Pumping Business Sticks to Old-School Service

You won’t find fancy business software in the office at B & B Septic Services.

You won’t find GPS tracking on the vacuum trucks, any high-tech digital advertising or clever social media campaigns.

What you will find is a third-generation (and soon to be fourth) business built on a solid reputation in the community and a dedication to the best in old-fashioned customer service. Moe and Kelsea Reagan, owners since 2021, credit Kelsea’s grandparents, J.F. and Ruby Barnhill, for laying the foundation. “It’s the reputation of her granddaddy that has made us keep rolling,” Moe says.

Kelsea adds, “Everybody knew my granddad. He always did whatever he could to help anybody.” Today the company is about evenly split between septic tank pumping and maintenance and portable restroom rental around Paris in western Tennessee, about a dozen miles south of the Kentucky line.

Their team consists of Brandy Autry, office manager; restroom service truck drivers Evan Ellis, Brady Bratton and Paul Melton; septic pumping technician and equipment operator Aaron Kennon; equipment operator Dennis Adcock; Dylon Twitchell, restroom washer, pumping technician and installer assistant; and Ashton Chase, restroom washer/repairer and installer assistant.

Family roots

Company founder J.F. Barnhill worked a few years in California with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers where he learned to operate equipment. He and Ruby then moved back to their home state in 1968 and started in business installing sewer lines.

J.F.’s son Roy Barnhill (Kelsea’s father) worked in the business starting in his teens. They began pumping septic tanks in 1995, purchasing a 1982 Chevy truck with a pair of 500-gallon repurposed propane tanks. They also converted a 1995 International for pumping with a 2,000-gallon tank.

Roy Barnhill passed away in 2011. Kelsea recalls that in 2020, after a day’s work, “My grandad walked in and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ He was almost 80 years old. We wanted to keep it in the family.” And so they did.

It was an easy transition, since Kelsea had run the office since college days and Moe had worked for the company since 2004, when he was 17 and still in high school. With help from a booming local economy, the business has grown significantly under the Reagans’ ownership.

Customers first

The company’s reputation persists because Moe and Kelsea devote themselves to treating customers right. “My granddad always said you reap what you sow,” says Kelsea. “We always want to be honest about what we do.”

In septic service, for example, Moe observes, “When we show up on a job, we’re thorough. We’ll sit down, talk to the customer and explain things. We open up the tank and diagnose all the problems. We have a sludge gauge to measure whether it needs pumping.

“We examine the tank and make sure there are no major cracks. We make sure there is an inlet and an outlet baffle. If not, we tell the customer what really needs to be done. We keep baffles on the truck and can install a new one the same day.

“If it’s hard to find the tank, we don’t give up. We’ll dig from the house to the tank and make sure we find it.” For rocky sites where a T&T probe isn’t helpful, they use a flushable transmitter and find the tank with a Prototek locator. They can inspect the sewer lines with a push camera (Inspector Cameras) “We go in depth and make sure the customer is happy and knows everything got done,” says Moe.

Other septic system services include inspections for real estate transfers and Terralift drainfield restorations.

For pumping the team relies on a 2024 Mack built by Iron-Vac Truck Sales with a 2,500-gallon steel tank and Jurop R260-D pump, and a 2022 International built by City Truck Sales with 2,000-gallon steel tank and Masport Viper CCW pump. The go-to digging machines for exposing tanks and laying field lines are a Kubota KX057-4 excavator, Kubota L47 and L39 backhoes and a John Deere 310J backhoe.

A new venture

While the pumping business grew, an auctioneer friend suggested the company expand into portable restrooms. “At that time, her granddad was getting old,” says Moe. “He was happy running one pump truck and installing sewer lines. So he said, ‘If it’s something you guys want to do, well, do it.’”

They took in their first batch of restrooms in 2012. Among vendors they called, PolyJohn stood out, offering to ship a unit in the company’s chosen color (gray) at no charge. Moe recalls, “Their sales rep [Steve Bai] said, ‘I’m going to send you one. If you like it, you call me back and we’ll take an order.’ That was great customer service, and we are loyal to them.”

