Chad Boudreaux’s first real introduction to disaster recovery work was a doozy. The year was 2005 and the disaster was named Katrina. The Category 5 hurricane devastated the Gulf, perhaps especially New Orleans, and Boudreaux retains vivid memories of scenes across the region.

“We got hit pretty hard,” he says of his home and business in Cut Off, Louisiana, southwest of New Orleans. “But we went to St. Bernard parish and it was like a bomb had hit the place. Houses were sitting on the highway. A vehicle was sticking out of the roof of a two-story house. It was like a movie. I thought, ‘How are we even going to go to work?’ It was one of my first disasters and — wow.”

He and his crew did go to work, however. It was a pretty intense, months-long recovery effort that involved pumping sewage after lift stations failed and supplying portable toilets for encampments of storm survivors, plus a variety of other emergency responses. Then, five years later, a British Petroleum offshore oil drilling rig dubbed Deepwater Horizon exploded, sank and precipitated a historically disastrous spill of crude oil into the sea. Joe’s Septic had portable units and pumpers working on the beach with cleanup crews for over a year.

Service offerings

Today, his company, Joe’s Septic Contractors, still serves the region — both in emergencies after storms and human-made disasters, and routinely in support of community events and gatherings. Boudreaux was asked if the two types of public service feel the same. The basic difference, he says, is urgency. “It gets chaotic in disasters. Basically, it’s … ‘How many portable toilet units can you get to me and how fast can you get them here?’ You’re constantly getting bombarded.”

In disastrous times, emotions overflow too. Consequently, someone in Boudreaux’s position must deal with public officials, community leaders and business executives, all of whom are trying to cope with disruption and, sometimes, with tragedy. How does he stay calm amid such disarray?

“What I have learned is not to overpromise,” he says. “When you’re younger, you’ll say yes to anything. I’ve learned you need to give whoever calls you an honest service schedule. Someone wants 200 toilets in one spot, you need to be honest with them about how long it will take to do that. We strive to provide excellent service, but I am not going to overpromise because you absolutely have to live up to whatever you say. I’ve learned to be totally honest. It goes a long way to keeping your sanity.” 

Back in the day

The backstory to Joe’s Septic Contractors says something about the enterprising Boudreaux family. It began when Joe Boudreaux, Chad’s father, found a shovel and wheelbarrow in a junk pile, refurbished both and started a business of digging cesspools, the underground reservoirs for sewage commonly found in rural areas. (A historical oddity is that his first day on the job was the same day in November 1963 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.) When business ramped up, Joe’s wife Eula Mae was the entire office staff, answering phones when he was out digging.

Not until 10 years later did Joe Boudreaux trade in the shovel for a 1954 Ford backhoe. He also acquired a Chevy flatbed truck and a Ford with a tank and pump, then got two sons to come work with him. When oil field work sparked a little building boom in South Louisiana in the late 1990s, the focus of the company’s work shifted to meeting the needs of oil field customers.

“But I started seeing the need for portable toilets,” says Boudreaux, who had dropped out of college in 1993 to come home and help his father after the senior Boudreaux suffered a heart attack. “The portable units were kind of a sideline for us. Installing sewage treatment facilities and cesspools were the main jobs. Now it’s totally reversed.”

After Boudreaux noticed other companies’ portable toilets in the area, his father agreed to buy a couple of portable restrooms. Little by little, the sideline venture began to dominate the company’s bottom line.

Basis of business

Today, Joe’s Septic Contractors has 2,000 portable toilets rented on any given day and another 2,000 in inventory. They all are the standard 35-40-gallon capacity. While the service mostly has grown organically, says Boudreaux, he also purchased two smaller competitors along the way to capture segments of the market.

“The portable toilet part of the business has snowballed. The more porta-rent units you put out with your name on it, the more business that comes back to you.”

A segment of the market that Joe’s Septic practically owns is portable toilets for offshore oil work. The company has 300 of the special units. They are an all-aluminum design and sit within a custom-fabricated lifting frame for handling by crane or forklift. 

Boudreaux patented the design after talking to Shell and Chevron and other oil companies operating from Louisiana’s shore. “I said, ‘Look, you need the toilet units and the cage for handling them from ship to ship. They all gave me input — easy accessibility, a checkered plate at the front so nobody would slip, slings that are certified for strength — and I built a prototype that they all loved. Now I’m their one-stop shop for offshore units.” 

Consequently, Joe’s Septic has 90% of the offshore toilet business in the Gulf. If one of the companies needs 20 of the toilets on its drilling platform, it orders 40 from Joe’s and rotates the empty and full ones, with Joe’s handling the waste onshore.

