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Women In Portable Sanitation
Lauren McGraw
By Carol Brzozowski
McGraw Gotta Go Toilets
Flora, Mississippi
Flora, Mississippi
A few years after she started her portable
sanitation business, McGraw Gotta Go
Toilets in Flora, Mississippi, Lauren
McGraw drove up to a job site in a pumper
truck where an apartment complex was
under construction.
She had been training a new driver. She
stepped out of the truck and as it happens
occasionally, she got a reaction.
“I’m 5’4” and 120 pounds and so I’m the
last person you’d expect to own this
company and run these men every day,”
she says.
Except the reaction wasn’t quite positive.
“This fellow comes up to me and says, ‘I
cannot believe that they hired a woman for
this job’,” McGraw recalls. “I said, ‘Why is
that?’ And he said ‘It’s just unbelievable
that they hired a woman. This company
won’t make it very long.’
sanitation business, McGraw Gotta Go
Toilets in Flora, Mississippi, Lauren
McGraw drove up to a job site in a pumper
truck where an apartment complex was
under construction.
She had been training a new driver. She
stepped out of the truck and as it happens
occasionally, she got a reaction.
“I’m 5’4” and 120 pounds and so I’m the
last person you’d expect to own this
company and run these men every day,”
she says.
Except the reaction wasn’t quite positive.
“This fellow comes up to me and says, ‘I
cannot believe that they hired a woman for
this job’,” McGraw recalls. “I said, ‘Why is
that?’ And he said ‘It’s just unbelievable
that they hired a woman. This company
won’t make it very long.’
“And I just laughed and got into the truck. The driver said, ‘Why didn’t you tell him you owned the company?’ And I said,
‘It doesn’t matter; he wouldn’t have believed it anyway’.”
McGraw can laugh all the way to the bank. McGraw Gotta Go now takes in revenues in excess of $1 million.
“The first year, we did $70,000 in sales and I thought we were really doing something,” she says.
The company is now nearly 10 years old. McGraw started it when, as a sales manager for a casino, she had a hard time
finding portable restrooms to rent for a new hotel groundbreaking.
“I had to order a lot of equipment and that was one of the pieces of equipment I couldn’t get through the rental stores,” she
says.
Her ex-husband’s family had been in the equipment rental business and it didn’t make sense to her that there wasn’t a one-
stop rental shop that would include portable sanitation as part of the offerings.
“I went to them and told them it would be a great idea. It would be like ordering French fries at McDonald’s because it’s
already needed equipment. They didn’t want to do it, but told me if I wanted to do it, go ahead,” she says.
She did just that – from scratch. She purchased 126 portable sanitation units and a truck.
“I thought it would be just enough for me where I wouldn’t have to work for someone else. I figured if I could get $75 a
month on the rentals and I had 100 out, that’d be $7,500 a month and I could make the payments on the truck and the toilets
and have a little left over,” she says.
Also, she was a new mother at the time and was looking for a way to spend more time with her one-year-old son at home.
“I ended up spending less time at home,” she says. “ I ran the truck during the day and I would invoice at night.”
Growth came fast.
“At the time I went into business, Waste Management and BFI were in business and were also here. Now, they’re not here
and we ended up with the majority of the business. We just continually bought more units. There were times I had to
borrow off of construction sites to cover special events,” McGraw says.
In 2004, she purchased a small competitor as a buffer.
Today, McGraw Gotta Go Toilets runs six routes with more than 1,300 units, serving a five-county radius with 12 employees
She buys from a mix of manufacturers – she started with one manufacturer, but now buys more from PolyPortables –
another woman-owned company - because the company is closer in proximity. The company’s special event units are from
Synergy World.
The boy McGraw wanted to spend more time at home with while she worked her own business is now 10 years old and has
grown up in the business. Where other children may grow up learning to count objects such as cars, her son grew up
counting portable restroom units.
While finances are no longer a challenge, at one time they were.
The attitude she encountered when trying to finance her business was “Who would have thought a woman would run a
porta-jon company?” says McGraw.
