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SYSK Selects: How Porta-Potties Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Happy weekend, folks. In old podcast time, it is December
0:06
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. In modern podcast time, it's two thousand twenty. One.
0:11
Speaker 1: Thing that has not changed between two thousand sixteen and
0:14
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty is how porta potties work. It's an
0:18
Speaker 1: interesting topic, believe it or not. I remember really enjoying
0:22
Speaker 1: this episode. Uh, don't really enjoy porta potties, but it's
0:26
Speaker 1: it's kind of a neat thing to research, believe it
0:27
Speaker 1: or not, So give it a listen. Why don't you
0:29
Speaker 1: how porta potties work? Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
0:36
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:45
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
0:48
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, Jerry Master, Ace Roland. Uh, and this
0:56
Speaker 1: is stuff you should not Yeah, poopy edition. This one's
1:00
Speaker 1: gonna get disgusting. Yeah, I mean, I don't think you
1:05
Speaker 1: need trigger warnings when the title of the episode is
1:08
Speaker 1: got porta potti in it, But um, we'll just throw
1:11
Speaker 1: it out there. We're gonna be talking about poop and yeah,
1:14
Speaker 1: and so if you're having lunch, maybe just put that
1:20
Speaker 1: chili dog down the gag easily. Yeah, you know, sure, Yeah, okay,
1:28
Speaker 1: we'll check. I don't think we can put it off
1:31
Speaker 1: any longer, you know that kind of beat it out. Um.
1:35
Speaker 1: I kind of like how this article actually starts though
1:40
Speaker 1: by Dave Ruse. He talks about the Taste of Chicago.
1:43
Speaker 1: Oh is this a Ruse jam? Yes, it is good.
1:46
Speaker 1: So he talks about how if you go to the
1:48
Speaker 1: Taste of Chicago, right every every July, they hold it
1:51
Speaker 1: at the Grant Park alongside the Lake. When was our
1:55
Speaker 1: show there, by the way, was that July? No, it
1:58
Speaker 1: was chillier than that. I think it was October. Okay,
2:01
Speaker 1: they had something had happened in Grant part because I
2:04
Speaker 1: remember seeing hundreds and hundreds of Porter potties on the
2:08
Speaker 1: drive in. Oh really yeah, so somebo they just always
2:12
Speaker 1: have them there. No, I don't think so. Okay, Well,
2:16
Speaker 1: for the Taste of Chicago, they definitely have Porter potties.
2:19
Speaker 1: In fact, for two thousand and fourteen, and we should
2:22
Speaker 1: say there's like a million people that come through this
2:24
Speaker 1: thing over the course of the week. It's a lot
2:26
Speaker 1: of folks, it really is. Have you ever been to
2:29
Speaker 1: Atlanta's Taste of Anything? Uh? No, I haven't either. I
2:34
Speaker 1: don't think it's I don't think a million people show
2:36
Speaker 1: up for it. It makes me want to go try
2:39
Speaker 1: Chicago's um But so you've got a million people. UM
2:43
Speaker 1: and Service Sanitation, Inc. Which is the company that landed
2:47
Speaker 1: the Porter Potty contract crunch the numbers. Looked at the
2:50
Speaker 1: food that was going to be there, uh said, you're
2:55
Speaker 1: gonna have some beer. Yeah, okay. They carried the one
2:59
Speaker 1: and they came up with three eighty regular port of potties,
3:03
Speaker 1: twenty eight wheelchair accessible porta potties, and eighty hand washing stations.
3:08
Speaker 1: They have soap and fresh running water. Not bad, right,
3:13
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, Like, that's great. They delivered all
3:16
Speaker 1: those things. But had they just walked away and said,
3:19
Speaker 1: see at the end of Taste of Chicago, it would
3:23
Speaker 1: have been a living nightmare for everyone involved. Yeah, that
3:27
Speaker 1: would be it would be more than the taste of Chicago.
3:32
Speaker 1: Be the sickening smell of Chicago. Yeah, that would have
3:37
Speaker 1: been bad. Because well, we'll get into it. But Porter
3:41
Speaker 1: Potty sometimes you can leave them come back a week
3:44
Speaker 1: later and just take them away if it's like a
3:46
Speaker 1: temporary work site or something. But sometimes when you're selling
3:50
Speaker 1: beer and chili, you need to come at the end
3:52
Speaker 1: of every day and clean those suckers out. Yes, and
3:57
Speaker 1: that's what they did. They came at nine when everyone
4:00
Speaker 1: was sleeping from well, I guess if you went to
4:03
Speaker 1: bed at nine pm, that's what I'm sleeping. But they
4:07
Speaker 1: would come every night from nine and I pm to
4:09
Speaker 1: three am, and they would work. And here's the thing,
4:12
Speaker 1: like porta potties, it turns out I was overthinking them.
4:17
Speaker 1: I thought there was maybe a little more going on. No,
4:20
Speaker 1: they are they are self. I don't. I really don't
4:25
Speaker 1: know what I thought. It escaped me as as the
4:27
Speaker 1: reality of porter potties sunk in my my delusions about
4:31
Speaker 1: my illusions about them kind of um escaped me and
4:34
Speaker 1: trickle away. And now I can't remember what they were
4:36
Speaker 1: up port potty, right, Sure I have, But I was
4:40
Speaker 1: like holding my breath and like like just barely had
4:44
Speaker 1: my eyes open because I didn't want any germs to
4:46
Speaker 1: get on my eyeballs. Um, So I wasn't paying that
4:49
Speaker 1: much attention. It's an in and out kind of thing. Um.
4:53
Speaker 1: It turns out that like when you serve as supporter potty,
4:56
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're showing up with a trunk
4:59
Speaker 1: truck as a tank with a vacuum on at a
5:02
Speaker 1: pressurized tank. Um, and you are sucking the contents out
5:06
Speaker 1: of that porter potty and then you put it in
5:10
Speaker 1: the truck, you drive off, and you dump it off
5:14
Speaker 1: at the waste treatment plant of your local city or town.
