Stolen Toilets

From WRCB

Stolen portable toilets leave owner out 30k

By Paul Shahen, Reporter

ATHENS, TN (WRCB) -- A McMinn County business owner is looking for his portable toilettes. Nearly three dozen were stolen from BCS Portables on County Road 442 in Athens.

The owner says he could see someone stealing one or two, but 30?  He says this had to be a well thought out plan and they didn't steal them all at once or else he would have noticed.

"They took one here, one here, maybe two, where you couldn't really run an inventory count," said Larry Henry of BCS Portables.

Larry ran inventory last week, that's when he realized 30 portable toilets were missing. He says someone had been slowly but surely bleeding them of hard earned money.

"That's $18,000 to $30,000, that's a chunk of my business right there off my inventory," said Henry.

Larry has insurance but that doesn't make up for everything. 

In the meantime, he can't rent out the missing portable toilets, and once insurance handles everything, his premium will go up.

Henry said, "That's a chunk of money; it adds up. If your premiums keep going up, small businesses can't stay in business too long."

The McMinn County Sheriff's Department is working on finding any leads.

To help, Larry is asking the public to watch for any portable toilettes in fields or yards with the BCS label on it, but by this point, he said they may not be noticeable.

"You can buy these, all they'd have to do is change the lettering on the porto-john and rent them out as their own," said Henry.

While he says he understands there's theft in every industry, he says it's just a lot tougher for a small business especially with today's economy.

Larry said, "Some of us want to work hard for what we have, and that's why we have what we have. Some want to take the shortcut to make a dollar. It will generally catch up with them in the long run."