“My view is service is service. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling – if you’re selling ice cream or porta-jons, you’re still a
service person filling a need,” she says.
While McGraw’s Gotta Go Toilets’ growth followed its owner’s knowledge expansion, it wasn’t always so. McGraw is self-
educated in the industry and at one time, didn’t know what a holding tank was.
“I learned everything from scratch,” she says. “I would call other people who were not in my area who were in the industry
and asked them to educate me.”
Her first big job was at a chemical plant renovation.
“I was so excited,” she says. “Most of my jobs were one unit here, one unit there. They wanted 10 restrooms, and that
seemed like so many to me, but they said I had to have some holding tanks and they needed them there in three days. I
didn’t know what a holding tank was.”
That didn’t stop her from servicing the customer.
“I said, ‘I’ll get them.’ I left their place and called one of my friends who was in the industry and said, ‘Can you please help
me and tell me what in the world a holding tank is? How do I hook it up and where do I buy them?’ ”
That experience not only taught her about holding tanks, but about the importance of being educated. Not only does
McGraw pursue continuing industry education, but believes her job also includes educating customers.
“The porta-jon people I bought my units from really should have educated me that I needed the holding tanks, but they
really didn’t do their job – they were just out to make a sale,” she says.
“When it comes to our customers, it’s not about a sale, it’s about educating them. You have to explain to them why they
need hand-washing stations or why they need a handicap unit on a job site. They appreciate that a lot more than shoving
one more item down their throat as another add-on to their ticket.”
Many customers are unaware of their choices, McGraw says.
“A superintendent on a job site who’s been asked to order equipment might not know about crane lifts or if she needs
handicap units on the site. You’re really helping her and you’re helping the whole industry by educating these people.”
McGraw values continuing industry education for herself and has found when she goes to industry trade shows,
“sometimes they think you’re the owners’ wife and you’re just there to pick up the freebies.
“I go to the shows to get educated. I want to find out what’s new and see what I haven’t seen. I went to a show this year
and took my son for the first time as well as one of my assistants. I had to stretch myself to find new equipment. I think
there is a need for some new, innovative products.”
McGraw is not waiting for the industry to catch up to what she knows is good business sense. In running her business,
McGraw reverts to her original idea that people ought to be able to go to one place to get all they need.
So she’s positioning her company to supply add-ons. One of her main customers is parks and recreation, where there is a
need for cold-air inflatables such as slide rides and jump houses for children. So McGraw offers those to her customers.
“We’re always looking for something else to add on,” she says, adding it’s not that much more effort to bring those items
along with portable sanitation units for umbrella-type service.
As for portable sanitation, her company offers the gamut: standard units, Americans with Disabilities (ADA)-compliant
units, hand-washing stations, trailer-mounted units and special event units.
McGraw says the female quality she brings to the industry is tenacity. And as a single mother, that’s a primary quality
needed to get through day-to-day successfully in order to create a comfortable standard of living.
“I’m tenacious,” she says. “That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am. I don’t give up on anything. “Can’t” is not a reason – I
just drop off the apostrophe and the ‘t’ and make it ‘can’.”
McGraw believes women know how to clean bathrooms “better than anybody”.
“A portable jon is a personal choice,” she says. “I think people try to sell the porta-jons just as a necessity. It is a
necessity, but also there’s a lot more to it.
“You don’t like to go to certain bathrooms in certain buildings. You certainly have a preference what type bathrooms you
want to use when you’re on a job site. Even though the majority of them are on construction sites, they still care. I think
females think in detail and that helps in this industry.”
For McGraw, that translates into extra touches on special event trailers, including flowers, bathroom rugs, air fresheners,
mirrors and purse hooks – many amenities one would want in one’s own restroom.
“I do think those things are important where a man doesn’t think they are,” she says.
To those who would question why it matters, McGraw points out that people – especially women – will leave the premises
to find an acceptable restroom and most likely not return. If she’s leaving a special event, the client is losing money.
McGraw’s drivers generally have no issues working for a woman.