5:18
Speaker 1: It's like a gigantic wet back. Yes, it is for
5:22
Speaker 1: poo poo and pep Yes, and a very dangerous one.
5:25
Speaker 1: I saw at least one story um in a porter
5:28
Speaker 1: potty trade magazine that of somebody who I've read a
5:32
Speaker 1: bunch of those, in a magazine called it's called Portable
5:36
Speaker 1: Restroom Operator TRO. It's a it's a good mag man.
5:39
Speaker 1: They actually found um uh this one issue online going
5:45
Speaker 1: all the way back to two thousand nine that I
5:47
Speaker 1: was looking for. So they they're legit, but they could
5:49
Speaker 1: have been a little more fun with the name and
5:51
Speaker 1: pro well. I think they're they're saying like, hey man,
5:55
Speaker 1: all the fun you want, but we're saving your behind.
5:59
Speaker 1: Hey see that that sounds like a slogan. I think
6:02
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is. Well, they do point out a
6:04
Speaker 1: couple of the slogans because porta Potty Companies or porta John's,
6:09
Speaker 1: Jiffy John's Portloo if you're in England, Toy toy if
6:14
Speaker 1: you're in Malaysia. Yeah. Uh. They're very famous for having
6:17
Speaker 1: pretty fun penny um slogans like we're number one in
6:22
Speaker 1: the number two business. Not bad, No, it's not bad.
6:27
Speaker 1: No one, there's no one takes care of our business,
6:29
Speaker 1: like Mr John. Sure I saw that too. Yeah. Um,
6:33
Speaker 1: there's also one called got to Go, but it's spelled
6:36
Speaker 1: really impressively. Um it's g It's all one word and
6:41
Speaker 1: it's lower case, so it's super mod g O T
6:46
Speaker 1: you with an oom l out g O. I love it. M.
6:52
Speaker 1: Do you like that one? Yeah? I just I thought
6:55
Speaker 1: you were going in a different direction. I thought it
6:56
Speaker 1: was going to be a little more like g E
6:58
Speaker 1: A U X. No, that's like if they were in
7:01
Speaker 1: Louisiana maybe, Yeah, that's what I thought. Sure, No, this
7:04
Speaker 1: is this had an oomlout. That's what got me. And
7:08
Speaker 1: that's why you love Motley Crue so much. Sure it
7:10
Speaker 1: is all right? So, um, should we talk a little
7:15
Speaker 1: bit about the history. I think so, all right, Well
7:19
Speaker 1: we need to go back to World War two in
7:21
Speaker 1: this case, and um, because World War two was going on,
7:27
Speaker 1: there was there was there was a need for more
7:30
Speaker 1: poopers essentially right because they had like manufacturing plants popping up,
7:37
Speaker 1: they had temporary manufacturing plants going up. They had places
7:41
Speaker 1: where they didn't want to build full service, permanent bathrooms
7:46
Speaker 1: all over the place. All of a sudden, these people
7:48
Speaker 1: needed to go potty. Um what I saw. I saw
7:52
Speaker 1: a few different origin stories, but the one I saw
7:54
Speaker 1: the most frequently was that the um shipbuilding docks at
7:59
Speaker 1: Long Beach are in World War Two. They're building warships
8:03
Speaker 1: for the US. The guys working the docks would have
8:07
Speaker 1: to working building the ships would have to get on
8:10
Speaker 1: a rowboat and go back to the dock to use
8:13
Speaker 1: the bathroom. And this is no good. And they were like,
8:15
Speaker 1: this is a terrible waste of time. Can we just
8:18
Speaker 1: get something down the ship? So they started building temporary
8:21
Speaker 1: what amounted to the first porta potties there on the
8:24
Speaker 1: ships for them to use. Yeah, and these first ones, UM,
8:28
Speaker 1: you can look up a picture of the Andy Gump.
8:31
Speaker 1: Is that what it's called. I didn't see. I gotta
8:34
Speaker 1: look that up. I think it's the Andy Gump, like
8:36
Speaker 1: one of the just type in like nineteen forties porta
8:39
Speaker 1: potty and there will be a picture, and it's basically
8:42
Speaker 1: this big heavy metal square. Sometimes they were would but
8:47
Speaker 1: they were super heavy and they weren't easily transported. Um
8:52
Speaker 1: they you know, this is pre uh using like chemicals
8:57
Speaker 1: which we'll get into to help break these the poop
9:00
Speaker 1: poo down and stuff. So it was just a disgusting affair.
9:04
Speaker 1: I'm having trouble right now. I see the indycomer. You
9:08
Speaker 1: see it. Wow, it looks like, um, it looks safe
9:12
Speaker 1: to be in. You know what it looks like. It
9:14
Speaker 1: looks like what they used on mash Yeah, like the latrine. Yeah,
9:19
Speaker 1: same idea. Basically, Yeah, it's just a latrine. You could
9:22
Speaker 1: take places. But I came across this really cool little
9:27
Speaker 1: thing on a website about World War two fighter pilots,
9:31
Speaker 1: and um, with World War Two came along planes that
9:36
Speaker 1: could stay in these bombers, I could stay in the
9:38
Speaker 1: air for a lot longer. And they started to think like, Hey,
9:42
Speaker 1: these these dudes are up there for like you know,
9:45
Speaker 1: ten to fourteen hours, we have to come up with
9:48
Speaker 1: ways for them to go to the bathroom. Right, yeah,
9:52
Speaker 1: I mean like you don't think about that, Like when
9:54
Speaker 1: we the frost Bite episode, I certainly didn't think that
9:57
Speaker 1: they were up there getting frostbite because it was so
9:59
Speaker 1: you know, cold. Also didn't think that they were up
10:02
Speaker 1: there so long that they couldn't use the bathroom. They
10:05
Speaker 1: had to hold it right, So yeah, And the earliest
10:09
Speaker 1: ones were, well, here's a funnel and it's attached to
10:12
Speaker 1: a tube and it leads out of the plane, so
10:15
Speaker 1: go ahead and p Yeah, and that's basically just for
10:17
Speaker 1: like the pilot and co pilot right this relief tube. Um.
