Latrine queen

After two summers spent cleaning portable toilets for her father’s business in high school, Rachel Bartlett was certain she’d had enough of dealing with other people’s crap.

Alas, that was not meant to be the case. After graduation Bartlett spent a few years at Butte College, but found she still had no idea what she wanted to do as a career. Then she enrolled in a business class that partly focused on entrepreneurial pursuits, which helped her realize the profit potential of the trade she’d formerly pooh-poohed.

“Everybody has to go,” Bartlett said, “and that’s never going to change.

“Even though I didn’t like it in high school, I figured some people have a real problem doing this kind of work, but I didn’t mind it that much. It’s a tough service to provide, but one that literally everyone needs.”

This realization led Bartlett to take a big gamble. The young woman sold her most valued possession—a beloved 1978 red, convertible Volkswagen Beetle—and used the funds to purchase two portable toilets and put a down payment on a truck equipped to pump waste. After she’d decided to take the plunge, she was struck one day with the perfect name for her business.

“I was just driving and ‘Johnny on the Spot’ popped into my head,” said Bartlett, who doesn’t shy away from talking—and joking—about the dirtier aspects of her profession. “I thought it was funny and original, but now if you look on the Internet, you see they have [unaffiliated] ‘Johnny on the Spots’ all over the country.”

Thus Chico’s Johnny on the Spot was born in 1998. In the years since, Bartlett’s rental fleet of portable potties—or “johnnies,” as she prefers to call them—has grown to more than 400 units. The facilities range from minimalist blue units to “elegant” white wedding johnnies and spacious models that comply with the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The business also rents hand-washing stations and holding tanks, and Bartlett has upgraded many of her units to include solar lighting. Depending on amenities, portable toilets range from $600 to $3,000 apiece.

Johnny on the Spot is the premier porta-potty purveyor in Butte County, providing relief for most of Butte County’s big events, including the California Nut Festival, the Chico Air Show and the Downtown Chico Business Association’s Taste of Chico event. The business’ ubiquitous units can also be spotted at construction and other work sites, as well as sporting, civic and private events. Anywhere people gather, and inevitably need relief, Bartlett’s commodes likely are nearby.

Bartlett credits much of Johnny on the Spot’s success to the community it serves: “It’s a great place to do business in for a lot of reasons,” she said. “There are always a lot of fun events going on, and the people here really care about and like to do business with other small, local companies.”

Bartlett said she often gives special prices to the city of Chico, and she also donates units to charity and other events.

These days, Bartlett leaves most of the dirty work to her crew of five employees, but said she’s never hesitant to “get back on the truck” and get her hands dirty.

She briefly outlined a typical day of working with waste:

A technician arrives in a truck at a site where Johnny on the Spot units are located and pumps the contents of each toilet into a large holding tank mounted on the vehicle. And it’s not just human waste that people drop in toilets, Bartlett said, noting she’s found everything from used needles to wallets in the johnnies. Short-term (weddings, special events) rental units are loaded on the truck, but many of the locations—such as job sites—feature longer-term rentals, in which case the portable restrooms are cleaned and resupplied on-site.

The units are loaded on a truck and returned to the company’s Cohasset Road yard, where they’re cleaned by another employee. Then they’re moved to the other side of the yard, where they stand in long rows ready for action, like soldiers waiting to march.

Bartlett said the worst part of the job is emptying the truck’s tank at the county’s Neal Road Recycling and Waste Facility, where most of Butte County’s other septic waste is also deposited.

Until this point in the interview, Bartlett had managed to avoid harsher language in favor of friendly euphemisms, but faltered when it came to describing the site: “It’s … well … um, basically,” she stumbled, struggling for the right words, before blurting out: “A shit lake! Yup—it’s basically a lake made of shit.”

As for other industry perils, Bartlett admitted she’s seen some funny porta-potty poetry over the years, but doesn’t find other vandalism amusing.

“You’d be amazed what people want to do to toilets,” she said, shaking her head. “They try to blow them up and everything else,” she said. “Just last week, someone burned one of our construction-site toilets to the ground.”

Bartlett noted that with an endless supply of human waste, and an equally eternal demand for relief, the portable-toilet biz is a booming industry, complete with its own trade publications (e.g., Pumper Magazine and PRO Monthly, the acronym representing Portable Restroom Operator). There are even large conventions—Bartlett said she attended her first “toilet show” last year, in San Diego.