I am a casual camper who bought this product about 2 years ago. After about 5 uses it cracked by the front wheels. The design is terrible. I even took it to a plastic welder after the crack and that did not even work!!!!!! Who ever designed this tote sure didn't test it first. The front wheels get caught on everything.

First of all, YES, it is supposed to be used for both black and gray water tanks. We have a property in another state where we go to recreate and it is primitive, so we keep our fifth wheel there for months at a time and don't want to hook it up to empty our waste and bring it back and set it up again. We are looking into an alternate system, but we don't want to dump or bury waste on our land, so this was a very attractive product. We bought a macerator and it attached to the holding tank and macerates the waste, pumps it up hill into this Tote which is in the back of our Ford truck. We drive it to the dump station in town and empty it. Should be pretty simple, right. Well, it was great the first time we used it. The second time it had a leak and upon inspection it had cracked around the wheel base. For the price we paid, we are very disappointed! So, if it were anything else, I would just take it back....in this case, not gonna happen - yuck! I plan to call them and see what if anything they will do for us and report back here. I see they have new, improved handles, so I suspect we are not the first to have a problem.

I've used these types of totes for over 30 years. I just bought the newest model for use with our truck camper. I've never, ever, seen these totes used for the black water waste. Everyone I've ever known to have these totes only use them for gray water. It's used to partially empty the gray water when the tank is getting close to full. The gray water always fills before the black water. I would never use it to hook to my 5th wheel black water tank. I'm not even sure if this type of tank is made to be attached to the black water outlet.

We purchsed this unit in November of 2008 for use at the sand dunes. The small wheels on the tow end of the tank have a tendency to get caught on a rock or some other small object and twist sideways, cracking the tank. We have used the tank about 25 times and now find that we have to do something else to empty our tanks. The small wheels on the front is a poor design. I would not recommend this new design to anyone.

I bought the SmartTote LX Portable Waste Tank - 27 gallons for $204.07. I wish I had looked at the design much closer, being that it lays flat and drains into the SmartTote at the bottom it would only make since that once the level is past the point of entry there is a serious potential back wash problem Duhhhh. Ok so now you have gravity feed the waste into the SmartTote and the level in the tank is higher than the inlet / outlet. So when you disconnect it from your RV's waste outlet, gravity is going to push the waste back out of the SmartTote waste hose, so be sure that you are wearing gloves and paints that you don't mind getting waste on, because when it back flushes it is going all over every where. About the only thing you can do is put the cap back on the SmartTotes waste hose to stop the backwash, I don't care how fast you can get the cap on you still have a gallon or two all over yourself and the ground. I have a 20 gallon waste tank so I bought a 27 gallon SmartTote but because of the design I can only put about 10 gallons into it at a time before I get into this situation. Perhaps if their was one inlet and one outlet valve that would only allow the waste to flow in one direction you wouldn’t have this problem. The designers that designed this SmartTote weren’t to smart in my opinion.