10:23
Speaker 1: After that they're like, well, what if we have to poop? Yeah,
10:25
Speaker 1: they said, can you get your hands on a produced crate?
10:30
Speaker 1: And the crew would say like, well, yeah, sure, we
10:33
Speaker 1: have produced creative course, what are we commies and the
10:37
Speaker 1: people in charge to say, We'll poop in that? Take
10:39
Speaker 1: that up in the plane and just pooping that, buddy,
10:41
Speaker 1: and maybe wash it out when you get down here
10:43
Speaker 1: and put it back in for later use, or maybe
10:47
Speaker 1: just get a new crate. I guess if you're not thrifty.
10:53
Speaker 1: Eventually they came up with something called the Elson E
10:55
Speaker 1: E L S A N. It's a chemical toilet and
10:59
Speaker 1: it was really kind of one of the first little
11:01
Speaker 1: porta potties. But if you look up Elson and on
11:05
Speaker 1: the images on Google you will find that it's it
11:08
Speaker 1: looks like nothing more than a metal oil can that
11:14
Speaker 1: you sit on. It's basically what it was pretty much. Um,
11:19
Speaker 1: and you're all they're exposed. I mean, there's no room
11:21
Speaker 1: that this is in. You're just doing this in front
11:22
Speaker 1: of you know, your all your buddies on the plane,
11:25
Speaker 1: right like prison. Sure, and that I mean that that
11:28
Speaker 1: Elson toilet was still I mean as primitive as it was.
11:31
Speaker 1: It was an advancement, but it had certain problems, right
11:35
Speaker 1: like if you were flying through turbulence, yea, that Elson
11:39
Speaker 1: would spill its contents out into the plane. Yeah, there's
11:46
Speaker 1: a few quotes here. I'd like to read a couple
11:47
Speaker 1: of these from some of these fighter pilots. Um, here's
11:53
Speaker 1: one and this is from a British pilot. While we
11:56
Speaker 1: were flying in rough air. This Devil's convenience often shared
11:59
Speaker 1: its con tense with the floor of the aircraft, the
12:01
Speaker 1: walls and ceiling, and sometimes a bit remained in the
12:04
Speaker 1: container itself. It doesn't take much imagination to picture what
12:08
Speaker 1: it was like trying to combat fear and airsickness while
12:11
Speaker 1: struggling to remove enough gear in cramped quarters and at
12:14
Speaker 1: the same time trying to use the bloody Elson. If
12:17
Speaker 1: it wasn't an invention of the devil, it certainly might
12:19
Speaker 1: have been one foisted on us by the enemy. When
12:22
Speaker 1: seated in frigid cold, amid the cacophony of roaring engines
12:25
Speaker 1: and whistling air, away from what should have been one
12:27
Speaker 1: of life's peaceful moments, the occupant had a chance to
12:30
Speaker 1: fully ponder the miserable condition of his life. This lowsome creation,
12:34
Speaker 1: invariably overflowed on long trips and in turbulence, was always
12:37
Speaker 1: prone to bathe the nether regions of the user. It
12:42
Speaker 1: was one of the true reminders to me that war
12:44
Speaker 1: as hell. You don't think about this stuff. You hear
12:47
Speaker 1: about all the glory of being like a bomber pilot.
12:49
Speaker 1: You don't think about sitting on a can and having
12:53
Speaker 1: your your friends poop and pe slash up on your fannie.
12:57
Speaker 1: Sorry to those in the UK, weies doesn't even make
13:00
Speaker 1: sense in that context. That means something different here in
13:02
Speaker 1: the US, right, but right so, uh yeah, that's the
13:09
Speaker 1: the first I guess. Chemical toilet, which is a designation
13:13
Speaker 1: of a porta potty, right, like a porter potty is
13:16
Speaker 1: a chemical toilet, but not all chemical toilets or porta potties,
13:20
Speaker 1: But a chemical toilet is any kind of toilet where
13:22
Speaker 1: you have um something in there that's intended to break
13:27
Speaker 1: down waste. And actually I don't know that an els
13:31
Speaker 1: In toilet, I guess it was a chemical toilet. I
13:33
Speaker 1: see now, But that's gross because in addition to getting
13:37
Speaker 1: the rest of the cruise poop and pa slopped up
13:39
Speaker 1: against your rear end, um, so too, were you getting
13:44
Speaker 1: very very hazardous chemicals as well. Yeah, so that's a
13:50
Speaker 1: good man. That guy may have had his buttocks removed
13:54
Speaker 1: after the war. Uh. One of the uses of the toilet,
13:58
Speaker 1: they said that this is supposedly very true. It was
14:00
Speaker 1: that some members of the Royal Air Force UM actually
14:04
Speaker 1: jettisoned the Elson toilets with their bomb payload onto German targets,
14:09
Speaker 1: so they would drop these toilets full of pooh on
14:12
Speaker 1: the Germans. And Uh. There was an American too, had
14:17
Speaker 1: a great quote about peeing through the little hose. He said,
14:21
Speaker 1: as the urine ran through the tube, it turned to
14:23
Speaker 1: ice and dropped like topaz colored hail to the ground.
14:26
Speaker 1: I like to imagine every time I urinated over Germany.
14:29
Speaker 1: My my acidulous projectile would plank on some Nazi Burger's
14:36
Speaker 1: aryan nose poetry. Yeah, there's some more good stories in here.
