No Joking Matter
Sanitation Is Serious Business at Northwest Cascade Inc.
Working in sanitation services, Ron and J.R. Inman of Northwest Cascade Inc. have heard countless jokes about their profession over the decades—good jokes, bad jokes and some that just plain stink.
But the Inmans usually get the last laugh.
“Everybody needs sanitation…all these people you think are cool and important, they still have to use the toilet,” J.R. says of the rock stars and sports heroes he’s worked with during big events.
“Pick an event, we’ve done it. Concerts, festivals, the PGA…they give us credentials and we can go anywhere at these events,” he says. “When you think about it, there are all kinds of fun things about what we do. It’s not miserable unless you want to make it miserable.”
That positive attitude has been the backbone of the Tacoma-based Northwest Cascade for 50 years. Formed in 1968 as Cascade Septic Service, the company now has hundreds of employees who work in Washington, Oregon, Utah and Northern California. What began as a tiny operation installing septic systems and sewers has expanded into a huge enterprise with three separate divisions: civil construction, Honey Bucket portable restrooms, and FloHawks plumbing and septic repair and maintenance.
Mark Perry, who joined the company in 1974, serves as the company’s Chairman and primary owner. He bought the company from original owner Alan Kimmel.
But the Inman brothers have also played an important role in Northwest Cascade for more than 40 years. Ron joined in 1975 and is now Vice President of the company and General Manager of the Honey Bucket division. J.R.—his younger brother—joined the company in 1979 and now serves as Vice President of FloHawks.
Both Inmans got their work ethic from their father, a part-time handyman who taught his children at an early age how to repair plumbing and remodel homes.
“There wasn’t time for sitting around watching TV,” J.R. says. “Dad would come home from work at 4:20 p.m. and say, ‘Be ready to go; we’re doing a job.’”
Leading from the Front
Today, Ron says he uses that childhood work ethic to “lead from the front.”
“There’s nothing I ask my people to do that I don’t do myself,” he continues. “When things get busy in the summer, I’m delivering units and pumping portable toilets right beside them, which is unheard of among bigger companies in our industry. I want everyone to know we’re all in this together.”
Today, Northwest Cascade employs more than 500 workers—all of whom can climb the ranks with hard work and perseverance, says Ron. “We like to think of ourselves as under-credentialed overachievers,” he says. “I don’t have a college degree. I started in the ditch, worked hard, learned what I needed to learn, and look at me now. There are 200 stories like that here. It’s a place where, if you want to find your home here, the opportunities are limitless.” One example is Ron’s son, Trevor, who now manages the Utah operation for Honey Bucket.
Ron, J.R. and their colleagues have tackled lots of demanding situations over the years. In 1990, the company provided sanitation for more than a dozen sites at the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle—a large undertaking, but a modest one compared to the work they did at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Ron led an Olympic consortium of sanitation workers who kept thousands of portable toilets and faucets from freezing in mountainous terrain in the dead of winter.
The bigger obstacle at the Olympics was security. Taking place less than five months after the September 11th terrorist attacks, the games were attended by then-President George W. Bush and other dignitaries.
“Everything clamped down on security, which made getting in and out every day a challenge,” Ron says. “The Secret Service stopped us and searched everything from our toolboxes to our waste tanks. They called us out in the middle of the night to clean the waste out of each restroom so they could look at all of the tanks.”
An even bigger challenge for Northwest Cascade was expanding from its home base in the Puget Sound Region into nearby states.
“It’s a struggle,” Ron says. “We have a good reputation (in Seattle-Tacoma), but breaking into a new market has been hard every time we’ve done it. …You have to plan on losing money for a while until you build a clientele of people who understand you do what you do well. Your reputation doesn’t just translate over like a McDonald’s franchise.”
A Worldwide Perspective
As the company has grown, all of its divisions have evolved. Its civil construction side now includes everything from demolition and industrial site development to road building. The Honey Bucket division has grown from 1,000 portable toilets in 1982 to nearly 37,000 today. The FloHawks division has flourished as well under the leadership of J.R., who admits he takes a much different approach to work than his big brother Ron. “Ron is methodical in studying how to get things done, and my style is, ‘Give me a job, let’s get a plan and go execute it, and we’ll adjust as we fly,’” J.R. says. “Our styles are a hundred percent different, but they both work.”
As leader of Northwest Cascade’s plumbing and septic system division, J.R. has been called upon to help the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation develop better sanitation in developing nations. The company helps the Gates Foundation test new equipment in the state of Washington, and J.R. has also traveled to Africa and India as part of a consortium tasked with improving sanitation infrastructure.
Unlike the United States, where indoor plumbing has been the norm for a century, many developing countries still rely heavily on poorly maintained pit toilets or no toilets at all—a situation that can lead to disease and death, J.R. says.
Witnessing that firsthand has helped him put things into perspective and has given him a newfound pride in the work he does with Northwest Cascade, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
“Traveling to developing countries, you realize sanitation is a major factor to the health and welfare of people,” J.R. says. “When you go and see how things look in the rest of the world, you realize how spoiled we are in the United States when it comes to sanitation.”