Porta Potty Industry Statistics
The US portable sanitation market is worth roughly $3.2 billion and has grown about 10.7% a year over the last five years. Below that headline, here is what 1,976 independent operators actually rent, data collected for this index and published nowhere else.
What share of operators rent each unit type
| Name | Companies | Sample |
|---|---|---|
| Standard portable toilet | 1,714 | 87% of operators |
| Restroom trailer | 1,125 | 57% of operators |
| ADA accessible unit | 1,094 | 55% of operators |
| Hand-wash station | 1,079 | 55% of operators |
| Flushing unit | 856 | 43% of operators |
| Shower trailer | 262 | 13% of operators |
Restroom trailers turn up at 57% and ADA units at 55%, which is higher than most people in the trade would guess. Shower trailers are the genuine specialty at 13%, roughly one operator in eight.
ADA unit availability by state
| Name | Companies | Sample |
|---|---|---|
| Texas | 128 | 70% of 182 |
| California | 113 | 64% of 176 |
| Florida | 68 | 72% of 94 |
| Georgia | 46 | 69% of 67 |
| New York | 44 | 70% of 63 |
| North Carolina | 43 | 61% of 71 |
| Michigan | 42 | 53% of 80 |
| Ohio | 38 | 72% of 53 |
| Arizona | 36 | 69% of 52 |
| Pennsylvania | 33 | 46% of 71 |
| Wisconsin | 33 | 79% of 42 |
| Colorado | 32 | 63% of 51 |
Availability is not evenly spread. Any event open to the public should carry at least one accessible unit, and in thinner markets that is the booking most likely to be unavailable at short notice.
What operators charge, and what the industry repeats
Every porta potty pricing guide online quotes the same monthly figures, and none of them says where the numbers came from. We went and counted. Of the 1,976 operator websites in this index, 58 publish a rate at all. That is the first finding, and it is the reason a sourced number is worth having here.
| Unit | Commonly quoted | Measured | Operators |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard portable toilet | $75–$150 | $110 to $170 | 17 |
| ADA accessible | $175–$325 | $135 to $290 | 7 |
| Hand-wash station | $50–$120 | $146 to $218 | 6 |
| Flushing / deluxe | $150–$300 | weekly only: $349 to $424 | 8 |
| Restroom trailer | $800–$3,500 | no measured figure, see below | |
The standard unit is the one worth looking at, because it is the figure everybody prints. The commonly quoted $75 to $150 a month sits below what operators charge. Measured across the 17 companies who publish a monthly standard rate, the range is $110 to $170 with a median of $140. The repeated figure's ceiling is roughly the real median.
ADA runs the other way. The quoted $175 to $325 overlaps the measured $135 to $290 but starts too high, and hand-wash stations at a quoted $50 to $120 are well under the measured $146 to $218.
Restroom trailers are the one unit we could not measure, and it is worth saying why rather than quietly averaging them. Of the operators publishing a trailer rate, the lower quartile is $290 a month and the upper is $2,000. Those two figures are two different products sharing a name rather than a range: a two-station trailer and an eight-station trailer are as far apart as a hatchback and a coach. Where the site quotes $800 to $3,500 for a trailer, that is the trade's own reference figure carried over and labelled as one, not something we counted. Ask what the unit holds before you compare two quotes, because station count is most of the price.
Method, sample sizes and the cells we withheld are on the methodology page. Counts are companies, not quotes: one figure per operator, lowest where a company lists tiers, and rates a company quotes about the industry are excluded from rates it charges itself.
How many units an event needs
| Guests | 4 hours | 8 hours |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 2 | 3 |
| 250 | 5 | 7 |
| 500 | 10 | 13 |
| 1,000 | 20 | 25 |
| 2,500 | 50 | 63 |
On construction sites the figure is law rather than guidance: 29 CFR 1926.51(c) requires one toilet up to 20 workers, then one seat and one urinal per 40. Work out your own number.
Market concentration
The sector is unusually fragmented. Our scrape found 1,976 independently owned operators against a handful of national carriers, and we excluded the nationals deliberately. United Site Services alone accounted for 135 listings. For a customer that fragmentation is the opportunity: the independent yard usually answers its own phone and quotes its own work.
Sources and reuse
Unit coverage figures are ours, updated regularly by reading 1,976 operator websites. Market size is IBISWorld's US Portable Toilet Rental industry estimate. Event ratios are ANSI/PSAI Z4.3; construction minimums are 29 CFR 1926.51(c). Measured rental rates are ours, read off operator websites the same crawl; the "commonly quoted" column is the figure repeated across published pricing guides, shown for comparison rather than as a source.
All of it is free to quote with attribution, and the underlying data is available as CSV and JSON.