How I built ‘a low-tech, AI-proof business’

Success doesn’t always smell sweet.

For Daniel Tom, the 31-year-old owner and operator of Bay Area Sanitation, success means nearly 2,000 portable toilets deployed at events and work sites across the San Francisco Bay Area. Tom’s company is responsible for renting out and maintaining those toilets, including weekly cleanings, restocking supplies and emptying up to 60 gallons of waste from each unit with one of Bay Area Sanitation’s 12 vacuum pumper trucks.

“When I tell people that I own a porta-potty business, I get a lot of disgusted looks,” Tom says. “But once I explain to them the business model and the revenue, most of the time they get interested.”

Tom launched Bay Area Sanitation in 2023 with one truck and just 100 toilets to rent. The company became profitable after its first year of business, and revenue has climbed alongside its fleet of rentable toilets. Bay Area Sanitation brought in $3.1 million in 2024 total income and $4.3 million in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

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Tom’s business operates pretty much anywhere a person might seek out a portable toilet, from short-term outdoor events like concerts to longer-term rentals at construction sites or public parks. Bay Area Sanitation’s standard-sized portable toilets start at $160 per month for long-term rentals, including weekly cleanings. Short-term pricing ranges from $239 to $399 per event.

The bulk of the company’s revenue comes from long-term rentals with recurring weekly cleaning charges that add up over weeks, months or multiple years, Tom says. “I like to focus on long-term rentals because it equals guaranteed recurring revenue for my business,” he says, adding that his business has a net profit margin of around 22%.

The irony that he’s built a successful business out of collecting human waste “right around the corner from some of the biggest tech companies in the world, like Google, Apple and Nvidia” certainly isn’t lost on Tom. At a time when many workers worry about being replaced by artificial intelligence, Tom sees a benefit in building his business around solving an inevitable human problem.

“We’ve managed to build what I think is a low-tech, AI-proof business,” he says.

Tom’s start in the industry came during his junior year of college at San Jose State University, where he studied to be a physical education teacher. He took on a part-time customer service job with a portable toilet rental company.

“I liked it so much that I decided to abandon teaching and dive in full-time after graduation,” says Tom, who worked for seven years as a sales manager with Hanson & Fitch before deciding to launch his own business, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Tom saw the business’ solid profit potential, and came to appreciate doing a necessary job that might cause others to shy away, he says: “The truth is, I take pride in what I do. I love coming to work every day and I provide a service that everybody needs. Everybody goes, right?”

Starting a porta-potty rental business typically requires enough upfront cash to buy equipment, which can cost around $800 per rentable toilet and $160,000 per vacuum truck, says Tom. He declined to share details about his own startup funds, but says that the average person might need roughly $250,000 to get started.

Labor costs for Tom’s 19 employees are his largest expense, he says, equal to roughly 30% of Bay Area Sanitation’s revenue. Other costs include fuel for the vacuum trucks and delivery trucks, and supplies like toilet paper and paper towels, he says. Tom takes home roughly $120,000 in personal annual salary — a number that could easily be higher, he says, if he didn’t reinvest the bulk of profits back into the business.

“We’re really prioritizing reinvesting in the business to continue growing,” says Tom. His goal is to amass 5,000 portable toilets and $10 million in annual revenue within the next five years, he says. In December, Bay Area Sanitation signed a lease for a warehouse yard space with room for “almost twice as many trucks as we have now,” he adds.

The portable toilet rental industry brought in an estimated $3.3 billion in the U.S. in 2025, up 1.7% from 2024, according to a September 2025 analysis from research firm IBISWorld. Tom projects plenty of market share for the taking in the Bay Area, he says, with myriad local outdoor events and a growing construction sector.

Tom’s business likely isn’t for everyone, though he says he’s gotten used to some of the less savory aspects. “I’ve cleaned so many porta-potties the smell doesn’t really bother me,” he says. “But every once in a while, I’ll come across [a unit] after somebody’s had some bad burritos, or something like that. And even for me, it’s hard to stomach.”

His typical day starts with a 4 a.m. wakeup. He drives to his company’s storage yard to meet his employees before they all head out to deliver fresh toilets to clients and clean long-term rentals. On less busy days, Tom stays in the office doing administrative work, making sales calls or working on the business’ long-term growth strategy.

One key to his success, Tom suggests: taking the sanitation aspect of the business as seriously as possible. Each unit’s weekly cleaning regimen includes completely emptying the waste with the vacuum truck’s suction wand, adding deodorizer that breaks down future waste and mitigates bad smells, scrubbing and disinfecting every surface inside the unit, and restocking paper goods.

Prioritizing the customer experience means trying to avoid users encountering nasty situations as much as possible, says Tom. And it means working with your hands, even when you’re the business owner, he adds: “What sets an owner apart in the porta-potty business is how involved they stay in the daily operations.”

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