Leased Chevy Silverado 1500 pickups are heart of investigation into Knox County trustee
Tyler Whetstone- The Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury has been investigating the Knox County Trustee's Office and Trustee Justin Biggs, Knox News has learned.
- Biggs' equipped his staff with six Chevrolet 1500 pickup trucks, which were pricey and largely unnecessary. The vehicles are sometimes used for personal use, which is against county policy.
- According to GPS data reviewed by Knox News, Biggs has been driving trucks since the fall of 2024, even though he receives an annual travel allowance worth $4,999.80 as an elected official.
Shortly after taking office in 2022, Knox County Trustee Justin Biggs signed up his office to pay $397,968 over five years for six large, four-wheel drive pickup trucks for employees.
The vehicles are bigger and nicer than those leased by other county offices. There's more of them and they cost more: $200,000 above what the trustee's office would have paid for vehicles typically used by other county offices.
What's more, Biggs himself frequently travels in the trucks, according to GPS data reviewed by Knox News, but he shouldn't because he receives an annual travel allowance from the county worth $4,999.80.
All of this, particularly how the trucks are being used, has attracted the attention of investigators from the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury, Knox News has learned. The agency also is looking into excessive travel expenses by trustee's office staff totaling $4,716.59 on 10 trips from August 2023-November 2024, according to records reviewed by Knox News. The comptroller investigates suspected cases of fraud, waste and abuse.
Sources with direct knowledge confirmed the county conducted an internal audit of the trustee's office. The internal audit was turned over to the state comptroller.
Biggs announced April 5 he is running for reelection.
The trustee's office serves as the county’s bank. It collects property taxes, funnels the money where it should go and is a central player in how the county manages its budget.
After Knox News sent Biggs a list of questions April 14, he released a statement announcing he fired an employee in the office after an "unfortunate breach to our policies." He did not name the employee.
"I assure you, the citizens, that I will persist in maintaining transparency throughout this process and beyond," he said in the statement. "My commitment to open and honest governance is unwavering, and I am thankful for your continued trust and support during this time."
Biggs did not answer questions about the internal audit and comptroller's investigation.
Details about the trustee's office's leases
Knox County contracts with Enterprise in a pilot vehicle leasing program that allows offices to lease vehicles for 12-60 months. Knox County entered the program with the intention of modernizing the county's fleet while keeping costs manageable.
Biggs opted to use the program to equip the office with six new Chevrolet Silverado 1500 pickup trucks with four-wheel drive for what he said was a pilot mobile office program.
He justified leasing trucks because he said trustee officials would be able to reach more county residents who owe taxes, he told Knox News in 2023.
But both the $79,593 yearly lease expense and the $13,265 annual average cost per vehicle dwarfs what every other county office pays for leased vehicles with the exception of the departments that handle parks maintenance and highway and bridge maintenance and require trucks for heavy work.
Three of the trucks are 2023 models and two are 2022 models. A fourth 2023 model was replaced with a 2025 model due to maintenance issues, Knox County Finance Director Chris Caldwell told Knox News.
Trustee's office trucks used for questionable trips
In 2023, shortly after the trustee's office got the trucks, Biggs told Knox News, unequivocally, his office would play by the rules. Employees would follow county policy and the trucks would be for business use only. He wouldn't use one at all, he said.
"I want to stress that these employees are not allowed to use the vehicle for personal use. I also should note that I use my own personal vehicle," he said in an email.
Maybe. But once the county equipped the trucks with GPS systems in the fall of 2024, it became clear this wasn't the case, at least for Biggs and Director of Operations Jason Dobbins.
Knox News reviewed the GPS data for all seven trucks (the original six and the replacement), provided through an open records request. The trucks are not assigned to individual employees, but two trucks in particular − which travel daily to addresses connected with Biggs and Dobbins − made numerous questionable trips.
The data isn't a GPS in the typical sense where you can see everywhere someone goes. Instead the GPS registers the location when the trucks are turned on and off. It also includes total mileage and how long each trip took.
What the GPS data shows
Biggs
Biggs said he would only drive his personal vehicle, but the data reviewed by Knox News shows one of the county-issued trucks was driven to an address in Halls multiple times a week, and typically parked overnight, since October.
The address isn't the Halls home Biggs owns with his wife. The home belongs to his parents, who live down the road.
Another trustee's truck picked up the same pattern of travel to nonwork locations beginning in December. That truck was driven over two weekends, once in December and once in January, for a total of 56.8 miles.
The January trip lines up with the weekend of the RK Gun Show at the Knoxville Expo Center, where the trustee's office had an informational booth for veterans benefits. However, the addresses don't appear to match a trip to the Expo Center, according to GPS data.
In all, GPS recorded trips from five of the seven trucks that showed multiple stops at Biggs' parents' home since October, typically for hours at a time.
Dobbins
More than any other county-issued truck, the one parked daily at Dobbins' address was frequently driven on weekends, when he would not have been doing office work.
From late August 2024 to late March 2025, the truck was driven on 18 different weekends, sometimes on both Saturday and Sunday, for a total of 793.5 miles. This includes a 290.3-mile-round trip to Bristol, Virginia, on Nov. 15, a Friday. County policy restricts take-home vehicles from being driven outside of Knox County, let alone the state.
