For residents around Hobe Sound on southeastern Florida’s Atlantic Coast, it was last Christmas, when a bright-red restroom from Tidy Coast Containers appeared in several local holiday parades. Outlined with Christmas lights, powered by a 6 1/2-hp engine and featuring 2-foot-high, propane-gas flames shooting out the roof, this promotional vehicle gave new meaning to the words “portable restroom.”

It also made a huge impression on tens of thousands of parade-goers, observes Anthony Heath, co-owner of Tidy Coast and the brains behind the revved-up restroom, nicknamed “The Potty Racer.” The idea occurred to him as he was thinking about out-of-the-box ways to promote Tidy Coast in the wake of a construction slowdown. (To watch the vehicle in action, log on to www.tidycoast.com and click on “The Potty Racer.”)

“It was just something that popped into my head,” Heath chuckles. “People cheered whenever we drove by. I estimate we got our name out in front of 40,000 people in four parade appearances. And we’ve had a lot of new customers call and say, ‘Yeah, I saw your portable restroom in a parade.’”

The Potty Racer underscores the enthusiasm and innovation that’s made Tidy Coast a success since it was established in October 1999. The business owns about 750 restrooms — all from PolyPortables Inc. — and has expanded to include special event restroom service for the entire state. Not bad for an outfit that began with just 48 units and serviced only local construction sites.

Much of Tidy Coast’s success stems from its ability to provide superior customer service. In fact, a brush with bad service prompted Heath to start the company, which began as a roll-off container rental business aimed at construction contractors.

“I was helping my father remodel a home, and the trash container company wasn’t servicing us in time, which often left our work dead in the water,” Heath recalls. “Within a week or so after I started thinking about starting my own container business, an old family friend, Leslie Crawford, called me and asked what I thought about roll-off containers.

“It was quite a coincidence,” he notes. “After that, I figured it was just meant to be.”

The Road to Restrooms

After 18 months, Heath again heard opportunity knocking when he figured that portable restrooms would be a perfect complement to the container business. Both restrooms and containers are vital to construction contractors, and he figured they’d be delighted to get both from one vendor.

Once again, his instincts were right on target.

“The easier you make it for a customer, the more likely it is they’ll use your services,” Heath observes. “I just knew there was a need and dove right in. Sometimes that can be bad, but in this case, it worked out real well.

“I don’t mind risks,” he continues. “Sometimes you have to go out on a limb to succeed at the next level … but you’ve got to take risks to make a difference. In this case, I knew it would take off.”

So Tidy Coast purchased 48 portable restrooms to serve the area’s booming construction market. And as the construction market mushroomed, so did the company’s inventory.

Among its restroom inventory, Tidy Coast owns six handicapped-accessible units, eight wash stations and four restrooms with sinks. Other units include two restroom trailers from Advanced Containment Systems Inc. and a dozen 210-gallon holding tanks made by Kentucky Tank. Its business mix is roughly 70 percent construction and 30 percent special events.

Initially, Heath fashioned a vacuum service truck by mounting a tank on a flatbed truck used for hauling containers. That enabled him to make deliveries in the morning, then go and pump out restrooms in the afternoon. It also saved him the extra cost of a second vehicle and the insurance that would require.

More Ways to Save

That’s not the only example of how common sense and frugality has paid off for Heath. When Tidy Coast needs new restrooms, for instance, the company orders them unassembled, which saves about $20 to $25 a unit. Moreover, a delivery truck can hold 120 unassembled units as opposed to only 28 units assembled. Tidy Coast usually doesn’t need all 120 units right away, so they’re stored and then assembled as needed, Heath says.

“We save a huge amount of money on shipping that way,” he observes.

Heath says Tidy Coast also saves money by having its own mechanic in-house.

“Without a mechanic, I’d have to send a truck to, say, West Palm Beach,” he notes. “You figure they’re going to have the truck for a day, and maybe more. We can turn it around much quicker onsite.”

Tidy Coast’s restroom fleet includes three trucks — 2003, 2005 and 2006 Isuzu NQRs — all outfitted with Keith Huber TUGGER systems (600-gallon waste/ 250-gallon freshwater tank); a 1999 Isuzu NQR flatbed with a slide-in unit from Marsh Industrial (700-gallon waste/300-gallon fresh); a 2000 Kenworth T600 tractor trailer; a 2000 Dodge 1500 pickup truck; and a 2005 Ford F-350 pickup for transporting restroom trailers.

As part of a comprehensive preventive maintenance program, all drivers are required to keep track of when routine maintenance is required. The program also includes regular full inspections.

“That way if we find something, we can fix it before it becomes a worse — and more expensive — problem,” Heath explains.

Special Events Beckon

As Tidy Coast’s reputation for great service spread, Heath started fielding requests for special event service. And in the proverbial one-thing-leads-to-another scenario, the company soon enjoyed a firm grip on the area’s event business.

“Someone attended one of our events and happened to run an even larger event,” Heath recalls. “By simply providing clean toilets in a timely manner — in other words, basically doing exactly what we said we’d do — we now provide most of the special event service around here.”

Heath is particularly interested in the special event arena because of the regional construction slowdown. The profit margins are also better for special events, he adds.

“On those weekends, you pretty much kill yourself to get the job done, but it’s much more profitable than construction business,” he notes. “The main challenges are the logistics of getting all the units to the site on time, and then lining up the manpower to clean them, which sometimes is done around midnight.

“For some special events, such as festivals, a street is shut down,” he adds. “So we need to get the units out of there quickly, before the street opens again the next morning.”

One of the larger high-profile events Tidy Coast has serviced was a National Basketball Association playoff series in Miami, about 200 miles away. Tidy Coast provided a restroom trailer and serviced it for a week. To handle the work, one driver did all the nightly pumping while co-workers covered the bases back home by dividing up his route.

Heath also broadened his statewide special event base by hooking up with Black Tie Services Inc., a national provider of restroom trailers for upscale events.

“If they send a trailer to our area, we provide the pump-out service, which they don’t offer,” Heath says. “Once you get in there and they’re pleased with your service, they come to you with work.”

Retaining Good Drivers

Retaining employees also benefits customers, and Tidy Coast does several things to keep its workers onboard. And it all starts from the top, Heath says.

“I never ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself,” he says. “We also try to provide a team atmosphere; motivation and morale is a huge factor.”

The company tries to pay better wages than its competitors, and gives paid holidays off. It also gives employees a paycheck stipend to help defray the cost of private health insurance premiums.

Heath conducts monthly meetings, with free coffee and doughnuts, to discuss safety issues as well as company goals.

“We want our employees to know where we are and where we’re going,” he says. “For example, I’ll tell them we put out this many toilets and this many containers to new customers in the last month.”

New employees receive 30-day and 90-day performance reviews to make sure they’re comfortable with the job and performing up to snuff.

“We want to be sure this is a job they’re going to stick with,” Heath notes. “There’s no sense wasting their time and my time if they’re going to take off down the road in four months.”

To create a friendly, supportive atmosphere, Heath says he also makes a point of trying to talk to each employee every day.

All these efforts appear to be bearing fruit. Even with the downturn in construction business, Tidy Coast recently added more new customers in a month than it did in any month during 2006.

“That speaks volumes in this down market,” he points out.

How does Tidy Coast do it?

“It’s simple — by meeting the needs of the customer,” Heath says, matter-of-factly. “If you provide the best customer service out there, you’re bound to grow.”

Add to that philosophy a fire-spouting, wheelie-popping motorized restroom, and you know Tidy Coast is bound to keep giving its competitors a run for their money.