14:42
Speaker 1: You should, uh man, I don't remember which website it was. Yeah,
14:47
Speaker 1: I have to. I have to post that later on
14:48
Speaker 1: Facebook and I'll tweet it, all right. So that's the
14:54
Speaker 1: the war effort that eventually ultimately led to the creation
14:58
Speaker 1: of the porta potty, right, and again, like there were
15:02
Speaker 1: already latrines that had already been out houses. And the
15:05
Speaker 1: difference between an outhouse and a porta potty is that
15:09
Speaker 1: an out house is basically some sort of rigid structure
15:13
Speaker 1: that's intended to be permanent or semipermanent, permanent that's dug
15:18
Speaker 1: over a hole in the ground. That's it. A porta
15:21
Speaker 1: potty is a self contained unit that has a place
15:27
Speaker 1: where the waste goes, and it's held inside that unit
15:32
Speaker 1: rather than like put into the ground, which is extremely
15:36
Speaker 1: dangerous that we learned a very long time ago. Pooping
15:39
Speaker 1: in holes in the ground is not a good way
15:41
Speaker 1: to go as far as public health is concerned. It's not.
15:44
Speaker 1: And that's one of the legitimate um marks in the
15:47
Speaker 1: favor of porta potties. Is gross, as as most people
15:50
Speaker 1: who have ever used one thinks they are. They're actually
15:54
Speaker 1: um quite beneficial to public health. Yeah, and they're green too.
15:58
Speaker 1: Saves a lot of water. Yeah. I saw um a
16:01
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy billion leaders a year, about a hundred
16:06
Speaker 1: and twenty five million gallons a day in the U
16:08
Speaker 1: s alone. Crazy. Yeah, So, um, you want to take
16:12
Speaker 1: a break for a second. Yeah, we'll break in. We'll
16:14
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the evolution of the
16:16
Speaker 1: port of John right after this y s game that
16:34
Speaker 1: you should know, that you should know, but Josh Clark,
16:45
Speaker 1: all right, chuckers. So we're talking about the evolution of
16:48
Speaker 1: the port porta john. You've got the Andy Gump, you've
16:52
Speaker 1: got the Elson toilet, and then finally, in actually the sixties,
16:57
Speaker 1: you have what is the what we think of as
17:02
Speaker 1: a porta potty. Um. A patent was developed by a
17:05
Speaker 1: guy named George Harding Um and he called it for
17:08
Speaker 1: a portable toilet Cabana and it was made from plastic
17:13
Speaker 1: and um. Although he had the patent for it, the
17:15
Speaker 1: guy who actually gets credit for actually creating the first
17:19
Speaker 1: real modern port to john reporta potty was a guy
17:23
Speaker 1: named Um Harvey Heather, and he created what's called the
17:26
Speaker 1: strong Box. Great name. Did you see Have you seen
17:30
Speaker 1: the strong Box? Oh? You did? That's what I went
17:33
Speaker 1: and found the December two thousand nine UM issue of
17:37
Speaker 1: Pro magazine. Um to find because I saw a reference
17:41
Speaker 1: that they had published a picture of it, and I
17:44
Speaker 1: couldn't find it anywhere else. Those things are ugly. Yeah,
17:49
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't a great looking Uh. It's not
17:52
Speaker 1: like the fantastic porter John say have today, just so
17:55
Speaker 1: gorgeous to look at right now. This thing was ugly,
17:59
Speaker 1: had had no alibi. Uh. Yeah. And these were made
18:02
Speaker 1: of fiberglass, which um, it was good. It was lightweight
18:07
Speaker 1: but um, and it was sturdy. It was as sturdy
18:10
Speaker 1: as metal or wood, and it was a lot easier
18:12
Speaker 1: to clean. But the problem with the strong Box and
18:15
Speaker 1: the fiberglasses it was a big kind of one piece mold. Um.
18:21
Speaker 1: It was dark inside, which was not good. They weren't
18:25
Speaker 1: stackable as far as transporting them, and so that just
18:29
Speaker 1: made it really expensive to get them where they needed
18:33
Speaker 1: to go and back again. It did. And the fact
18:36
Speaker 1: that like it was completely opaque um and there was
18:39
Speaker 1: no light that could get in. That's that's an issue.
18:42
Speaker 1: Plus I also get the impression that the floors could
18:45
Speaker 1: get pretty slick and you could fall and die of
18:50
Speaker 1: positional asphyxiation and important you. Yeah, and they were also
18:55
Speaker 1: fiberglasses pretty fragile, so they would break a lot uh,
18:58
Speaker 1: fiberglass absorb odors, which was not good. Uh. And so
19:03
Speaker 1: shortly after the fiberglass came along, someone said, you know what,
19:06
Speaker 1: how about poly ethylene um. This is what we will use.
19:11
Speaker 1: And George Harding, who you mentioned, co founded the Polly
19:14
Speaker 1: John Corporation, and he started building the polyethylene portable toilets
19:19
Speaker 1: that were much better because they lasted longer. They would
19:22
Speaker 1: last like a decade. Although I would not want to
19:25
Speaker 1: use a nine year old port of John. Well, so
19:28
Speaker 1: the that picture of the strong box that was published
19:31
Speaker 1: in Pro magazine apparently had been out in service. It
19:35
Speaker 1: was still in service, and it had been built like
19:37
Speaker 1: thirty years before. Well, yeah, you would know that your
19:41
Speaker 1: company could not have cared less about you if you
19:44
Speaker 1: show up to your job site and there's a strong
19:46
Speaker 1: box there. Yeah, and that's what you're expected to use,
19:50
Speaker 1: with all of the with all of the possible choices
19:52
Speaker 1: that your company could choose from, and they went with
19:56
Speaker 1: the strong box. They don't care about you or your happiness.
20:01
Speaker 1: The polyethylene. The other good thing about them where they
20:04
Speaker 1: were assembled into different parts and pieces, so it made
20:07
Speaker 1: them a lot easier to transport, a lot cheaper. Uh
20:10
Speaker 1: and if apart broke, you might be able to replace it.
