The Goodyear office on Forest Park Rd.,
St. Louis
St. Louis
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“At the meeting, as usual, Penn asked each salesmen about his sales successes, but only asked me if I had any new wrecks to report! Apparently, my fame as a salesman was exceeded only by my infamous driving record!.” |
WE weren't as rich as we thought when we got to St. Louis. All our possessions had been shipped in a small trunk. But we were even with the world -- no debts, my college and Military service over, and our lives before us. My new position as a Goodyear District Service Representative Trainee had the longest title and the shortest salary in the district sales force, but was still triple the hundred-per-month that I was paid as a Marine Corporal.
The Goodyear office was at 4210 Forest Park Boulevard, was near the site of a great worlds fair, and now occupied by a wonderful zoo and arboretum and lots of wooded picnic areas. We searched for an apartment nearby, but very few landlords would allow children. They wouldn't say that in their ads, but would rudely dismiss us when they heard about the baby. We finally found a one-room apartment on the third floor of an old house on Washington Boulevard, near the park. Then, we discovered that the landlady had sixteen noisy Pomeranian dogs running around in the house. I hadn't thought to ask her if she had pets.
We finally moved to Audubon Park, a huge new apartment development, ten miles further out in a suburb called Brentwood. It was dubbed "The hatchery" because the streets were named after birds, and it seemed as though half of the two thousand wives who lived there were pregnant. MJ had lots of neighbors with babies with whom to compare notes, instead of and old lady with sixteen dogs.
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St. Louis |
My first day at work was nothing like I expected. It was in an old five story warehouse with part of the first floor enclosing all of the district offices. I handled the most difficult customer complaints for the district, which covered a hundred counties in Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Indiana. Charley Ashbaugh, my boss, traveled four day a week, handling the claims that were referred to us from the Akron office. That left me to run the district claims office and inspection lab, and handle customers who were referred to me by dealers and company stores. I had a staff of one--a secretary to assist me in the office. I had no help in the lab which was on the third floor and had to do all inspections myself, then go down to the office and write to each customer who submitted a tire through a dealer or store. The man that I replaced had stayed a week to help me get started. I had to learn as much as possible about tire construction in that one week. There were 118 types of failures, about which the factory wanted detailed reports, plus special reports on any unusual tire failures. In those days, tires were made of cotton and would literally come apart at the seams if they didn't fail first from the bumps and bruises in normal service. As tires improved over the years, they were made respectively of Rayon, Nylon, Polyester, Polyester and Fiberglass, and finally, Polyester and Steel.
Some of the customers came directly to see me since I was the final authority for customers who were dissatisfied, and it was up to me to win them back as loyal customers. Often, when I was confronted by an angry, burly truck driver, demanding a new tire, I wished that I had a back door to my little cubicle office as a sort of escape hatch! But I soon learned to become adept at pacifying angry customers. As Charley described it, "make lemonade out of lemons."
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One old lady came in during a downpour of rain and insisted that I immediately check her tires for adjustment consideration. When I saw them, I told her they were Sears tires. "Not those," she directed, "The worn out ones in the trunk. I just want to make sure they have no adjustment value before I throw them away!" She must have been the same customer that our butcher told me about, who brought back the turkey bones -- all licked clean -- and said the meat was no good! That lady was just one of the many types who came in trying to get something for nothing. If they became angry and wrote to the home office in Akron, it was a black mark against me, but if I gave in too easily, that was wrong also, because it raised our adjustment rate which was watched very closely.
One day, another lady came in complaining about a tire that
blew out. It was blown to pieces--even the heavy bead wires were
broken in seven places, and the fabric had numerous ruptures that
extended from bead to bead. I made the claim pending, and air-mailed
the tire to Akron immediately. I reported exactly what the lady
told me: "I was driving through the cemetery to the grave
of my dear husband when the tire suddenly just blew out. I didn't
hit a thing," she insisted. That claim made me the laughing
stock of the tire engineers. They said that I was obviously taken
in by the lady, and that her car must have fallen off the St.
Louis bridge! I got tired of hearing about my old lady who I still
believed was telling the truth.
