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RV Gear Pro

Portable & Cassette Toilets

When there's no black tank plumbed in — a tent, a truck bed, a van build, or a small trailer — a portable or cassette toilet carries its own waste. This category runs from the simple Camco 5-gallon bucket toilet with bag liners up through Thetford's Porta Potti line with sealed fresh-water flush tanks, plus cassette tanks and the C223 cassette toilet for rigs set up to slide the waste tank out an exterior hatch.

11 products

Picking a portable or cassette toilet

These all solve the same problem — somewhere to go when you don't have a plumbed toilet — but they empty very differently. A bucket toilet uses bag liners you throw away; a Porta Potti holds waste in a sealed lower tank you carry to a dump; a cassette stays mounted and only its tank comes out. Match the style to how you camp and how often you can reach a dump station.

  • Waste capacity and dump interval. The Porta Potti 335 and 135 hold about 2.5-2.6 gallons of waste, good for a weekend for one or two people. The Camco travel toilet runs 5.3 gallons. More capacity means fewer trips to dump, but a full tank gets heavy to carry.
  • Flush type. The 550P uses a piston pump flush, the 335 a bellows pump; both draw from a sealed fresh tank up top. Bucket toilets don't flush at all — a gelling powder and double bag handle the waste instead.
  • Portable vs cassette. A Porta Potti or bucket lifts out whole. A cassette like the Thetford C223 stays bolted to the floor and only the 18-liter waste tank slides out an outside door — cleaner to empty, but your rig has to be built for it.
  • Consumables. Bucket toilets need replacement waste bags with gelling powder. Any of these run cleaner and smell better with a holding-tank treatment made for portable units.

Keep the seal and dump valve wiped clean so the tank slides and empties without dribbling. For odor control, the tank care and chemicals section has drop-ins sized for small portable tanks, and if you later add a plumbed setup, the fixed RV toilets and their repair parts are one category over.

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