Disaster-specific 

Other portable sanitation units that Joe’s Septic markets for both disasters and outdoor gatherings include shower trailers, with six-shower/lavatory units in 20-foot-long trailers and 10 shower stall units in 30-foot trailers. Also available from Joe’s are restroom trailers ranging from one to 18 toilets, portable eye-washing stations and luxury air-conditioned restroom trailers — some of which include a TV and fireplace. While the company has used several brands of trailers, it relies heavily on Lang Specialty Trailers. 

Boudreaux observes that emergency situations are not all of the magnitude of a hurricane. They come in many sizes. “You would be surprised how many times we have delivered portable units to office buildings where the water has quit running or there’s a plumbing issue and they need a unit now.” 

The company’s service area for disaster response is not the same as its day-to-day service. For disaster recovery, the company will respond to anywhere in the country. After a category 4 storm, Hurricane Harvey pounded Houston, Texas, in 2017, Joe’s had five toilet and washroom trailers positioned at the Astrodome.  

Hurricane Laura, another Category 4 storm, swamped Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 2020 and for several months Joe’s had in position throughout the community temporary fencing, shower trailers, wash trailers, holding tanks and, of course, toilets. Hurricane Ian, still another Category 4 storm, hit Fort Myers, Florida, in 2022, and Joe’s had seven trucks there pumping sewage day and night in lieu of pump stations.  

Who are Joe’s biggest clients after a storm or human-made hazard? “Bulk orders usually come from state or parish officials and also from power line companies like Entergy,” says Boudreaux. “But we still get a good, fair share of commercial and residential property owners.” 

Hurricane Ida was personal. In 2021, it hit Cut Off with 228 mph winds, punching hard at the company itself. “We suffered damages and lost about 300 of our portable toilets,” Boudreaux recalls. “Within a week, we sent out every piece of equipment we had on inventory and had to sub out equipment for out-of-state companies to help meet the tremendous demand. We are still not back to 100% almost three years later.” 

On the other hand, the service area for nondisaster events — annual public gatherings of many different kinds — is limited to Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and Mississippi, where an office just opened. Other company offices are in the Louisiana towns of Cut Off, Fourchon, Thibodaux, Abbeville and Reserve. An office in Odessa, Texas, serves West Texas and New Mexico.

Equipment matters 

From his father’s shovel and wheelbarrow, Boudreaux built a company that has an equipment yard filled with Takeuchi and Link-Belt hydraulic excavators, Fassi knuckleboom cranes and a fleet of 35 trucks ranging from pickups to big diesel tractor units that mostly are Peterbilt. Its pumper and tank units vary from 300-gallon trailers to 18-wheelers with a 5,200-gallon capacity, with most of the tanks being either of KeeVac or Progress manufacture.  

And, of course, he has thousands of portable sanitation stations of one kind or another. Favored toilet manufacturers include PolyJohn and Satellite. 

Soon, there will be freshwater tankers, too. “We’re in the process of starting our freshwater division — potable water tanker trucks, that is — for both festivals and disasters. In West Texas, they’re asking for water all the time,” the owner says. “We feel like it’s a good move, pretty easy pickings, really. It goes hand in hand with what we already offer.”

The team 

Among his staff of 50 full-time and standby personnel, Boudreaux can count two employees who have been with the company for 20 years, a couple more who have been there for a dozen years apiece.  

His son, Mason, is the company’s chief executive officer after coming to work six years ago upon his graduation from college with a business degree. Mason, of course, represents a third generation of the Boudreaux family in the business. Another member of that generation, Mason’s 17-year-old brother, Colt, plans on joining the company, too, after high school. 

“You get to a point in a business where you can’t do it by yourself,” Boudreaux says, with a special nod to his wife Trixie, whom he calls his rock. “The company would not be where it is without these people. I thank God for them. He has blessed us.” He recalls how he left college to help his father with the intention of returning to school shortly, “but the business side of it got me hooked. I decided to put everything into this business.” He became owner of it in 2005. 

Disasters by definition are unplanned, yet companies like Joe’s Septic Contractors have to plan for them. Boudreaux was asked how exactly he planned for a disaster? 

“First thing, you have to have an inventory of, in our case, portable toilets and washrooms. You can’t rent out what you don’t have. You’ve got to keep up with the inventory. And we stay locked and loaded. When we need extra people, we can go to a third-party company who in a single phone call can provide us with, say, 20 people. We keep our own people on call 24/7. We stay locked and loaded.”