The St. Louis District finally hired a man to replace me in the
office, and I then traveled with Charley all over our four-state
district. It was great fun being Charlie's protegee. He had traveled
for Goodyear as a salesman ever since World War I. He was a typical
old fashioned "drummer" who lived by his wits and didn't
worry too much about technology or fancy presentations. He was
a master at circumlocution, and could answer a customer's question
at great length without really saying anything.
He told me about the "good old days" in the "twenties" when he traveled by Model-T Ford with the windshield open and his pheasant gun ready to shoot his supper that the chef in the hotel would prepare for him. In the winter, all the "drummers" traveled by rail -- just like in The Music Man, and it was like one continuous party. It almost made me feel that I was born thirty years to late! One day when we were deep in the Ozarks, we crossed a stream to an old general store that Charley had signed up as a Goodyear dealer in 1920. He said that on his first visit an old man poled him across the stream because, at the time, there was no bridge. While crossing on the pole boat, Charley asked the old man if that old S.O.B. Schapercotter, who owned the store, was as mean as they say. The old man replied, "Well, I don't know about that, but I'm that old S.O.B you're looking for!" Charley was a good enough salesman to sign him up anyway!
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When we were in that ancient store, I asked Charley the purpose of a little rubber hose that was sticking out of the wall. When he told me to guess, I replied that it must be a dispenser for battery acid. "You're close, he said -- it's for moonshine whiskey! You put the hose in your mouth as they release a clamp on the hose to allow you a swig of whiskey for twenty-five cents." It was a relic from the era of prohibition.
Charley said that Goodyear's competition with Firestone had always been extremely fierce, and told me all about its origin. It seems that Harvey Firestone, Thomas Edison, Warren Harding, and Henry Ford were buddies, and took an ocean cruise together each summer. Poor Harvey was the only one in the group who was not number one in his field. All during the cruise, they would chide Harvey about being second rate and ask when his company would catch up to Goodyear. Goodyear always rubbed it in when they ran an institutional magazine ad each year, touting the fact that they were still number one in tires. When Harvey turned the company over to his sons, he told them that the most important thing was to outsell Goodyear. It was interesting that the Firestone salesmen down at my level were as competitive as those tycoons on their yacht. Whenever I met a Firestone counterpart in a coffee shop or automotive show, he would always tell me that "This year, we're going to get you!" They should have worried more about their quality control than about beating us, because a stupid mistake in tire manufacturing finally cost them their company when they were forced to sell out to Bridgestone.
My third year with Goodyear was spent as a district order clerk in order to learn Goodyear's operating system. The other clerk was Bob O'Leary, a good natured Irishman, who shared a big double desk with me. All of the district's business revolved around the two of us. There were no computers or fancy accounting systems. Everything as done with pencil and paper and a manual adding machine. We would code each order with all of the serial discounts -- sometimes a dozen in a chain discount. Then we would pass it to the credit clerk and then to the stock ledger clerk and finally to the shipping clerk. The amount of business that we could handle depended on how fast we could write and compute.
MJ and I could have tolerated St. Louis better were it not for the hot, humid weather and the long train rides to Ohio to visit MJ's parents. One day in that sweltering office it got so hot that the fluorescent light ballast that was directly over my desk started leaking and dripped black tar on the high stack of work that I was frantically trying to complete. If I didn't get it done, I would have to come in on Saturday. I finally noticed that two invoices were stuck together. Further checking revealed that the whole gooey mess was stuck together and I had to do it all again. It was 112 degrees and very humid in St. Louis that day, and it only cooled down to 95 degrees that night. We had ninety days over ninety that summer, and we had no air conditioning at home or at work.
It was very hard, demanding work, but my efforts were finally noticed by Mike Gress, Goodyear's head of operations. When he visited our district he talked to me about joining his operations staff in Akron. He reminded me that the sales department would transfer me at least once every five years, but with him, I could spend thirty years in Akron. MJ and I talked about it, but decided that we didn't want to spend or lives in Akron.
