A Company Inc., -- Press Release

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Boise company to supply toilets for Winter Games
A-Company gets $3 million deal for 2,600 potties
A Boise company has landed a $3 million contract to provide what will likely be the most sought after seats at the Winter Olympics -- the portable potties.
And in terms of contracts for the restroom industry, this contract is truly Olympic in proportion.

Photo by Kim Hughes / The Idaho Statesman

Jeff Moore, right, and his brother Larry Moore, of A-Company Inc., a portable toilet provider, have a contract to provide 2,600 portable toilets to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

"Jobs of this scope are very rare," said Larry Moore, chairman of A-Company Inc. The job is so big, in fact, that A-Company has had to partner with four other firms to supply the 2,600 portable toilets Olympic organizers have ordered for the Winter Games.
Moore said the Olympic potty contract is 10 times bigger than any previous award in A-Company´s 29-year history. The firm has had the portable toilet contract for the Boise River Festival for the past few years, but that job only involved a few hundred potties.
Still, Moore is confident he can handle the Olympic job.
"There´s a lot of work involved, but we feel good about it," he said. "We´re right on schedule."
A-Company started small in 1972 and will celebrate its 30th anniversary this year. Founded by Moore´s father Bernie, the business is still run by Larry Moore and his brother Jeff Moore, who serves as company president.
The firm´s road to the Olympics began in earnest two years ago when the Moore brothers started putting together a bid for the project.
Jeff Moore said they ended up spending more than $40,000 just preparing the bid for the project. Because of security regulations, they had to submit every worker to a background check and describe each piece of equipment to be used in the job. While normal bids are a few pages long, this one filled a two-inch binder.
Although they are not the largest company in the industry, A-Company does have a Salt Lake City location that they opened in 1984, which helped give them name recognition with the Salt Lake Olympic Committee, which was awarding the contracts.
The prestige attached to the Olympic job should help generate more business for A-Company.
"It will undoubtedly give us a step up in experience and recognition and will help our business," Larry Moore said.
Larry Moore said because of the size of the project, the company realized it would be difficult to handle it all, so they recruited four other companies to help.
"We didn´t want to slack off our other business," Larry Moore said. "We know there is life after the Olympics, and we were not going to let our other customers down because we were taking on this type of project."
Larry Moore said they only asked companies that shared the same level of professionalism to join them.
The four companies include: Andy Gump Inc. and A Throne Co., both of California, and Northwest Cascade of Tacoma, Wash., and Super Bowl Portable Restrooms Inc. of Denver.
A-Company was officially awarded the contract in March 2001, and since then has been busily preparing for the job. All 2,600 restrooms are new and are being assembled on-site in Utah. The company has until Feb. 3 to have everything completed and ready to go.
Larry Moore said there´s a lot of excitement among employees, especially the 60 from A-Company going to work at the Olympics. In all, more than 200 workers from all four companies will be in Salt Lake City to keep the toilets clean.
Larry Moore is quick to point out that the glamour and pageantry of the Olympics will not be as apparent to his employees, who will be working from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day cleaning and maintaining toilets. They´ll have to pump the waste out of each potty´s 80-gallon holding tank, wash it out, put in a new batch of sanitizing liquid and re-stock the toilet paper. They´ll use more than 50 pumping and hauling trucks during the Games. The object is to get all 2,600 of the units clean and ready for business by 6 a.m.
"It will be a challenge," he said.
The Moores admit they´ve heard their share of potty jokes and horror stories. But all smirking aside, they say they want everyone who attends this year´s Olympics to have nothing but good things to say about their portable toilet experiences.
"If our job isn´t taken seriously it will hurt the whole industry," Larry Moore said. "Our whole goal is to make sure that portable restrooms and sanitation comes off as a high point in the Olympics."
Written by Ken Dey The Idaho Statesman