Holiday travel
A truck that frequently was driven to an address that matches trustee's office chief of staff Robin Benton's home was driven on a Saturday in December and on Thanksgiving Day, totaling 44.6 miles for the two trips.
The trucks did not help the trustee's office reduce mileage
Biggs said the trucks relieve the county from paying mileage reimbursements, but that’s misleading.
The office is spending less on mileage reimbursements, but those reimbursements never came close to the nearly $80,000 a year the office is paying for the six trucks, according to records provided to Knox News through a records request.
Since fiscal year 2018, the most the office paid in mileage reimbursement expenses in a given year was roughly $25,000 in 2019, before Biggs took office. The trustee's office now spends more than three times that amount every year for the trucks.
Additionally, the trustee’s office must now pay for maintenance costs. The office has spent $9,041 on vehicle maintenance and tires since opting into the program, including $590 for car washes, according to records provided to Knox News.
Maintenance costs vary from year to year.
- Fiscal year 2023: $1,127.77
- Fiscal year 2024: $5,303.59
- Fiscal year 2025: $2,610.27
The trucks are unnecessary for work use
Biggs said office employees are required to carry large signs to post tax sales in yards and because of this, larger vehicles were necessary.
However, former trustee Ed Shouse, who served as trustee from 2014-2022, told Knox News in 2023 the required signs Biggs was referring to are no larger than typical political signs, at most 2 feet by 3 feet. These signs were previously transported by employees’ personal vehicles, he said.
Furthermore, Biggs said smaller, mid-sized SUVs his office looked at leasing were $800 more a month. Knox News could not confirm this figure as Enterprise does not have a public price list, Caldwell said.
However, of the other 17 county departments currently leasing vehicles (not including park and highway maintenance) all manage to lease SUVs like Chevrolet Blazers, Traverses and Equinoxes, for less than $800 a month, according to records provided to Knox News. Additionally, the county leases six other Silverados, but they’re all less expensive than the ones the trustee’s office leases.
The county highway department, for instance, has a fleet of Silverado 3500 trucks that are larger than the trustee’s office’s Silverado 1500s. And yet, six of their 22 trucks are leased for less than the ones leased by the trustee’s office.
Other offices lease Chevrolet Equinoxes or Traverses or a Ford Explorer with leases that run between $537 to $861 a month. The trustee's office vehicles run from $1,071 to $1,146 a month.
In the five years of the lease agreement, the trustee's office will pay $397,968 for the trucks. Had Biggs leased six Equinoxes, for instance, the trustee’s office would have paid roughly $193,000 over the same five-year period – half the price – based on the $537 price tag county IT is leasing the vehicle for.
Marked vehicles make sense, says former trustee
Not every reason Biggs provided strikes out. He said having marked vehicles – with “Knox County” on the side – improves safety for workers, though not every one of the trucks is marked.
Certainly, having marked vehicles for employees who make what can be uncomfortable house calls, such as to collect delinquent taxes, is appropriate. Shouse said as much when Knox News reached out to him. His employees had to use their personal vehicles that lacked the designation.
“There’s a lot of justification in having something that says ‘Knox County’ on the side when they go into a situation that could be volatile,” he said.
How are the leased trucks being paid for?
In order to pay for the trucks, Biggs cut roughly $70,000 in office expenses, according to a review of office budget figures. The cuts range from limiting out-of-town training expenses, streamlining office software programming into one program instead of multiple programs, no longer paying a third party to send mass mailers and attempting to go paperless in the office, Biggs said in 2023.
“I want to be clear that expanding services isn't always best done by opening more offices. Brick and mortar offices require significant overhead for space and staffing,” he said. “These vehicles were secured for the purpose of serving all Knox County residents and protecting my staff.”
However, these cuts will not cover the added fuel and maintenance costs that come along with the vehicle.
Caldwell, the finance director, declined to answer questions about the investigation when asked April 14 by Knox News.
"The Administration doesn't comment on active investigation," he said in an email. "Our practice is to comment once the report is complete and released. It's important to note that Internal Audit works for the Audit Committee, which is independent of the Knox County Executive Branch. Any investigations are handled through them."
So, what is the mobile office for?
The office’s implementation of a mobile fee office is meant to serve homebound residents who cannot visit one of the trustee office's five satellite branches. If you qualify, the trustee’s office will send someone to your home to discuss tax solutions and collect payments, some of which may have previously gone uncollected. In the past, the office only made visits for tax sales, not to collect payments.
“We are currently working 9,500 cases that are tax sale eligible,” Biggs wrote to Knox News in an email in 2023. “There are 30,516 properties that are delinquent in taxes. We are taking a proactive approach, so that the properties close to being sold pay the delinquent tax. Trustees in the past didn’t do this. I’m the first to bring government to the people for disabled veterans, elderly and disabled for tax relief and tax freeze.”
Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter focused on accountability journalism. Connect with Tyler by emailing him at tyler.whetstone@knoxnews.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @tyler_whetstone.