20:13
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that that is kind of good. Yeah, makes sense.
20:17
Speaker 1: So hooray for poly ethylene toilets. But one of the
20:20
Speaker 1: things that George harding Um created in his patent that
20:23
Speaker 1: I noticed was a ventilation system. This is a big improvement,
20:27
Speaker 1: right for sure, because when you're just piling human waste
20:30
Speaker 1: upon human waste into a hole, um that it's going
20:34
Speaker 1: to create gases, noxious gases, because bacteria is going to
20:37
Speaker 1: start decomposing that waste, and as a byproduct of the decomposition,
20:41
Speaker 1: they're going to produce what we see what we experience
20:45
Speaker 1: as rotting fecal material. Right. Yes, not just that it's stinky,
20:49
Speaker 1: it's dangerous. It is dangerous and as that gas tries
20:53
Speaker 1: to find a way to escape upward, if the only
20:56
Speaker 1: hole available to it is the toilet that you're pooping
20:59
Speaker 1: or peeing into, those gases are going to come out
21:02
Speaker 1: of it, and you're going to vomit while you pooper
21:05
Speaker 1: p as well. So what George Harding had I told
21:08
Speaker 1: you this phone is going to be cruts. What George
21:11
Speaker 1: Harding figured out was that if you could just basically
21:14
Speaker 1: create a pipe venting off that gas upward and out
21:19
Speaker 1: of the porter potty, people would be willing to use
21:23
Speaker 1: porter potties a lot more. And that was a huge improvement. Yeah.
21:26
Speaker 1: He also said, how about we make this rooftop translucent
21:30
Speaker 1: white so we can let in some natural light at least,
21:34
Speaker 1: why don't we improve the flooring so that it's not
21:37
Speaker 1: as slippy and um, maybe even further down the line,
21:42
Speaker 1: we'll have porter potties that have a little urnal that's separate,
21:45
Speaker 1: so you don't even have to sit your butt down
21:47
Speaker 1: on that most horrid of places. Right yep, what about
21:54
Speaker 1: the roll around toilet? Did you see these? Yeah? Those?
21:57
Speaker 1: I mean that it makes sense. So basically, if you
21:59
Speaker 1: are on like a job site right um, where there
22:03
Speaker 1: are like different multiple stories being built and you're up
22:09
Speaker 1: on one of the higher stories, it's the same thing
22:12
Speaker 1: as when you're working in the shipyards building a ship.
22:15
Speaker 1: You don't want to have to come all the way
22:16
Speaker 1: down to use the bathroom. So they created porter potties
22:20
Speaker 1: that were a lot more mobile that could be um
22:23
Speaker 1: hoisted by cranes. UM just two different different levels. Yeah,
22:28
Speaker 1: if you look up roll around toilet, it basically looks
22:30
Speaker 1: like one of those UM coolers that has the two
22:34
Speaker 1: wheels and the handle and you can pull the cooler around,
22:37
Speaker 1: except it's larger and UM sitting above the wheels is
22:42
Speaker 1: a is a urinal. Right. I don't see how you
22:45
Speaker 1: go poopy in those, so maybe maybe that's when you
22:48
Speaker 1: go downstairs. Uh yeah, I don't know either, because it's
22:53
Speaker 1: not enclosed or anything. I mean, it's just wide open,
22:55
Speaker 1: just like prison. And there's actually a great um a
23:00
Speaker 1: great scene from I think the First Police Academy starring
23:03
Speaker 1: our friend and Twitter followers Steve Guttenberg goots and UM.
23:09
Speaker 1: I think it's Mauser who uses a porter potty and
23:13
Speaker 1: Steve Guttenberg goes over and gets some crane operator to
23:18
Speaker 1: lend him the crane and now it's Mauser's um, his
23:22
Speaker 1: right hand man. I don't remember that guy's name, but
23:24
Speaker 1: they lift the porter potty up while he's inside using it.
23:27
Speaker 1: It's hilarious, wacky, wacky stuff and sus uh. And then
23:32
Speaker 1: if you really are living the good life, or you
23:36
Speaker 1: have a maybe a really nice upscale wedding that's out
23:40
Speaker 1: in a remote area, you don't want to bring in
23:43
Speaker 1: just even the nicest polly ethylene porta John won't do.
23:48
Speaker 1: You will bring in what we call in in the
23:50
Speaker 1: movie business a honey wagon. Um. It is a restroom trailer.
23:55
Speaker 1: And these are actually nice. They are have running water,
23:59
Speaker 1: they have dolls, they have porcelain uh, toilets, it's all partition.
24:05
Speaker 1: They have sinks and running water and mirrors, hand towels.
24:08
Speaker 1: It's like a rolling trailer full of toilets. Yeah. Like
24:14
Speaker 1: you can breathe through your nose in these things. You
24:15
Speaker 1: can lay down on the floor if you wanted. Yeah.
24:18
Speaker 1: And apparently these first started in nineteen eight four Polly
24:22
Speaker 1: John in Columbus, Ohio, go by guys. Yeah, And the
24:26
Speaker 1: original trailer was eight stalls or as we said in
24:28
Speaker 1: the movie business, and eight banger at three journals, and
24:33
Speaker 1: it was thirty two ft long. And now there are
24:37
Speaker 1: nineteen companies manufacturing luxury restroom trailers around the world today. Yeah.
24:41
Speaker 1: I saw one in um like that they market for
24:44
Speaker 1: like outdoor weddings and stuff like that. They said, all
24:47
Speaker 1: you need are like I think six outlets maybe six
24:51
Speaker 1: D and twenty bowl outlets. Yeah, and like standard garden
24:55
Speaker 1: hose connection. And you've got yourself a luxury porter potty
24:59
Speaker 1: trailer for your next remote black tie event, right, which
25:03
Speaker 1: I mean even people in black tie got a p Yeah. Sure,
25:07
Speaker 1: so you might as well take it easy on him
25:09
Speaker 1: with a nice looks trailer. That's right. So, speaking of Chuck,
25:12
Speaker 1: you want to you want to take a break. Yeah,
25:14
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to a real bathroom and hug it,
25:18
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get a crane operator to probably
25:20
Speaker 1: a prank on you. All right, we'll be right back.