Jack and Irene came through St. Louis on their way to live
in Pahala, Hawaii, and had planned to spend several days with
us. In order to beat the heat, Jack and I bought a case of Falstaff
beer and a wading pool. We sat in that pool and drank the beer
while we listened to Harry Carey broadcast the St. Louis Cardinals.
Jack and Irene spent the night camping on our living room carpet.
The next morning, he said, "You must be crazy to live here,"
and then packed up and headed for Hawaii where they have lived
for 47 years.
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Our favorite place to visit was the St. Louis Zoo. It was generously
supported by the Anheuser Busch Brewery and had a large collection
of jungle animals. Most of the animals were trained like circus
animals, and there were free shows as well as free admission to
the zoo. Celia Sue was born during our stay in St. Louis and seemed
to enjoy the zoo even as a tiny infant. She was born in a hospital
just across the street from the zoo. We called her Susie because
Charley (whom I was working with again after my year on the order
desk) kept asking every day if our Susie had arrived yet. He was
out of town when she did arrive. MJ's mom called me at my office
and said the doctor came and took her to the hospital and was
afraid that Susie might be born on the way. I told the operations
manager that I wanted to leave, but he said, no, unless I had
someone to relieve me. Then I walked over to the office manager
and said, "I'm leaving," and rushed to grab a taxi.
And what a beautiful baby! She had lots of black hair, flashing
eyes, and already had a great personality, and started right in
wrapping me around her finger.
During our vacation in 1956, we stopped at Goodyear's home office and asked the director of the service department when I could expect to be transferred to Columbus as had been promised. He said that he hadn't received my request, but would transfer me right away. Obviously, my superiors had not passed on my transfer requests because they wanted me to stay in their district.
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In Columbus, my boss was Lee Close, another nice old gentleman. Unfortunately, he was very ill and wasn't able to do much. I had replaced Jim Barnett, an energetic and ambitious man. I should have followed Jim's technique of getting promoted, because he moved up every year until he was a vice president. The second man was Ray Grupe, a guy like me who enjoyed life each day and didn't worry abut climbing that promotion ladder. Our supervisor in Akron was Earl (the Pearl) Chandler. One day, I received a report from the "Pearl" that disputed my inspection reports on several tires of the hundred that they had called in for Akron re-inspection. They did this occasionally as a check of our coding as compared to the engineering department. I was really complaining about this because I knew that I was right and they were wrong. By this time, I was very accurate in judging tire failures, and felt that I was as good as the engineers. As a practical joke, Grupe then picked up his phone and directed our switchboard girl to get him through to Mr. Chandler right away. I sat in dumb amazement as Grupe began giving Chandler a good chewing and cussing out. It went on for several minutes as he berated, criticized and condemned the whole Akron staff. He was really enjoying watching the look on my face because he was talking into a dead telephone. He had previously told the switchboard girl not to place the call! Finally, Grupe was promoted and left just me and Mr. Close, who by that time had terminal illness and could do very little work. That left me with three men's work, but with my efficient secretary to assist, I was able to do all the work for a while. This was really stupid, however, because they were taking advantage of me. Then we started having an epidemic of tread separations. Defective tires came in by the truckload, and our warehouse was swamped with them. There was barely room for the new tires.
Twice a year, all of the District Service Reps met in Akron and reviewed product problems with the tire engineers. On our next visit, I asked the head engineer if he remembered the tire that I sent him that had exploded in a cemetery. He said, "As a matter of fact I do. If it ever happens again, get an air sample from the dealer's air tank and take it to a lab for analysis. I think you'll find that the dealer added alcohol to keep his lines from freezing. We made it explode by addng a static electricity spark as though it spun in a mud puddle." During the followng winter, a tire was submitted by our dealer at Buckeye Lake that looked exactly like the old lady's tire in St Louis. The customer was damanding a new tire and payment for extensive damage to his car. I got an air sample from the dealer's air tank, proved it had alcohol in it, and turned down the claim. The district staff were amazed, so I let them believe that I had brilliantly figured it out by myself!
