Porta Kleen roughly doubled its business in the Louisville, Kentucky market after acquiring Rumpke’s sanitation customers. Regional Manager Chris Waite said a Rumpke representative reached out to President Adam Black because Rumpke wanted to get out of the sanitation business in Louisville.

Many Louisville companies are similar to Rumpke in that they offer portable restroom services in addition to dumpster services. “Since Porta Kleen does not offer dumpster services, they reached out to us to see if we’d be interested,” Waite said. Following negotiation between Black and the Rumpke Company, Porta Kleen acquired their sanitation customers.

Rumpke will continue to provide sanitation services in other areas, such as Cincinnati and Dayton.

Porta Kleen picked up roughly 200 portable restrooms on several routes throughout Louisville and made major gains by acquiring Rumpke’s services to local events. Waite described them as anywhere from typical weekend events requiring five to more than 20 portable restroom units, to an upcoming event requiring more than 50 units. Waite anticipates servicing larger Louisville events requiring 100 to 700 units.

The current challenge for the Porta Kleen team is to swap out all of Rumpke’s portable restrooms, return them to Rumpke, and replace them with Porta Kleen equipment. “It takes a lot of logistics,” Waite said, adding that the former Rumpke portable restrooms had to be integrated with Porta Kleen’s existing routes. “So, we can’t just go and swap out 150 to 200 plastic units with the snap of a finger,” he said.

Waite said the process is not difficult, but it is very detail oriented, so he’s working closely with Louisville Branch Manager Lisa Taylor, who—along with Operations Manager Wes Daihl—leads the process of swapping out the old units. “It’s been a challenge at times just due to our resources and the fact that many of the customer sites have multiple units,” Taylor said.

Adding to the challenge, Rumpke's records were unclear as to the exact location of some of the units. Also, some of Rumpke’s customers were omitted from Porta Kleen’s acquisitions list. “Of course, we have those customers in the system now and we are making sure to build relationships with them as well as all the other customers,” Taylor said.

Taylor has been riding with the route drivers to meet the new customers, introduce them to Porta Kleen, and explain the change in service. She said the new customers say Porta Kleen is more responsive than Rumpke and the units are cleaner than they were under the previous ownership.

As of early August, the Louisville Porta Kleen team still had roughly 130 portable restroom units to swap out and return to Rumpke. “Our team in total is doing a fantastic job, both with this project and building our brand in the Louisville community,” Taylor said.