25:34
Speaker 1: That's y s games a little bit that you should know,
25:39
Speaker 1: y sk should know. But Josh Clark, okay, Chuck, Yep,
25:52
Speaker 1: we can't put it off any longer. We gotta go inside.
25:55
Speaker 1: We're gonna go inside, deep dive into the bowels of
26:00
Speaker 1: the porta pott Oh my gosh. Okay, okay, you're ready, Yeah,
26:04
Speaker 1: catch your snorkel. Okay. So when you look into a
26:09
Speaker 1: porter potty, you may notice that the stuff that's inside
26:12
Speaker 1: the bowl or inside the holding tank is blue. Yeah,
26:18
Speaker 1: it's in brown, sure, yeah, but it's more blue than brown.
26:22
Speaker 1: And that's no accident, that's right. Any porta potty is
26:25
Speaker 1: going to use a deep blue dye. In the entire purpose,
26:30
Speaker 1: from beginning to end of the blue dye is to
26:32
Speaker 1: visually mask the presence of human feces. Yeah, they don't.
26:37
Speaker 1: They don't want you looking down there and seeing. Uh
26:40
Speaker 1: if it was just like clear, like it's already disgusting,
26:46
Speaker 1: You're you're getting the full experience from the smell alone.
26:49
Speaker 1: You don't need the visual and and you don't pooping
26:52
Speaker 1: these things to you? Oh no, okay, No, I I
26:56
Speaker 1: think I would just put my pants and walk around instead.
27:01
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I would. I certainly don't remember.
27:05
Speaker 1: It's possible I blacked out that memory, but I don't
27:09
Speaker 1: think I ever have it, like the first Lallapalooza, right,
27:13
Speaker 1: I The only time I pooped in these I'm sure
27:16
Speaker 1: there's been like some extreme emergency. But the only time
27:19
Speaker 1: I can really recall is when Emily and I were
27:22
Speaker 1: getting our master bath built at our house. Um, we
27:26
Speaker 1: had our own we had another little bathroom kind of
27:30
Speaker 1: you know, a little small guest bathroom, and we shared that,
27:33
Speaker 1: and then we had a construction toilet on site because
27:36
Speaker 1: they were doing construction. And so I would get up
27:38
Speaker 1: in the mornings because I didn't want to. I want
27:40
Speaker 1: to be a good husband, you know, and not ruin
27:42
Speaker 1: Emily's day in morning, um by getting in there first.
27:46
Speaker 1: So I would, I would get my newspaper and I
27:48
Speaker 1: would walk outside in my slippers and use the port
27:51
Speaker 1: to john in my driveway every morning. But I mean,
27:55
Speaker 1: I guess it was pretty clean. It was yours, right,
27:57
Speaker 1: it was great. It was me and like, you know,
27:58
Speaker 1: two or three dudes there you go, that's that is doable.
28:02
Speaker 1: Festival taste of Chicago, Like, yes, there's there are like
28:08
Speaker 1: of course, like surely if you're sharing a porter potty
28:11
Speaker 1: with a couple of other people that you have to
28:12
Speaker 1: look in the eye here there, you're gonna take care
28:14
Speaker 1: of it. But if it's random drunk strangers or people
28:17
Speaker 1: on drugs or something like that, you, uh, it's gonna
28:20
Speaker 1: get messy awfully fast. And and again it's more and
28:24
Speaker 1: more people use it, that blue dye becomes more and
28:27
Speaker 1: more important. Right as it does, there's also gonna be
28:31
Speaker 1: a fragrance that they're gonna add to hopefully mask the
28:34
Speaker 1: odor and apparently well, I was reading in some uh
28:38
Speaker 1: some trade magazines, and I haven't experienced it myself, but
28:43
Speaker 1: I did get the impression that they have come a
28:46
Speaker 1: long way as far as fragrance goes. Yeah, like I saw, um,
28:51
Speaker 1: you can get bubblegum fragrance. It doesn't sound good vanilla
28:57
Speaker 1: um that comes from just standard use to the taste
29:02
Speaker 1: of Chicago. Yeah, I mean, you know me with fragrance
29:06
Speaker 1: this period, it's it's even worse to me, um everything bagel. No.
29:15
Speaker 1: But like I came across the site and there's like
29:17
Speaker 1: a Jaguar brand porta potty fragrance additive, and they have
29:22
Speaker 1: like any fragrance you can imagine. Wow. Uh. And then
29:28
Speaker 1: the finally final thing you're going to see down there,
29:30
Speaker 1: or that it's going to be down there are biosides
29:34
Speaker 1: to kill the bacteria and microbes and um. It used
29:37
Speaker 1: to be that they would use formaldehyde uh to take
29:41
Speaker 1: care of that, but more and more wastewater treatment plants
29:44
Speaker 1: UM started saying, hey, we can't properly dispose of that
29:47
Speaker 1: stuff now carcinogen, and we don't feel good about it.
29:50
Speaker 1: So they've been phasing that out over the years going
29:53
Speaker 1: a little greener and now um they actually use enzymes
29:59
Speaker 1: like in official enzymes and microbes that feed on this stuff. Right,
30:03
Speaker 1: they feed they helped break down the poop, and they
30:06
Speaker 1: also feed on the bacteria that causes the smells. Right,
30:11
Speaker 1: So they're making the poop and nert but they're also
30:14
Speaker 1: naturally cutting down and smells, which I just find fascinating. Um.