The Firestone district warehouse, next door, was having even more trouble and finally put on a second and third shift of inspectors. But Mr. Pruitt, our district manager, let me do it all myself until I collapsed from exhaustion. Then they had no choice but to bring Grupe back to assist, hire still another assistant, and replace Mr. Close with another man as District Service Manager. But darn the luck if my new boss didn't turn out to be an alcoholic, and I still had to do his job as well as mine. I wondered why he went out to his car so often, and finally caught him sitting there, drinking vodka. I was so disgusted that I walked into the district manager's office and told him that I was tired of handling complaints and demanded that he assign me to manage a sales territory, knowing that we would have to move from Columbus again. So we sold our new house that we had owned less than a year, and moved to Marietta and my new territory, which was seventeen counties in southeast Ohio and West Virginia. We found it to be a delightful town full of friendly people. However, my work was very demanding. I usually worked six days a week and stayed out two nights, holding dealer training meetings, and to making presentations to prospective dealers, distributors and fleet accounts. All of this effort paid off, and Goodyear eventually dominated each of my counties, where sales had more than doubled.
During the following August, the Ohio River flooded and part of Marietta, including my Goodyear distributor's warehouse was under water. We had to make a supreme effort to move the thousands of tires and other merchandise that I had sold him before the water came up. As the people sought high ground, it reminded me of the floods at Lake Park because it was a festive atmosphere with everyone having a great time while disaster struck. They were so used to it that they thought nothing of it when they had to row a boat to get to their post office.
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In 1959 we were blessed with a beautiful blue eyed, yellow haired baby girl. Geri Lynn was another Daddy's girl right from the start, and even came into the world during the half time of the Brown-Packers football game, so as not to interrupt my viewing! She was completely different from her brother and sister, but just as beautiful. Susie was in kindergarten then and had such a sweet nature that her teacher wrote us a note saying how she hated to lose her when we moved across town to a new house on top of the highest hill. All three of our kids were so intelligent that it was almost frightening. Davie's teacher called us in and showed us the results of the tests given to all Ohio students. "Your son is the brightest child I have ever taught!" she exclaimed, "He scored in the 99th percentile in aptitude and 97th in achievement." Watching our kids grow up and excel in school was the greatest joy in our lives.
One of the disadvantages of working for a large company was
the many reports demanded by management. The guys said it should
be called "The Goodyear Tire
and Report Company!" I preferred to spend by time with MJ
and the kids and was chronically late and frequently reprimanded
by Mr. Pruitt. I finally conspired to get him off my back by flooding
him with long reports to read. I replaced the back seat of my
car with a little office, using my college briefcase typewriter.
After each call, I typed a detailed report of the call and mailed
them with the orders each day. One day Pruitt called and said
to quit sending all those reports -- he would have his secretary
fake all reports for me. All he wanted from me each day was a
stack of orders! After that, they never knew what town I was working
until they saw the orders, and apparently didn't care.
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Traveling in West Virginia was fun because it was so scenic and also so full of interesting people. During my first trip to the mining town of Williamson, I took the dealer to lunch at what he claimed was the best restaurant in town, and to my amazement, our waitress was bare-footed! When I stayed in the best hotel, I woke up with an outline of my body on the bed that was made by the coal dust that seeped in and stenciled my form on the sheets! One day a new distributor that I signed in the town of Glenville, invited me to dinner at his home. Everything in that town was covered with coal dust, so I was prepared for the worst. There was a huge coal mine that had been automated, eliminating over four thousand mining jobs in the County. The county's coal production increased in spite of the fact that there were only three-hundred miners employed. When I arrived at the dealer's home for dinner, I was amazed to find that the house was immaculate, as though it had never been lived in--and it hadn't been! They lived and even entertained in their basement and kept the upstairs just for show!
