Ep. 7: The Portable Shitter
We’ve spent the last few episodes talking about airy transparent shit that literally doesn’t smell. Let’s get back to the good ‘ol brown stinky stuff that inspired this newsletter to begin with.
In this post-COVID era, societies and urban municipalities around the world have returned to a “new normal” that now includes an emphasis on outdoor social gatherings in many cities and regions. More people gathering in outdoor venues means more sanitation and hygiene problems out in public places. As a result, we’ve seen a surge in the portable toilets industry as event & community organizers strive to maintain higher levels of sanitation and hygiene while also supporting growing numbers of people at outdoor gatherings.
Prior to COVID, portable toilets industry growth was tied to construction projects and large outdoor events. Since the pandemic recovery began gaining momentum in 2022, we’ve seen many sectors like fitness, recreation and other social activities move outdoors. For example, in the United States, an estimated 7.1 million more Americans enjoyed an outdoor activity each year after the pandemic than before. The sanitation needs of all these new outdoor event attendees is driving the global Portable Toilets market to grow at a CAGR of nearly 8%. The market is projected to expand from $13.6 billion (USD) in 2023 to over $25 billion by 2030.
At that market size, the Portable Toilets industry will be roughly the size of the global vitamins & supplements market or the global sunglasses industry today. Each of us can probably rattle off some top sunglass brandnames or some dietary supplement provider they like. But how many portable toilet companies do you know? Let’s dive in to learn a bit more about the history and the companies that are active in the Portable Toilets space.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
The inception of the modern portable toilet came from 1940’s shipyards during the shipbuilding rush of World War II. Reportedly, owners of the shipyards in Long Beach, New Jersey, realized that their employees were losing valuable work time going back and forth between ships and the docks to use the bathroom. They responded by building portable toilets from wood with a chamber inside. These portable toilets were designed for rapid deployment into temporary or remote locations to quickly create sanitation solutions, especially for construction sites and shipyards throughout World War II.
What we think of today as the ubiquitous portable toilet was a 1960’s evolution of those early wooden designs, using a then-new “wonder material” called polyethylene plastic. The first plastic portable toilet was patented in 1962 and introduced by the PolyJohn company. It quickly grew to become the dominant design for portable toilets.
Growth through Acquisition
One business point that I find fascinating about the modern portable toilets industry is that dealmaking, mergers & acquisitions, and consolidations have been present in the market right from its inception. PolyJohn was founded by two brothers who purchased a post-World-War-II fiberglass & wood portable toilets business and then merged with the inventor of the polyethylene plastic portable toilet to create a new company, PolyJohn, as the first marketer of plastic portable toilets. First and foremost, cleaning up shit was a commercial opportunity for these early portable toilet entrepreneurs.
Their business took off and has spurred many others to enter the industry. Since the 1960’s the market has bifurcated into two groups of companies around the world: manufacturers of portable toilets and service providers for management of toilets on client sites.
PolyJohn continues to be a leading manufacturer, along with companies such as Satellite Industries, Thetford Corporation, Armal, Formit, Camco Manufacturing, and NuConcepts.
Servicing companies include brands such as TOI TOI, Dixi Group GmbH, Sanitech, Blue Bowl Sanitation, and United Site Services.
These are just some of the main brands in the portable toilet market. There are hundreds of other companies active in the space. Note: the vast majority of these companies are privately owned and so it’s difficult to obtain exact revenue figures for all of them. The largest of these private companies is likely to be United Site Services with roughly $1.5 billion (USD) in annual revenues.
Interestingly, United Site Services has grown aggressively through acquisition of over 70 smaller portable toilet servicing businesses. They seem quite proud of this and show off an impressive badge board of acquisitions on their website.
The fact that United Site Services makes a point of highlighting their successful acquisitions gives us a few hints about where the market is headed. The fact that they, as just one operator, have done so many M&A transactions tells us that it’s been a very fragmented and hyperlocal market. United Site Services believe that they gain business advantage from identifying, acquiring and integrating smaller local portable toilet servicing businesses under a single brand and operating platform. They clearly take pride in doing this effectively and retaining the underlying book of business from each business that they acquire. To some extent, the team at United Site Services may even feel that their ability to acquire other companies is a competitive advantage that is hard to replicate. We should expect further consolidation in the space as revenues grow.
Sidenote: if any reader happens to have a connection on the leadership team at United Site Services, I would love to interview them. Please let me know!
There are a handful of notable public companies with divisions working in the portable toilets sector:
It will be quite interesting to see how these large public companies and private equity funds continue to tap into the portable toilet market opportunity, especially as consolidation across the industry concentrates the business into fewer companies that may then feel greater competitive pressure between them. With billions of dollars in annual revenues at stake, we may see a new wave of innovation in design and materials for portable shitters.
This will be a hot space to track in the business of cleaning up shit.