Satisfaction

As karma would have it (blog about the smile), I located two outstanding kayaks for sale to chose from, both in New York. Transportation cost was going to be a factor and an LTL truck carrier was out of the question. They tend to munch long kayaks of light construction.

I could locate a company that specializes in this mode of transportation or make the trip myself and turn it into a getaway weekend. I called some prospects to ride shotgun. Negotiating the New York mountains in February with a pickup truck held surprisingly little appeal to them.

An idea occurs to me. I know a friend is looking for a boat similar to these kayaks. This could be his answer and maybe we could get a discount on shipping. All I have to do is work a deal on one boat, one between him and the other seller, and convince a transport company it’s worth a volume discount, even if the boat locations are different. Or, I could just turn around the world economy, whichever is less complex. Why complicate things by trying to structure a five-way deal? Same reason I do the puzzle page in the newspaper. The satisfaction of making it happen.

Yes, it sounds relatively simple. But, you have five parties involved and not everyone buys into the win-win philosophy. I don’t know most of them, but can surmise. The boat transport guy has chosen the lifestyle and freedom of a gypsy, accountable largely to himself. He’ll go good with the other buyer, an engineer who needs tons of details, diagrams, maps and updates. And, one of the sellers is a college professor, introducing the academic viewpoint. Nothing can go wrong here.

I manage to orchestrate the framework for the five-way transaction. As the process ensues, the inevitable snarls occur for me to unknot. I find myself wondering if this is worth a few bucks off the freight or should I just make the run solo and get some expense money from my friend. There’s something vaguely familiar about this.

It was my first professional job since graduating college. We sold a subsidiary to a company on the East Coast, not far from my hometown. A transition team was assembled and I was surprised to be included. Ah, but someone would have to do the grunt work.

One of my assignments was to get quotes for moving the company records to the buyer’s location, which was our responsibility in the contract. I bided my time through a long meeting and then had center stage. I presented three quotes, ranging from $2,400 to $2,800. Grumbling suffused the room. They were already irritated from the arduous session and I wasn’t the messenger of good news.

An argument broke out and a thought occurred to me. I could be a hero, make some money and get a free trip home to hang with my cousins. “I’ll do it for half. $1,200.”

The room fell silent and all eyes turned to me. “You? How are you going to do it?” I think the CEO’s unspoken question was, who the hell are you?

“I’ll rent a truck and drive it.”

“Did you think about loading and unloading, and other issues?”

“I’ll take responsibility for figuring everything out.”

He looked at the head of my division who finally gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Okay, but one thing that you may not have thought of.”

“What’s that?”

“If you screw up, don’t bother coming back.” His reputation preceded him. I didn’t need to hear that.

First thing you may be thinking is why do all that for a lousy twelve hundred, less expenses? For perspective, my salary then was $11,250. This wasn’t bad money and was like a paid vacation.

I went to the location to eyeball the load before picking a truck to rent. It hadn’t been necessary before since I just had movers go over there to calculate their bids.

Holy crap! This company had been in business since the turn of the century. The records filled a cavernous, dank basement. Good lesson in having the relevant facts before opening one’s mouth.

The largest truck available, without moving up to a semi (out of the question) was 26’. It would hold about 1,400cf or four tons. I needed to estimate the load.

I measured a few boxes and hoisted them. From there, it was the floor footprint times the average stack height. I came up with about 20% over the truck capacity. Now what? Hmmmm. Were they really going to pore over records from 1908? Who does that?

I could deliver the most recent documents, up to capacity. If they squawked, I’d have to make good.

Another quick calculation. If I started loading the truck today, it would be filled by the time I made vice president. Of course, if the shipment took that long, I wouldn’t even make assistant manager. My margin was rapidly disappearing and I needed a way to minimize cost.

On a friend’s advice, I went to government agencies. Yes, they could hook me up with some workers to load the trucks. Recipients of unemployment and other funds were required to accept work assignments or show good reason why not. I can’t imagine it’s still like that.

I had calculated that five could do it in a reasonable amount of time, but requested six. Three ragged men showed up. One arrived by cab. Yeah, that’s cost-effective for him.

So, I pitched in and spent half my time loading and the other half tracking down their hiding places and prodding them back to work. By the time I left the lot, I was two hours behind schedule. Big deal, you say.

It was. Another miscalculation came into play. When I was in college, I had made this run almost a dozen times. Radar wasn’t prevalent, then. I would leave around ten on a weekday evening, dial in warp drive and be crossing the Philadelphia city line a little after five in the morning.

I wasn’t expecting this behemoth to snake through the mountains of western Pennsylvania, but I did think it would clip right along once it got up a head of steam in flat Ohio. Think again.

Loaded down to the axles, it couldn’t even hit the speed limit (70) under ideal conditions. Most of the time, conditions weren’t ideal. Any headwind, bump or hill robbed me of already meager momentum. I had it floored climbing out of the river valley in Wheeling and didn’t let up until I hit New Stanton. Never broke 55 and thought I’d have to perform CPR on the steep upgrades. The blinker got a workout.

I had called ahead, but they still weren’t happy. Instead of arriving at the opening whistle, I’d be limping in not that long before quitting time.

I had already asked if they would mind unloading the truck and they had agreed, without asking questions. Two guys were waiting for me and they weren’t happy when I rolled up the door. They weren’t happy? I had been wrestling boxes and the truck’s balky steering for almost 24 hours. I was sore, exhausted and red-eyed. I really didn’t give a black rat’s butt if they were happy or not. I found an empty skid and went to sleep.

They woke me up in a few hours and I dropped off the truck. Drives a lot better without eight thousand pounds of cargo. My cousins picked me up and we had a few days of fun before I worked the economic magic of standby flying for the leg home.

Not the big net profit I anticipated and more complicated than Chinese algebra, but it made some points back at the office. And, there was the satisfaction of making it happen. Which brings me back to the present.

The boat hauler stopped returning calls and emails a little way into the coordinating process. You always got his answering machine because he was out on the road. I suspected he was finding the personalities and logistics more than he dealt with in his core trade (volume shipments from manufacturers to dealers) and a good deal more than he wanted to put up with. I felt like I could iron it out if I could get him on the phone. But how?

In researching haulers, I had found some favorable mentions of him on the web from happy customers. If they had been customers, they had to have coordinated the time and place of the handoff. That wasn’t done through the office phone. They had his cell number.

I made a couple contacts and no one had hung onto the number. I asked a woman if she had received it by email and, if so, please check her inbox around the date of the delivery. That worked.

I reached him on his cell, much to his surprise, and hooked everything up again. He got a double sale, a couple guys in New York converted their boats to cash and we got some very nice kayaks for a good net cost. Everybody won.

And there was the satisfaction of making it happen.