Think about any dirty, feces-related joke, and Cassie Collinson guarantees she has heard it.
“People find out what I do and like to tell me jokes,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me.”
That’s because Collinson is the owner of Cassie’s Cans Inc., a port-a-potty rental company for construction sites, based in the South Kingstown village of West Kingston. It also doesn’t bother Collinson, or her all-female crew, to work in a male-dominated industry.
“It’s truly not a tough world to be in,” she said. “We treat the guys with respect, and they do the same back. We aren’t going on-site expecting to be noticed or treated differently because we are women. They are there to do their job; we are there to do ours.”
So how does a young woman end up in the port-a-potty industry?
“I worked with sewer lines at my dad’s rooter company and got my feet wet with blue-collar work in the waste industry,” she said. “I got the idea I wanted to start a business and my dad and I were throwing ideas around and sort of jokingly said I should start a Porta-John business.”
The idea stuck with her, and within a few months, she had secured financing and started her own business. She was 19 and had a couple of portable toilets she was ferrying to some local sites operated by friends. By the time she was 20, she had a full-blown rental business on her hands.
Now six years later, she has three service trucks and two employees.
“I think we have gained clientele through our attention to detail by providing toilets as clean as we can get them,” she said. “We are on small and large job sites and we treat every customer as if they are my first customer.”
‘I’ve messed up in all departments and learned from it in all departments.’
CASSIE COLLINSON, Cassie’s Cans Inc. owner
She also has two mascots on staff: German shepherds named Ozzy and Kaiser.
“They go everywhere with me,” she said. “People are disappointed when I show up without them.”
Cassie’s Cans services the entire state, and it is difficult to overlook the lime and dark green structures.
“When I started, I didn’t want to step on any toes,” she said. “Nobody had that color yet and I wanted it to stand out. I came up with that from a marketing standpoint. I went with the loudest color I could so that I’d have my own brand.”
Collinson said seeing site work move from start to finish is her favorite part of the job, but she also enjoys getting positive feedback.
“It’s nice picking up a new customer or starting a new relationship and having them say, ‘Hey, that girl was great, really friendly,’ ” she said. “Positive feedback about staff is big to me.”
Fortunately, the pandemic didn’t affect her bottom line as much as it did in some industries.
“COVID-19 actually gave us a little bit of business,” she said. “Most sites stayed open as long as they were within regulations.”
The biggest challenge she faced in 2020 was the same one everyone else was facing: getting enough toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
“My vendors were backed up three to four months,” she said. “I was getting Purell at Walmart and grabbing whatever toilet paper I could at the stores, but I could only get two at a time, so I was going out to different stores every day. For a business 100% about sanitation, that was the biggest thing, but we got by and made it work.”
Collinson said the past six years have been a blur.
“Anybody can go out and pump a toilet, but I had to figure out how to get legit,” she said. “I was trying to understand business and what it means and build it up on paper. Who do I buy chemicals from? How do I get a state ID? What insurance do I need? As far as growing a business, you truly only learn in those dark, nitty-gritty moments.”
Collinson often would spend all day pumping toilets and then work on administrative tasks well into the night.
“I’ve messed up in all departments and learned from it in all departments,” she said. “From learning to bid properly, to making mistakes on the clerical side, to lacking in maintenance on service trucks, I learned you have to have a strategy [instead of] panicking. Now I’m in a position where I feel a little more confident with anything that gets put in my lap. If there is a mess-up, I can tackle it. That growth is something I’m super proud of. I would never have pictured myself being able to do it.”
She is also proud of her two staff members, Karissa Doak and Selena Gordon.
“These girls are doing some pretty rugged work, and learning these skills and maintaining their schedules gives them a confidence boost,” Collinson said.
She feels good about where her business is now.
“I’m grateful that I got into business at a great time in a good economy, with supportive family and friends,” she said. “I had something to prove and I’m proud of the effort, blood, sweat and tears, and pushing through is something I’m proud of. I’m not necessarily fighting for something now. I’m in the flow of a working business and that momentum has been so rewarding.”