My new dealer in Harrisville was also eccentric. I would stop there in the morning on my way south, and if he seemed OK, I would stay and handle my business with him. If he acted strange, I would go on my way and catch him on the return trip. One morning, when I asked him how he felt, he replied, "I'm fine. Last night I died, and now I'm in heaven." I was stuck for a reply to that, because I realized that he was serious! But, I loved to watch him sell! He could close a sale slicker than anyone I knew. His big hardware store was headquarters for just about everything in that County, and just about everyone owed him money. There was a big front porch full of trade-in appliances. Every so often, he would hide all of them behind his store and then start bringing them around again, one or two at a time. The people passing by would notice the growing accumulation of trade-ins and think that he must even outsell Sears-Roebuck!
He sold so many tires that the garages around there got tired of installing them, so I sold him a shop full of equipment and helped him set up a service bay. However, I couldn't convince him to hire a service man. He just told his clerks that whoever sold a tire had to go down to the shop and mount it. Naturally, they just quit selling them! He also had a mental block about opening mail and would only open the envelopes which he believed contained cash and checks. Hundreds of pounds of mail was piled all over his office -- on top of his files, on his desk, in layers separated by sheets of plywood, on the floor and piled high in the front window. I kept urging him to hire a bookkeeper, which he finally did. His new man found thousands of dollars of checks that were old and worthless.
As the newest salesman, I had been assigned the oldest car in the fleet--a '56 Ford Galaxie V8. The other salesmen asked me, kiddingly, when I was going to drive it off the side of a mountain and get a new car. Little did I know that I was going to do just that! It was a cold blizzardy day when I started my swing through West Virginia. I always started out very early and worked late on those trips because I had never found a decent restaurant or motel in any of those six counties. I found it better to work them all in one long day. This was to be my last trip in West Virginia because Goodyear was setting up a new District there and giving me, instead, some large distributors in central Ohio. MJ begged me not to go that morning because the mountain roads would be very icy. But I had a big assignment to sell each distributor a five months supply of tires, so I went anyway. All during that month of December I had received pep talks from Dick Pruitt, the District Manager, and from others on his staff. When I only had one more order to write to achieve my quota, and become the first one to complete the assignment, he called and instructed me to meet him at Gallipolis for coffee, two-hundred miles off my route. All I received for that long detour was a five-minute "go-go-Goodyear" appeal to get my orders in that week. This caused me to fail to write that last order until the following week. A few weeks before, he had come down by air on a snowy day for the same purpose, and much to my delight, the Parkersburg Airport was socked in. They took him all the way to Tennessee before they could find a place to land, forcing him to return to Columbus by bus. "Big Dick," as we called him, did give me my pep talk, however. While he was circling the airport over Parkersburg, I was paged to the air dispatcher's office and received my "ration" as Dick talked to me from the pilot's radio!
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It had been a bad decision to take that final West Virginia trip, because when I went over a mountain, I discovered, too late, that the back side of the mountain was a glare of ice. I skated down with my brakes locked toward two trucks sitting side-by-side blocking the road. I turned into a snow bank at the last second, to the great relief of the two truck drivers, and damaged the radiator of my car. I rode to the next town with the truckers and then began a twelve-hour journey home by Greyhound bus. When I called the District Office the next morning, they didn't seem to be concerned about the car and instructed me to go to the local dealer and pick out a new Plymouth. I found a beautiful new '60 model that had tail fins almost as high as its roof. I discovered the purpose of those tail fins, a year later when I skidded off another mountain road. I had called MJ from Woodsfield, Ohio, which is perched on top of a high ridge, and told her that I was staying over because of the weather. MJ then gave me the bad news that both she and Davie had come down with scarlet fever. Unfortunately, I tried to make it home over very icy roads. I hit a patch of glare ice, spun out, and plunged backwards over the mountain ledge. The car lit on its top with the tail fins digging into the steep snow covered slope which kept the car from tumbling on down into the deep canyon. The headlights were shining straight up like airplane beacons, and attracted the attention of a passing truck driver who gave me a ride to the sheriff's office.
