| Reese Carpenter began
working in a thread mill in 1949. North Carolina at that time had a much different
economy than exists today. The opportunities were less than favorable and jobs after
the war were scarce. His responsibilities at that time were to oversee the machinery
and keep things working smoothly. He didn't make a great deal of money, but at that
time in America, few did. As his family grew,
Reese looked for additional ways to earn more money. Around 1969, one of his two
sons, Keith, suggested that his father ride along with him one day on a job that he had
recently started. Keith was working for the R.H. Pinnex Construction Company as a
timekeeper while he was a student at nearby Belmont Abbey College. The job required
Keith to visit three to five Pinnex construction sites daily. As a result of his
visits to the sites he heard the job superintendents complain about the poor service of
the existing portable restroom supplier.
Keith explained to his father that the current
supplier was renting his toilets for a dollar a day, and felt that the business might have
some possibilities for growth. Reese wasn't interested. He already had two
jobs and he wasn't about to tackle three! "Anyway," Reese explained,
"Keith practically pleaded with me to come along and just take a look at it.
Well, after seeing what Keith did, and thinking about the 'dollar a day' rental
fee, I rolled it over in my mind for a few days and the more I thought about it the more
it became a possibility. I just couldn't get it out of my mind. Now that
may not seem like a lot of money, but in 1969 it was. At the mill, as I recall, I
was making about $18.00 a day and working six days a week."
It wasn't long after that when Reese decided to take
the plunge. "Back then there weren't many manufacturers, and I didn't have
enough money to buy a bunch of units anyway. So I decided to build a few and see if
I could rent them. The first units that I built were wooden, and cost me five
dollars each. I ended up building five units. They cost me twenty five dollars and
that was my total investment. I remember that I fashioned them out of plywood, and
used a 50 gallon barrel for a tank. I cut a foot or so off the top of the barrel and
turned down the edges so that I could secure it to the wooden seat top. This
prevented it from coming loose, and it was easy to change out with just a few bolts and
screws." On the top, he installed a regular toilet seat and lid, and he had the
urinals made locally. After fabricating the unit, Reese decided to embellish the
look and impart some uniformity. "I painted them all gray," said Reese,
"And then I was ready to see what would happen." Apparently the market was
ready for him, because before long he had rented them all out.
For a service vehicle, he came up with another clever
solution. "I only had a pickup at the time, and I used it to pump and deliver.
Since I only needed it one day a week for pumping, I had to improvise some way to
easily remove all the pumping equipment when deliveries needed to be made," Reese
said. "I had a friend that owned a farm and out by his barn we devised a way to
quickly remove the tank and pumps. I built an iron frame with a beam going across
the top and anchored it into the ground. I had a come-along attached and would back
the pickup under it and jack it up about three inches, then drive out from under it,"
related Reese. "All my pumps and tanks were mounted on a frame and came off in
one operation."
Reese continued for a while building five units at a
time, until he had reached around sixty units. Then one day he received a call from
a construction company that wanted twenty units as soon as possible. "That was
a big order," Reese mentioned, "There was no way that I could make twenty that
quickly." So he put in a call to one of the few manufacturers at the time,
Virginia Fiberglass, out of Roanoke, Virginia. "That was when I purchased my
first manufactured units. I think they cost me around $100.00 each. Yellow was
all they had in stock at that time, and I needed them, so I said "Bring 'em
on'." related Reese. "You know, I didn't like the color at first, but
after awhile, they turned out to be OK. It was easy to see them on a construction
site, and the driver could spot them quickly."
For a few years, he continued to build his fleet.
"Then, I guess we got to around 400 units, and at that time we switched to plastic.
I believe that was around 1980...At that time, you had to buy the unassembled
units, you couldn't buy them put together," Reese said. "They told me that
we could completely assemble one in about an hour," Reese stated. Chuckling, he
continued, "But, it really took about two and a half hours if you were by yourself.
There were over 150 rivets in each toilet, and I had to hand pop every single
rivet! You really had to have strong hands back then. We still have some of
those units around, they're tough as nails, and still being rented today."
"My son Ned joined me in January of 1980.
His background was accounting and he's a college graduate. We worked well
together, and I remember whenever we made service calls, and would be traveling our route,
we'd stop by a construction site whenever we noticed someone that needed a unit and try to
get them to rent one. We were fairly successful too." he related.
"Problems? Like everyone else, we've had our share," said Reese.
"We never had much of a graffiti problem back then, but if we did we simply
painted over it. We did have a few units burned and a few stolen though, from time
to time. I remember some years ago when we had two fairly new units taken. It
was out by Lake Norman, just north of Charlotte. I had a friend that knew a police
helicopter pilot, and when he heard of the missing toilets he said, "Don't worry,
I'll find them for you." He did too!," related Reese. "Ned went
out to the houses that had them, and told the owners that he wouldn't press charges, but
that he wanted his units back. He got them that day."
1999 marks the thirtieth year in business for the
Carpenter family. The Charlotte area and PORTA-JON have grown substantially over the
years, and they both continue to expand. PORTA-JON has grown to become one of the
largest firms in the southeastern U.S. and through acquisitions, and expansion, has
increased it's size many times over. Reese's son, Ned Carpenter is very active in
the PSAI and enjoys the fruits of a very successful business. But, it can all be
attributed at the onset, to a man that had the desire and the foresight to envision what
could be. "You just think for a minute," stated Reese, "if it weren't
for the portable sanitation industry, imagine how much disease, trash, and sewage would be
out on the ground. This industry has been very important in keeping our country
clean and I'm proud of that." And well he should be. |
