A famous line, at least in sales circles, goes something like, “Nothing happens until somebody sells something.”

The line contains a great deal of truth since an economy based on capitalism requires a sales transaction for the gears to begin moving.

But from a very practical sense, the phrase anticipates that money changes hands when the deal is done. In the real world, the phrase might be better stated, “Nothing happens until someone collects the payment.”

Adams County Supervisors have learned that first-hand as they’ve grappled with a number of deadbeats taking a free ride on the county’s contracted garbage collection service.

Seeing the trashy trolls take advantage of other taxpayers truly irks us, as honest bill-paying residents are forced to subsidize the trash pickup of the shirkers.

Though we’re glad the supervisors are tackling the issue, the plan to take a sample of the trashy deadbeats to court is only a first step in solving a much bigger problem.

Earlier this year, supervisors briefly considered adding millage to support garbage collection — thus eliminating the need to bother with billing and collections beyond tax collections altogether.

We know such a plan would likely require lots of work to manually pick through and make necessary exceptions — for example, large businesses that own a good bit of land, but don’t actually use garbage collection.

But the rewards could be great.

If the millage option cannot be made to work, could the county somehow tie garbage collection fees onto residents’ water bills?

We’ve got to get creative or else the trashiest among us will continue to smell up the place for the rest of us.