In 2016, the Reagans bought a nearby septic service and restroom company that had about 100 portables, a vacuum truck and a clientele. To win new customers, Moe reports, “On weekends or if we had a slow day, I would go through the phone book and make calls.

“During restroom service routes, if I see construction starting up, I leave a business card or I see their phone number and call them. When they see how good our service is and how clean we keep everything, the next thing you know they’ll tell another construction company.”

Spotless standards

Today the rental fleet includes nearly 500 portable restrooms (including 20 ADA units) and 43 hand-wash stations, nearly all from PolyJohn, as well as 21 holding tanks, and six water tanks (300 and 90 gallons). J&J Portable Sanitation Products is the B & B’s primary restroom chemical supplier. Luxury restroom trailers for special events, weddings and private parties include:

• 2026 Comforts of Home Services five-stall
• 2008 Comforts of Home Services two-stall plus ADA stall
• 2020 and 2025 Rich Specialty Trailers two-stalls
• 2006 AMERI-CAN Engineering eight-stall

Special events are a primary focus and include the World’s Biggest Fish Fry, an annual springtime festival in Paris sponsored by the Jaycees and supported by the Masonic Lodge and other community groups. B & B’s restrooms there get noticed and help bring new business. The company also services multiple concerts and other events at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch near Hurricane Mills.

Here again, service and reputation carry the day. “We thrive on keeping the units clean,” says Moe. “Some weekends, Kelsea and I will drive around and just check on our porta johns. If workers are there, we’ll get out and talk to them. The customers don’t just see the restrooms. They see our faces, too. We interact with them. If we see a unit that wasn’t cleaned right, we’ll tell our guys about it and make sure it gets taken care of.”

If a storm blows through and knocks a restroom down, B & B won’t wait for the next scheduled service day to respond. A technician will arrive the same day or the next day to right the unit and do cleanup. “The storm wasn’t the customer’s fault,” says Moe. “We understand construction. Things happen, and they need to keep working.”

Technicians service restrooms with a fleet that includes:

• 2019 and 2025 Ram 5500s built by FlowMark Vacuum Trucks with 1,500-gallon aluminum tanks
• 2024 Ram 5500 crew cab, built in-house with a 650-gallon steel tank from Satellite Industries
• 2021 Ram 5500 crew cab with 450-gallon aluminum slide-in tank from Imperial Industries
• 2016 Ram 5500 crew cab with 640-gallon aluminum Satellite slide-in tank
• 2005 International built in-house with 1,100-gallon steel tank from Abernathy Welding

Keeping it running

While Moe and his team handle field operations, Kelsea and Brandy Autry run the office. They use Intuit QuickBooks software for accounting and billing but otherwise handle office functions manually. “I’m kind of old-school,” Kelsea says. “It’s all pen and paper.”

Moe adds, “We have a big whiteboard with columns for Monday through Saturday. When a customer calls, it gets written on a sticky note and put up on the board. The drivers come in the morning, we put the sticky notes together, scan it and say, ‘Here’s your work for the day.’ It’s definitely old-school, but it still works.”

One concession to modern methods is accepting credit cards. Says Kelsea, “Years ago my granddad would just give customers the invoice to be paid by mail. You can’t do that anymore. We require payment at the time of service. When we started taking credit cards, that helped a lot.”

Looking ahead

A strong economy in Tennessee bodes well for B & B Septic, although finding quality help is a challenge to growth. Moe and Kelsea thoroughly check out candidates before they’re hired, and it’s a personal process. “They need to come to the office and fill out an application,” says Kelsea. “That way we can see how they approach us and how friendly they are.”

One key future team member is their 13-year-old son, Kase, who already has talked about taking over the business someday. “When he was little, he was riding with my granddad,” says Kelsea. “He’s been ready to take over basically since the day he was born.

“During summers he’ll help install field lines. We pump campers at some events, and he gets in there with the drivers. He’ll work sunup to sundown. He’s started learning to run the excavator. He knows how to do pretty much everything around here.” Meanwhile, daughter Rorea helps out in the office while planning to attend college.

The present for B & B Septic is in good hands. By all appearances, the future is, too.