The profile of Kerkstra Portable Restroom Services, Inc., Hudsonville, Michigan,is shaped by an extraordinary strategic business leadership track record. Brian Knoper, owner of Kerkstra, recently shared with ALW some information about the company’s history, growth, and challenges, and strategies, and his future plans for the business. He further discussed Kerkstra’s identification of technology leader EcoFab, a subsidiary of PolyJohn, as his company’s preferred supplier. He talked about his experience working with the manufacturer over recent years, and his plans for continuing investment in EcoFab’s advanced vacuum toilet models going forward.
Kerkstra Portable Restroom Services, Inc.
Brian Knoper reflected on his purchase of the Kerkstra company and the growth of the business under his direction to date: I bought the portables and services side of the Kerkstra company, and another buyer bought the septic services side of the business back in January 2006. We’ve grown a lot.
Today, we have about 7,000 portable toilet units in our inventory. We also have about 30 restroom trailers. Of those, 6 are 2-stall, 7 or 8 are 3-stall, and the rest are 6-, 8-, and 10-stall. Plus, the pod RVO series (the collective Kerkstra stock of EcoFab units) has 60 seats total. A couple of those are designed for wheelchair accessibility.
Our fleet includes 5 Ford F350s for trailer delivery and pickup and running around for various business needs. We have 4 Kenworths with 1,000-gallon waste tanks and 500-gallon water tanks. Those are our dedicated festival service vehicles. We also have 25 F550/600 trucks with 900/400 waste/water aluminum tanks for our normal route services. We run National Vac 304 pumps on our trucks. Most of our tanks are made by Imperial Industries. Those are all aluminum, and we have a few stainless steel tanks made by Best Enterprise.
We use GPS on all vehicles, with cameras inward and outward, along with other advanced field technologies. We’re always looking for ways to improve our equipment and tools to increase efficiency and quality.
The Kerkstra Team
We have 5 people in admin roles in the office and sales, and we have 26 field operators. They range from pickup and delivery workers to people running regular service routes, to setup and tear-down teams for festivals and other events. Everybody kind of knows everybody’s job, so there’s plenty of capacity for cross-functioning, as needed. I still participate in the field, especially on construction worksites, as needed. There are some admin things I’m responsible for, but I’m mostly in the field.
We handle events with up to 1,500 portable toilets. For example, the Electric Forrest, music festivals, and other events. We pride ourselves on being a smaller company that can compete so effectively with national brands in serving major events.
EcoFab By PolyJohn
EcoFab, just acquired by PolyJohn Enterprises this year, in February 2026, specializes in technologically water-saving advanced vacuum toilet systems. The process of the equipment is non-macerating (no grinding involved). It’s entirely a vacuum system. This high-efficiency technology is engineered for the segment of the portable toilet service industry focused primarily on deployment for disaster relief, public events, and other large-scale needs. Some of the key benefits of PolyJohn’s new EcoFab technology for service operators include:
- Simpler Setup: Installation options are more flexible, allowing pipes to run horizontally as well as vertically, or even around corners, not requiring a continuous slope. That means faster deployment.
- Incomparable Efficiency: The system works by air transport of waste material through pipes at high velocity, not by gravity. The use of strong air pressure can reduce water consumption by up to 90%.
- Exceptional Water Conservation: The EcoFab technology uses just a third to a little over a half gallon per flush. That’s as much as 90% lower water consumption than conventional portable toilets.
- Superior Hygiene: The EcoFab innovation is a closed system, so it eliminates the upward spray of bacteria that occurs from flushing a traditional toilet, which minimizes contaminants and odors.
- Minimized Maintenance: Old-style vacuum systems required macerator pumps. The break-through EcoFab designs contain fewer moving parts. That means reduced incidents of clogs, and minimized general maintenance costs.
Kerkstra and EcoFab
Brian shared his experience with EcoFab and talked about the significance of his business relationships with the unique vendor to his operations and future plans for his company: EcoFab makes individual restroom pods that can be linked together to create an extended bank of units. The base unit is a portable 2-stall vacuum pod. Inside are 2 stalls, a sink, and a toilet on each side.
All the pods line up modularly and attach to each other — sort of daisy-chained together. The series attaches to a tech unit that creates a constant vacuum and pumps out when a user flushes a toilet in one of the pods. It’s vacuumed out, much like an airplane vac toilet. It’s the same kind of technology.
We utilize this model at festivals and fairs, especially in VIP and upscale areas, where end users are looking for something with a more value-added and luxurious experience than using traditional plastic portable toilet units. There are other vacuum unit suppliers out there, but a big factor that makes EcoFab so attractive to us, in our niche market and for our business size, is the interior sinks.
