PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Running a Porta Potty Business

Pricing Extra Pump-Outs, Extra Days and Add-On Services in a Porta Potty Business

The base rental pays for the truck. The extras are where a lot of the margin lives. They are also the charges most likely to be forgotten, because they happen on short notice, often by text, and often to customers you have a good relationship with.

Why the Extras Matter

Your base rate was covered in Pricing Porta Potty Rentals: How Operators Set Monthly and Event Rates. This article is about everything on top of that: the extra trips, the extra days, and the add-ons that customers ask for after the deal is done.

An extra pump-out costs you almost as much as a weekly service: a truck, a tech, fuel, chemicals and a dump fee. If you do it for free or forget to bill it, you are paying for the customer's busy week.

Extra Pump-Outs

Construction sites with large crews, events with more guests than planned, and hot weeks all lead to calls for an extra pump-out. Set a price for an extra pump-out per unit and stick to it. Tell customers the price when they call, not after.

In PortaPottyBossPro, an extra pump-out is a job like any other. It lands on the Waiting List, gets assigned to a truck and day on the dispatch board, and shows up in the driver app. When the tech completes it, it goes on the invoice with its own line. If the customer has a card on file, it can be charged on completion.

Extra Rental Days

This is the biggest quiet leak in the business. A contractor's job runs long, nobody calls for a pickup, and the units sit for weeks past their rental period. Or an event customer's units are picked up a few days late because the trucks were busy, and nobody bills the difference.

Decide your policy: how many days a rental includes, and the per-day rate after that. Then let the system count. PortaPottyBossPro tracks the delivered date, the days included and the per-day rate. The office lists show how long each unit has been out, for example "Out since 10/3 (12 days, 4 extra)", and the extra days are added to the invoice automatically as "Extra rental days". Unbilled Extra Rental Days: The Quiet Leak in a Porta Potty Business goes deeper.

Add-On Units

Hand wash stations, ADA accessible units, deluxe flushing units and high-rise or crane units each deserve their own price. A hand wash station needs fresh water and soap restocked. An ADA unit takes more space on the trailer. A crane unit takes coordination with the site. Price each by the extra work it takes, not as a free throw-in to win the job.

Relocations, Trip Charges and Damage

Some extras do not fit a neat category:

• Moving units to a new spot on the same site because the build moved
• A trip charge when the tech arrives and cannot get in through no fault of yours
• Cleaning a unit that was vandalized or misused well beyond normal
• Replacing a unit that was damaged, burned or tipped by equipment

Decide which of these you charge for and write it into your rental terms. When something happens, the tech takes photos in the driver app, and the photos stay with the job so the office can back up the charge.

Put It All in the Service List

Every extra should exist in your service list with a price. When the office creates the job, the price is already there. When the customer gets an estimate, they see it before they say yes. Approved estimates become scheduled services, so nothing has to be retyped.

Telling Customers Up Front

Customers do not mind paying for extras nearly as much as they mind being surprised. Put the extra rates on your quotes and your website. When a customer texts for an extra pump-out, reply with the price before the truck goes. Two-way texting from the office keeps that conversation on record, tied to the customer.

When to Waive a Charge

There will be times you choose not to charge for an extra. A large contractor whose crew doubled for one week, a church that books you every year, a unit that was knocked over by wind. Waiving a charge can be good business. The key is that it should be a choice, made by someone who knows the account, not an accident.

The way to make it a choice is to bill it by default. If the extra days or the extra pump-out are already on the invoice, the office can remove them on purpose and note why. If they were never added, nobody decided anything, and the money is simply gone. Over a year, the difference between those two habits is real money for a small company.

For a full look at how quotes, rentals and invoices fit together, visit the Porta Potty Business Software page.