30:18
Speaker 1: They also, since it's capable of breaking down UM bacteria,
30:22
Speaker 1: it's also capable of breaking down um any organic material,
30:26
Speaker 1: so that if you use the right kind of toilet paper,
30:29
Speaker 1: they'll break down the toilet paper as well. Yeah. It's
30:32
Speaker 1: just basically magic in a in a porter potty. Yeah.
30:35
Speaker 1: And they the other benefit there is they don't need
30:37
Speaker 1: to be emptied as often UM if it's doing the
30:41
Speaker 1: job like it should. Yeah. UM weather has an effect obviously,
30:46
Speaker 1: if you're in Georgia in the hot summer, things are
30:50
Speaker 1: gonna get even worse. I imagine Chicago in July is
30:53
Speaker 1: probably no picnic either, and the taste of Chicago. No
30:57
Speaker 1: one's gonna go to the taste of Chicago anymore. They're
31:00
Speaker 1: like attended stop by this year. You don't know what's
31:03
Speaker 1: going on, but when temperatures go up, bacteria go to
31:06
Speaker 1: work even harder, and things are just gonna smell even worse.
31:10
Speaker 1: So they might actually use more chemicals in the summer
31:14
Speaker 1: um or more chemicals, especially if it's a summer festival.
31:19
Speaker 1: And then conversely, I saw this, I guess it was
31:22
Speaker 1: a blog post by a Porta Potti worker that was
31:26
Speaker 1: published on Cracked and um, they basically just went over
31:31
Speaker 1: most of the stuff you can imagine, but just crazy
31:34
Speaker 1: stuff that they found. Um. But one of the things
31:38
Speaker 1: that they made reference to is that the worst thing
31:41
Speaker 1: that they can encounter is um a frozen waste, because
31:47
Speaker 1: they said, once that happens, you have to break it
31:49
Speaker 1: up by hand. Oh, so to protect to defend their
31:54
Speaker 1: people from having to do this, they well, typically in colder,
31:58
Speaker 1: colder areas during the winter, they'll they'll create a briny mixture. Yeah,
32:02
Speaker 1: that will have a lower freezing temperature, like the Minnesota
32:06
Speaker 1: ice Fishing festival, Right, But eventually you're going to reach
32:09
Speaker 1: a point where it's cold enough that it's it's freezing
32:11
Speaker 1: no matter how much salt you add to it. Yeah,
32:14
Speaker 1: And I did see one of their little tricks of
32:15
Speaker 1: the trade is they put a a cake of this
32:19
Speaker 1: rock salt in the urinal, so you go peepy on it,
32:22
Speaker 1: and as you peep on it, it just adds a
32:24
Speaker 1: little more salt slowly throughout the day. Right. The only
32:27
Speaker 1: issue with those is that you have to keep the
32:30
Speaker 1: deer away because they love salt licks. You like that one. Yeah,
32:37
Speaker 1: I'm ashamed of basically every joke I've made this whole episode.
32:41
Speaker 1: I don't feel good about myself right now. All right,
32:44
Speaker 1: so let's finish up by talking about the really the
32:47
Speaker 1: worst part of this. If you're one of like eight
32:50
Speaker 1: people still listening, right, Uh, if you're still listening, then
32:55
Speaker 1: we'll finish up with the worst part, which is servicing
32:57
Speaker 1: these things. And we talked about it. It's like a
33:01
Speaker 1: wet back. You suck it out, drive it to a
33:04
Speaker 1: waste water plant. But uh, you have to add new water.
33:09
Speaker 1: You have to add new blue junk, uh and some
33:12
Speaker 1: more dry solution. And I saw I saw like a
33:15
Speaker 1: ratio of one to one about fresh water to solution.
33:19
Speaker 1: We don't want to mess that up. Uh. And you think, like,
33:23
Speaker 1: all right, so that's pretty gross and everything. But um,
33:27
Speaker 1: especially at like a music festival or something, there's stuff
33:32
Speaker 1: everywhere like you've been in these There's there's urine everywhere,
33:35
Speaker 1: there's poop and places where you think, like, what in
33:37
Speaker 1: the world of someone doing in there, and they have
33:40
Speaker 1: to be cleaned out by somebody. It's an awful job. Yeah,
33:44
Speaker 1: there's um stuff that people drop down there. Like if
33:47
Speaker 1: you use the sock to wipe your bottom with and
33:50
Speaker 1: you just deposit the sock into the porta potty, that's
33:53
Speaker 1: gonna as you comp up the tank or the pump. Um.
33:58
Speaker 1: So they have to get that kind of stuff out first.
34:00
Speaker 1: About your cell phone, cell phone, Yeah, apparently they find
34:04
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, especially things like phones, wallets full
34:07
Speaker 1: of cash, jewelry, drugs. Yeah, guns. Uh. That crrarect guy
34:14
Speaker 1: said that, Um he had a friend who showed up
34:17
Speaker 1: at a porta potty where they just found a body.
34:20
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, the thing now in the porta potty,
34:23
Speaker 1: not in the actual hole. That's just cruel. Yeah, but um, yeah,
34:29
Speaker 1: they find all sorts of stuff because almost everybody would say,
34:33
Speaker 1: well that's gone. I'll just have to get a new
34:36
Speaker 1: identity because I dropped my whole wallet into porta potty. Actually,
34:39
Speaker 1: I saw a stat where five percent of people that
34:41
Speaker 1: go into porta potties don't come out at all, so right,
34:44
Speaker 1: the dead body scenario makes sense. They end up in
34:47
Speaker 1: the other dimension from phantasm uh. And then our article says,
34:54
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario if you're a porta potty service
34:57
Speaker 1: person is uh that the porta potty Well, there's two
35:02
Speaker 1: worst case, one worse and one way worse. One is
35:06
Speaker 1: if it just gets knocked over, either by a car
35:09
Speaker 1: hitting it or the wind, or some jerk who thinks
35:12
Speaker 1: it's funny, that's not cool knocks it not cool at all,
35:15
Speaker 1: knocks it over on purpose. But the ultimate ultimate worst
35:19
Speaker 1: is if it tips over on its door. That's its
35:23
Speaker 1: achilles heel, any porta potties achilles heel, because what happens,
35:28
Speaker 1: all of the stuff that's in the holding tank gets
35:31
Speaker 1: dumped out. When it's facing on its front on the door,
35:35
Speaker 1: all of the stuff is liable to come out, and
35:37
Speaker 1: it does, especially when they pick it back up. It
35:40
Speaker 1: just slashes around everywhere and the poor porter potty service
35:43
Speaker 1: operator has to wash this thing out. And those are
35:47
Speaker 1: the worst. Like like somebody can put poop like on
35:50
Speaker 1: the ceiling or on the walls or something that's pretty bad.
