observed in the past, the business adventure story of Frank Perez and AAP, LLC, Anchorage, Alaska, is second to none. We will continue following his exceptionally exciting entrepreneurial journey and reporting any information and wise advice he may share.
For more information about Alaska Porta Potty, LLC, contact Frank Perez, Owner at (907) 519-4144 or alaskaportapotty@hotmail.com, or visit the website at alaskaportapottyllc.com/.