Instead of users having to walk out and use a common sink, everything is contained within each restroom unit. That’s much more desirable for the users, and it’s an advantage for us to provide them with that benefit at a cost that is feasible for us in our pricing.
Another thing that really separates EcoFab in their field is that their vacuum unit is kind of changing the way the vac tech is applied to mobile units. It’s all self-contained in one unit, whereas others out there take multiple units to do the same thing. The engineering is fantastic, it works so well. They’ve built in redundancies across the key systems in the equipment to ensure against failure. It’s a fabulous design, with 2 water pumps and 2 vacuum pumps, instead of the more typical equipment built with just one of each.
Collaborative EcoFab Customer Experience
Since the initial purchase, they [EcoFab engineers] have been coordinating, reviewing, and continually improving the existing units I have. The support I’ve been getting has been ongoing. For example, they’ll examine a certain way a fitting is on and an idea for improvement. They’ve been trying to fix or improve everything that may enhance performance or comfort or convenience for the user. For training purposes, they actually sent the designer to work with us on our first event for a customer when we started using the pods. He was able to let us know best practices to manage or fix the various potential issues that are a natural part of providing portable toilet services. Up to this point, it’s been pretty flawless. We have not run across anything that is outside normal circumstances or that is not easy to address.
It has been a great deal for us. They [EcoFab engineers] have been working very well with us. They include me in the design process, and they carefully consider how we do our cross-country and local logistics as they’re producing those. I’ve got on order right now for additional units, and they’re still keeping our ease of use in mind in manufacturing the units currently on order.
They’re looking at how we transport the units as they’re working to continue improving the design, fuel use rate, and time expenditures that can really eat into profits. They’ve just been a very good partner in all of it. Also, as part of PolyJohn, which has been around for a very long time and makes great products, EcoFab provides that PolyJohn level of backend support for us as well.
Kerkstra Operations
Our service area is the greater Grand Rapids area, and farther across Michigan to the east about 30 minutes out or so, to around Lansing, but not much farther. We provide service to the north along the lake about as far as Traverse City, and, to the south, we go about as far as the Indiana border. For large events, we have served customers throughout much of the country. For example, in Colorado, Texas, Illinois, and Ohio.
We have onsite mechanical work, one ASE certified mechanic and a couple of other workers who are mechanically skilled. For drivers, Kerkstra provides on-the-job training. New service technicians ride with an experienced person who can show them what we expect for driving and time management, and who can teach them how to use our tablets and our software, including our CRO platform.
The CRO platform handles all the service information inputs. Our GPS system is accessible through the tablets as well. Employees and management can gain insights into our telematics directly from their tablet, and they have the full range of options to do everything they need to do in real time directly from the field.
We put our logo on every truck. We prefer not to put the logo on the luxury trailers, but we do put them on the porta potties and other weekend rental units. Our quality management program is managed through our process at the point of pickup and delivery of the rentals. We can see what each unit looks like and how it’s been maintained by the route driver on the customer’s site. To round out our representation of our commitment to professional service, everybody wears a uniform. (We have our own uniform management program.)
Our bonus program helps us retain talented people, and we offer full employee benefits, including health insurance, retirement accounts, etc. But, I also think a lot of our success in keeping good people onboard is just giving them something new and different to work on when the opportunities arise. That’s a big part of why we do out-of-state projects, to provide everyone with a little variety, which helps challenge us all in new and positive ways. And, those are really good income opportunities for all of our field service employees.
Right Fit for the Future of Kerkstra and the Industry – EcoFab Innovation
Kerkstra Portable Restroom Services, Inc., under the direction of Brian Knoper, is recognizable as one of the industry’s most innovative companies. From the continued growth of the business, to the decision to continue investing in the world’s most advanced portable toilet service technology, Kerkstra appears to be working a very practical strategic service plan and progressing along a well-proven growth trajectory for the foreseeable future.
As for EcoFab, the company began developing its highly advanced portable vacuum toilet technology in 2021, and the manufacturer’s supremely innovative engineering team has continued to make strides in perfecting the equipment over these past 5 years since its inception. Now, under the umbrella of the powerful PolyJohn ($17billion) marketing and sales machine, the EcoFab system’s impact on the US market can be expected to grow significantly over the coming years.
For general information about Kerkstra Portable Restroom Services, Inc., Hudsonville, MI, or for help with an event that EcoFab might be a good fit for, you can call (616) 662-2677, or visit kerkstraservices.com. For information about EcoFab, Justin, Texas, you can call (806) 686-2601, or visit eco-fab.com. For information about PolyJohn, you can call (800) 292-1305, or visit polyjohn.com.