“There sometimes is at the beginning,” she says. “I’ll sit down and explain to them that I started the company from scratch
and I know how to run everything because I used to run a truck. You don’t need to tell me how to do it. I know how to do it,
what it takes and how it can be done, because I’ve done it all.”
Although McGraw runs the company, she says it’s not unusual for her to hop into a truck whenever she gets complaints
on a route so she can see what’s going on.
“It’s a lot easier to fix it than it is to hire somebody new,” she says. “Customers like it that I’m humble enough that I will go.”
McGraw employs one female route driver and says while she does a great job, “Unfortunately she runs up against the same
things I run up against, but on a different scale. They just automatically assume she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She
pulls up on the site and they give her a hard time.”
Quoting an old Virginia Slims ad, McGraw says, “We’ve come a long way.”
But because of some of the challenges she’s faced and continues to face, despite her self-made success, she adds: “But I
don’t think we’ve come far enough.”
‘It doesn’t matter; he wouldn’t have believed it anyway’.”
McGraw can laugh all the way to the bank. McGraw Gotta Go now takes in revenues in excess of $1 million.
“The first year, we did $70,000 in sales and I thought we were really doing something,” she says.
The company is now nearly 10 years old. McGraw started it when, as a sales manager for a casino, she had a hard time
finding portable restrooms to rent for a new hotel groundbreaking.
“I had to order a lot of equipment and that was one of the pieces of equipment I couldn’t get through the rental stores,” she
says.
Her ex-husband’s family had been in the equipment rental business and it didn’t make sense to her that there wasn’t a one-
stop rental shop that would include portable sanitation as part of the offerings.
“I went to them and told them it would be a great idea. It would be like ordering French fries at McDonald’s because it’s
already needed equipment. They didn’t want to do it, but told me if I wanted to do it, go ahead,” she says.
She did just that – from scratch. She purchased 126 portable sanitation units and a truck.
“I thought it would be just enough for me where I wouldn’t have to work for someone else. I figured if I could get $75 a
month on the rentals and I had 100 out, that’d be $7,500 a month and I could make the payments on the truck and the toilets
and have a little left over,” she says.
Also, she was a new mother at the time and was looking for a way to spend more time with her one-year-old son at home.
“I ended up spending less time at home,” she says. “ I ran the truck during the day and I would invoice at night.”
Growth came fast.
“At the time I went into business, Waste Management and BFI were in business and were also here. Now, they’re not here
and we ended up with the majority of the business. We just continually bought more units. There were times I had to
borrow off of construction sites to cover special events,” McGraw says.
In 2004, she purchased a small competitor as a buffer.
Today, McGraw Gotta Go Toilets runs six routes with more than 1,300 units, serving a five-county radius with 12 employees
She buys from a mix of manufacturers – she started with one manufacturer, but now buys more from PolyPortables –
another woman-owned company - because the company is closer in proximity. The company’s special event units are from
Synergy World.
The boy McGraw wanted to spend more time at home with while she worked her own business is now 10 years old and has
grown up in the business. Where other children may grow up learning to count objects such as cars, her son grew up
counting portable restroom units.
While finances are no longer a challenge, at one time they were.
The attitude she encountered when trying to finance her business was “Who would have thought a woman would run a
porta-jon company?” says McGraw.
“My view is service is service. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling – if you’re selling ice cream or porta-jons, you’re still a
service person filling a need,” she says.
While McGraw’s Gotta Go Toilets’ growth followed its owner’s knowledge expansion, it wasn’t always so. McGraw is self-
educated in the industry and at one time, didn’t know what a holding tank was.
“I learned everything from scratch,” she says. “I would call other people who were not in my area who were in the industry
and asked them to educate me.”
Her first big job was at a chemical plant renovation.
“I was so excited,” she says. “Most of my jobs were one unit here, one unit there. They wanted 10 restrooms, and that
seemed like so many to me, but they said I had to have some holding tanks and they needed them there in three days. I
didn’t know what a holding tank was.”
That didn’t stop her from servicing the customer.