This time my District Manager was Martin Penn, who said to buy another new car, only this time to get the smallest, cheapest Plymouth that I could find! I thought I was being punished, but I just happened to be the first of five-hundred Goodyear representatives who were given compact cars on an experimental basis. Penn had to get one also, but he would never admit that it was his company car, and always passed it off as his son's car, explaining that his Chrysler was in the garage. The compacts didn't hold up, however, and we were soon driving big V-8's again. During my third winter in Marietta, I started out early one frigid morning. When I started up our driveway, I decided to let the car warm up while I had another cup of coffee. I set the parking brake, and ran up the steps to the kitchen where MJ once more told me that she wished I wouldn't travel in such terrible weather. Suddenly, we heard a noise in the driveway! I rushed to the window and cried, "Oh, no--there she goes!" The brakes had warmed up and let go, allowing the car to plunge down over the terrace and across the lawn toward the slope to the river, 700 feet below. The only thing going through my mind was what to tell Penn! How would I tell him that my third car in three years had slipped off a mountain, and this time, was at the bottom of the river! However, this time, my luck was good for a change and the little Plymouth Valiant got hung up on the fence of the dog run that I had built for Davie's beagle. My little car actually did survive until time to be traded, but not without a couple more scrapes -- partly because it was small and hard to see.
My work took me into the big strip mines where I sold tires eight feet tall for huge trucks that carried 100 tons of coal at a time. One day I went to the mine to caution them against overloading and exceeding the speed limits of the tires, which was causing premature failures. As I rounded a blind curve on that deeply rutted mine road, I heard one of those monster trucks speeding towards me. My little Plymouth just barely got out of the rut before the truck blew by at forty miles per hour. I think I would have had trouble explaining to Mr. Penn how I turned my company car into a "road toad!" I didn't tell Penn about my next scrape, however, when a truck backed into it and messed up the front end. The driver said that my car was so low that he didn't see it.
I had to tell Penn about the next accident, however, because the top was peeled back like an open sardine can when I backed under a trailer load of tires. I knew that my Athens, Ohio, dealer could sell all the tires that I could get them to buy. However, they had their storerooms full, their sales room stacked to the ceiling, and even more stored at their homes. But that wasn't enough for Penn. He pressed me to sell them still another truckload at an extra ten percent discount. I solved this problem by conspiring with the freight line to ship the tires in a junk trailer that was suitable only for storage, that they could sell at scrap price. In the meantime, I had measured it for Goodyear signs and already had factory approval to cover it with signs proclaiming, "Direct Factory to You Discounts!" It worked well and my dealer wound up the year with the deepest market penetration the district.
That fall, however, my sales pitch failed on the assignment of selling each dealer an assortment of tires with blue, yellow, red and green sidewalls. The National auto Show in Chicago had featured all General Motors cars with red sidewall tires on bright red convertibles. It was such a sensation that Goodyear decided to offer an assortment of colors. But all the distributors in our district got together and decided to refuse to sell them. After failing to get an order in Athens, I angrily grabbed my brief case, jumped into my car, and backed right under their storage trailer, which was sitting in the center of their parking lot. I would have to report at the meeting the next morning that I had completely failed and couldn't get a single distributor to go along with brightly colored tires. I thought, however, that I would save the news about my new "sunroof" for later in the week and drove MJ's new Rambler Wagon to the meeting. At the meeting, as usual, Penn asked each salesmen about his sales successes, but only asked me if I had any new wrecks to report! Apparently, my fame as a salesman was exceeded only by my infamous driving record! My pal Ray Ramsey's territory was adjacent to mine, and he had a Plymouth Valiant exactly like mine. One day, he swerved to miss a dog, and rolled his car several times. He was saved by his seatbelt, but his car looked so terrible that it was put on display in a town in my territory that was promoting driving safety. When my dealers saw it, they would not believe that it was not my car, until I finally showed up in mine after a new roof was installed.
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That November, we had another big conference to inspire us to sell each dealer a large "Spring Dating" order. Penn gave us dramatic speeches, designed to propel us into our territories to sell each dealer a five month supply of tires and tubes. He ended the two-day conference by appearing in an Ohio State jersey and threw a football to each of his seventeen salesmen with their sales quotas written on them. Mine represented a one-third increase over the previous year. After the meeting I told him that, since Goodyear's distributors already dominated my territory, it looked like an impossible assignment. "You can do it," he asserted, "Just load up each distributor with a five month's supply, then help them sell them to their dealers." I protested that the West Virginia District was selling on our side of the Ohio River all up and down the territory, and that the Cleveland District was raiding us from the North. "You handle it," he demanded, "Just fight fire with fire, but don't get caught out of your territory." Thus, began a great "Tire War" in the Ohio River valley.