35:53
Speaker 1: But when it falls on its front on the door
35:56
Speaker 1: and everything slashes out. It gets everywhere, so you have
35:59
Speaker 1: to like inside to clean the whole thing. And at
36:02
Speaker 1: the very least, it takes them a lot more time
36:05
Speaker 1: and screws up their entire day's schedule. At the worst,
36:08
Speaker 1: they're in there cleaning a filthy porter, potties, nook and
36:12
Speaker 1: crannies from the inside. Yeah, I would just say it
36:16
Speaker 1: fell off the truck, boss, right, Sorry, it's in that
36:19
Speaker 1: phantasm dimension, boss, didn't they Jack asked, do one of
36:23
Speaker 1: these like put one of them in there and tip
36:25
Speaker 1: it over or something? Yeah, I'm sure I think they
36:28
Speaker 1: did that when they were like four. Yeah, I think
36:32
Speaker 1: they did, like I had a crane lifted and turn
36:34
Speaker 1: it over something. I don't know. No, you're thinking police
36:36
Speaker 1: Academy and also police academy, giegs. You don't have to
36:39
Speaker 1: write in it was Police Academy three. So I was
36:42
Speaker 1: about to say, I didn't remember that. You didn't see what? Nah?
36:49
Speaker 1: I think I petered out after two. Even three might
36:52
Speaker 1: have been the best of all of them, which is
36:55
Speaker 1: that what was the full name of it? Uh? Citizens
36:58
Speaker 1: on Patrol? Okay, it's the one where Bob gold Thwaite,
37:01
Speaker 1: like goes over from his life of crime to being
37:05
Speaker 1: a junior police academy guy. Yeah, I love Bob Goldthwaite.
37:09
Speaker 1: But good, he's great. Can we stop, sure, man, Okay,
37:15
Speaker 1: we have to say you got anything else? No, okay, Chuck? Well,
37:19
Speaker 1: actually I do know. If you see these porter potty
37:23
Speaker 1: service people in your neighborhood, if there's construction going on,
37:27
Speaker 1: you see them, bring in the truck, just flash a
37:30
Speaker 1: nice smile, give him a tip of the cap. It's
37:33
Speaker 1: a really gnarly job. And like they say, somebody's got
37:36
Speaker 1: to do it. They're making a living. Like they've got
37:39
Speaker 1: a job. They went out and got that job to
37:42
Speaker 1: make money and provide for their family. And don't forget,
37:44
Speaker 1: they're defending public health and they're saving a significant amount
37:49
Speaker 1: of water. So there you go. Nice Chuck, all right,
37:52
Speaker 1: good way to finish. If you want to know more
37:55
Speaker 1: about porta potties, you can type those that hyphenated word
37:58
Speaker 1: on the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
38:01
Speaker 1: And since I said hyphen it's time for listening. Now
38:06
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this quick. John Clase uh direction or
38:10
Speaker 1: John please exactly. Congratulations on an absolutely marvelous episode concerning
38:15
Speaker 1: Monty Python guys, it's great to hear so much of
38:18
Speaker 1: the history of the group. Well done. One bit of information.
38:21
Speaker 1: I happen to see John Clease present a one man
38:24
Speaker 1: show a few years ago in Carmel, California. He just
38:27
Speaker 1: stood on stage and talked for about seventy five minutes. Um, boy,
38:31
Speaker 1: that's a good gig. He discussed his life in general,
38:35
Speaker 1: Python in particular, and lots of things. Other things he noticed.
38:39
Speaker 1: Noted that his name is pronounced to rhyme with cheese
38:43
Speaker 1: rather than fleece. In fact, his surname was originally Cheese,
38:49
Speaker 1: but his father changed it to please. Uh. This was
38:53
Speaker 1: a good thing for the Sun being named John because
38:55
Speaker 1: he did not want to go by Jack Cheese. Yeah.
38:58
Speaker 1: I guess not, so it's John Klees. Never knew that
39:02
Speaker 1: that's from David Hewitt. Yeah. And um, I also want
39:05
Speaker 1: to say, chuck. Somebody called us out for not mentioning
39:09
Speaker 1: Carol Cleveland. She was, for all intents and purposes, the
39:13
Speaker 1: seventh member of Monty Python. Yeah, we felt terrible because
39:17
Speaker 1: she was in our notes and we mentioned her and
39:21
Speaker 1: lavish praise on her and our runthrough that we did
39:23
Speaker 1: in the studio, and it was just one of those
39:25
Speaker 1: live show things that got biased. Yeah, so sorry, Carol Cleveland.
39:30
Speaker 1: We uh, hats off to you. We appreciate your work
39:33
Speaker 1: and we're sorry we'll left you out, agreed. Uh. If
39:36
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me, your Chuck,
39:38
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us I'm at joshuam Clark and
39:41
Speaker 1: there's also s y s K podcast Chuck sat Charles W.
39:45
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at Stuff you Should Know
39:47
Speaker 1: on Facebook. You can send the both of us and
39:49
Speaker 1: Jerry an email to stuff podcast at how stuff Works
39:53
Speaker 1: dot com and has always hang out with us at
39:55
Speaker 1: our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com.
40:00
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
40:03
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40:08
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