Standard Portable Toilet

A standard portable toilet is a single-occupant unit with a holding tank, a urinal, a toilet paper dispenser and a vent stack. No running water, no power, no plumbing. It gets dropped off, it gets pumped on a schedule, it gets picked up. That simplicity is exactly why it costs a fraction of everything else on this page.

The unit itself is close to a commodity. Every supplier in Central Texas runs roughly the same molded polyethylene box from one of three or four manufacturers, and the difference between a good rental and a bad one has almost nothing to do with the plastic. It is the service schedule, the age of the fleet, and whether the driver actually shows up on the day you were promised.

That is worth understanding before you shop on price alone. A $95 unit serviced every other week in an Austin August is a worse deal than a $140 unit serviced weekly. Heat accelerates everything in a holding tank, and Central Texas gives you four straight months where the inside of a black-vented unit sitting in full sun will run well over 100 degrees. Ask what the service interval is before you compare the numbers.

For construction, the working standard is one unit per ten workers on a forty-hour week, with weekly service. That ratio comes from the portable sanitation industry and it lines up with what OSHA expects you to provide. Below that ratio you are not saving money, you are creating a jobsite problem that costs you crew time.

For events, the standard unit is the default and the right call for most of them. If your guests are in jeans and boots at a ranch, nobody is disappointed. If your guests are in heels on a wedding lawn, read the restroom trailer page instead.