First, I got even with my old district manager, Dick Pruitt, who had pushed me mercilessly. We shipped 20,000 inner tubes to a dealer in St. Louis, which was now his district. We carefully removed all the shipping labels so that no one could tell where they were shipped from. Then, I fought off the company store that was raiding my territory from the South. I secretly signed up a car dealer in Parkersburg to distribute tires. He was located just around the corner from the company store, and became a real thorn in their side. The West Virginia people tried to catch me in their territory, but I was hard to spot since I drove MJ's Rambler Wagon when I called on that dealer, who had an acre of new Ramblers on his lot. There was even a "stake-out" in a restaurant across the street, but they never caught me. I used the same tactics when I raided the Cleveland District's town of Coshocton. A local retreader had been a friend of Dad's, so I made friends with him and signed him up as a sub-distributor. This infuriated the authorized Goodyear distributor who shared the same building with him. Our great tire war had finally been won, and all parties agreed to stay out of each other's territories from then on.
Another problem that I faced in my territory was selling my big quota of "Car and Home" merchandise. All but two of my distributors sold only tires and tubes, and wanted no part of the "pots and pans" business. But Hubert Huddle, my distributor in Lancaster, Ohio, had a big retail establishment and did a good business in appliances and Goodyear catalog items. Hubert had one shortcoming -- he liked his Canadian Club whiskey, and insisted that I have a couple of snorts with him before he would discuss business. One day, as he poured our drinks, he asked me what new idea I had brought him to increase his business. "Don't you remember buying a whole ballroom full of display samples at our merchandise fair last night?" I asked, "You were going to use them to promote your fiftieth anniversary sale next month." "Did I buy them all?" he asked incredulously. "Where will we put them? When will they arrive?" I told him to expect a large trailer load on the following day, which prompted him to pour another stiff CC.
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"Didn't you buy those two houses next door to tear down and enlarge your parking lot," I reminded him. "You could use them as a store annex during the sale and display everything there." Huddle bought this idea and then sent his credit manager over to tell the tenants that they would have to move out right away. But a funny thing happened -- the credit manager, who was a shy, timid fellow, discovered that the tenants were "call girls", and were "working" at that very moment! He came back, stammering, "You kick them out. I want nothing to do with those girls!" After we had a good laugh, we kicked them out and decorated the Huddle Annex for the big 50th Anniversary Sale. We flooded the airways with commercials of Huddle sincerely thanking the people of Lancaster for their fifty years of loyal patronage, but everyone knew that it was really Huddle's big "Whore House Sale," and a very successful one at that!
Joy Newlon, another fifty-year distributor, was turned over to me at that time. He loved to buy bargains, and when I showed him a list of factory overruns, blemished whitewalls, factory seconds, "change-of-spec" original equipment tires, tires marked "Farm Use Only" or discontinued designs, he would usually buy the whole lot because he had lots of contacts that would buy them. I worked hard to cultivate his friendship and sold a great deal of my quota through. him. He would buy inner tubes 50,000 at a time -- an amazing thing, since all our tires were then tubeless. But I carried a trunk load in my car and sold some of them every day. We also shipped them out of the district with the recipients promising not to reveal their source.
Another technique that I used, was to loan a truckload of tires to gasoline stations for a forty-eight hour sale. I would decorate the stations for the sale and paint big signs in their windows. Goodyear finally transferred me to the Columbus area territory, and by using the same tactics, our sale increased 100 percent in five years.
Then I was offered a promotion to the regional office and told to teach my system in all the districts. But this would necessitate moving my family to New Jersey, where the office was located, and after much soul searching, MJ and I decided to stay in Columbus and go into business for ourselves rather than uproot our family and move again.