“I said, ‘I’ll get them.’ I left their place and called one of my friends who was in the industry and said, ‘Can you please help
me and tell me what in the world a holding tank is? How do I hook it up and where do I buy them?’ ”
That experience not only taught her about holding tanks, but about the importance of being educated. Not only does
McGraw pursue continuing industry education, but believes her job also includes educating customers.
“The porta-jon people I bought my units from really should have educated me that I needed the holding tanks, but they
really didn’t do their job – they were just out to make a sale,” she says.
“When it comes to our customers, it’s not about a sale, it’s about educating them. You have to explain to them why they
need hand-washing stations or why they need a handicap unit on a job site. They appreciate that a lot more than shoving
one more item down their throat as another add-on to their ticket.”
Many customers are unaware of their choices, McGraw says.
“A superintendent on a job site who’s been asked to order equipment might not know about crane lifts or if she needs
handicap units on the site. You’re really helping her and you’re helping the whole industry by educating these people.”
McGraw values continuing industry education for herself and has found when she goes to industry trade shows,
“sometimes they think you’re the owners’ wife and you’re just there to pick up the freebies.
“I go to the shows to get educated. I want to find out what’s new and see what I haven’t seen. I went to a show this year
and took my son for the first time as well as one of my assistants. I had to stretch myself to find new equipment. I think
there is a need for some new, innovative products.”
McGraw is not waiting for the industry to catch up to what she knows is good business sense. In running her business,
McGraw reverts to her original idea that people ought to be able to go to one place to get all they need.
So she’s positioning her company to supply add-ons. One of her main customers is parks and recreation, where there is a
need for cold-air inflatables such as slide rides and jump houses for children. So McGraw offers those to her customers.
“We’re always looking for something else to add on,” she says, adding it’s not that much more effort to bring those items
along with portable sanitation units for umbrella-type service.
As for portable sanitation, her company offers the gamut: standard units, Americans with Disabilities (ADA)-compliant
units, hand-washing stations, trailer-mounted units and special event units.
McGraw says the female quality she brings to the industry is tenacity. And as a single mother, that’s a primary quality
needed to get through day-to-day successfully in order to create a comfortable standard of living.
“I’m tenacious,” she says. “That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am. I don’t give up on anything. “Can’t” is not a reason – I
just drop off the apostrophe and the ‘t’ and make it ‘can’.”
McGraw believes women know how to clean bathrooms “better than anybody”.
“A portable jon is a personal choice,” she says. “I think people try to sell the porta-jons just as a necessity. It is a
necessity, but also there’s a lot more to it.
“You don’t like to go to certain bathrooms in certain buildings. You certainly have a preference what type bathrooms you
want to use when you’re on a job site. Even though the majority of them are on construction sites, they still care. I think
females think in detail and that helps in this industry.”
For McGraw, that translates into extra touches on special event trailers, including flowers, bathroom rugs, air fresheners,
mirrors and purse hooks – many amenities one would want in one’s own restroom.
“I do think those things are important where a man doesn’t think they are,” she says.
To those who would question why it matters, McGraw points out that people – especially women – will leave the premises
to find an acceptable restroom and most likely not return. If she’s leaving a special event, the client is losing money.
McGraw’s drivers generally have no issues working for a woman.
“There sometimes is at the beginning,” she says. “I’ll sit down and explain to them that I started the company from scratch
and I know how to run everything because I used to run a truck. You don’t need to tell me how to do it. I know how to do it,
what it takes and how it can be done, because I’ve done it all.”
Although McGraw runs the company, she says it’s not unusual for her to hop into a truck whenever she gets complaints
on a route so she can see what’s going on.
“It’s a lot easier to fix it than it is to hire somebody new,” she says. “Customers like it that I’m humble enough that I will go.”
McGraw employs one female route driver and says while she does a great job, “Unfortunately she runs up against the same
things I run up against, but on a different scale. They just automatically assume she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She
pulls up on the site and they give her a hard time.”
Quoting an old Virginia Slims ad, McGraw says, “We’ve come a long way.”
But because of some of the challenges she’s faced and continues to face, despite her self-made success, she adds: “But I
don’t think we’ve come far enough.”
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Serving the American Liquid Waste Industry Since 2002