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Chattanooga man has 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer and nowhere to sell them amid coronavirus outbreak

Matt Colvin with his stock of hand sanitizer and other supplies in demand due to coronavirus concerns that he was selling online until Amazon and other sites started cracking down on price gouging, at his home in Hixson, Tenn., March 12, 2020. Sites like Amazon and eBay have given rise to a growing industry of independent sellers who snatch up discounted or hard-to-find items in stores to post online and sell around the world. / Photo by Doug Strickland/The New York Times
Matt Colvin with his stock of hand sanitizer and other supplies in demand due to coronavirus concerns that he was selling online until Amazon and other sites started cracking down on price gouging, at his home in Hixson, Tenn., March 12, 2020. Sites like Amazon and eBay have given rise to a growing industry of independent sellers who snatch up discounted or hard-to-find items in stores to post online and sell around the world. / Photo by Doug Strickland/The New York Times Matt Colvin with his stock of hand sanitizer and other supplies in demand due to coronavirus concerns that he was selling online until Amazon and other sites started cracking down on price gouging, at his home in Hixson, Tenn., March 12, 2020. Sites like Amazon and eBay have given rise to a growing industry of independent sellers who snatch up discounted or hard-to-find items in stores to post online and sell around the world. / Photo by Doug Strickland/The New York Times

By Jack Nicas / New York Times News Service 9 min read

For answers to frequently asked questions about the coronavirus, click here.

UPDATE: An investigation of Colvin and his 21-year-old brother on suspicion of price gouging is ongoing. About one-third of the supplies have been taken by representatives of the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office to Kentucky, where the brothers originally bought it. The rest will go to a local church.

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ORIGINAL STORY: On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death in the United States, brothers Matt and Noah Colvin set out in a silver SUV to pick up some hand sanitizer. Driving around Chattanooga, Tennessee, they hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, a Staples and a Home Depot. At each store, they cleaned out the shelves.

Over the next three days, Noah Colvin took a 1,300-mile road trip across Tennessee and into Kentucky, filling a U-Haul truck with thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes, mostly from “little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods,” his brother said. “The major metro areas were cleaned out.”