Starting to Pick Up Bargains

Standing on a patch of prime ground, Fang Bai felt overjoyed.

He spent the next half hour observing.

He found that, with careful selection, on average two old TVs could be pieced together into one working unit.

Or better yet, if he picked ones with good screens and casings but internal issues that just needed a part swap or repair, those were the best finds.

In short, there was plenty of potential!

Ready to act, Fang Bai asked the on-site staff for the specifics, then left to find a truck.

Private cargo trucks didn't exist back then; hauling goods meant going through the State-Owned Fleet.

T City had a port, so its transport industry was well-developed. Fang Bai took a rickshaw, and with the driver's guidance, quickly found the State-Owned Fleet.

He needed a 9.6-meter box truck, which could hold about 50 cubic meters and had a max load of 17 tons.

He negotiated transport with the relevant person in charge, and in the end, Fang Bai settled on a price of 500 Yuan.

That price was steep for the era. Fang Bai haggled, but the other side wouldn't budge—take it or leave it, and their service attitude was pretty lousy.

There was nothing he could do about it; they had an Iron Rice Bowl job, so their pay didn't depend on how much they earned.

The fleet staffer explained that running over a hundred kilometers wasn't much cheaper than two or three hundred—fuel costs were low, but the truck itself wasn't cheap, and loading and unloading took time. Four hundred was the daily charter rate, and the extra hundred covered round-trip fuel and fees; another hundred kilometers would only add forty Yuan in fuel.

That didn't match the per-kilometer billing of later years and sounded a bit off.

Fang Bai figured he could understand—back then, a truck might make one trip in several days, whereas later it'd be several trips in one day.

Plus, with poor information flow and varying conditions, pricing standards differed wildly by region.

Fang Bai had no choice but to agree and pay.

After a short wait, he and the driver headed to a nearby Porter Hiring Ground.

Truck drivers were rare back then, so their wages were sky-high.

Fang Bai was polite to the driver, handing him a pack of cigarettes first to keep him from slacking off.

At the destination, Fang Bai started looking for porters.

"Afternoon shift moving TVs at Yaming Company, half a day's work, pay is five Yuan. Anyone interested, sign up fast—need four people."

Fang Bai shouted his offer; the pay wasn't bad.

Loading and unloading weren't part of the driver's job, and Fang Bai didn't expect help from him—besides, the driver wouldn't care about a five-Yuan half-day porter gig.

Plus, porter work seemed low-status.

In later years, as long as there was extra cash, drivers would haul cargo too.

Or if the load was light, some drivers would gladly help for free, just to finish early and grab another job to earn more.

Life was tough back then, nothing like how cushy those state-employed drivers had it.

"I'll do it, boss!"

"Boss, pick me, I'm in too!"

The moment Fang Bai finished calling out, people rushed over to sign up.

Time was tight, so he was in a hurry; otherwise, even two or three Yuan for a half-day would've drawn takers, since many porters were rural migrants looking for odd jobs.

Fang Bai picked four young men and had them hop on the truck to head to the factory.

At three in the afternoon, Fang Bai returned to the electronics warehouse of Yaming Electronics Recycling Company and started selecting stock.

On the open ground, TVs were stacked two or three layers high, some still in unopened boxes. The staff said he had to pick them one by one and couldn't open them just to grab parts.

Fang Bai had no issue with that—it was a fair rule, or they wouldn't make money.

"Move this one, take the matching cables and controller too, and set them on the empty lot."

"This one too, careful not to damage the screen."

Fang Bai picked fast. Every TV he chose, the porters nearby would carry to a vacant spot.

He focused on units with good picture tubes and screens; for him, as long as the circuit board could be fixed, it wasn't a problem.

An hour later, he'd already selected over a hundred TVs, mostly 21-inch color models, and he never passed up a repairable 29-inch color TV when he found one.

But 29-inch color TVs were scarce.

Fang Bai calculated that a cubic meter could hold 15 to 20 21-inch color TVs, and a 9.6-meter box truck could theoretically stack up to a thousand of them.

[The outer dimensions of a 21-inch old color TV are roughly 50-60 cm wide, 35-40 cm tall, and 30-40 cm deep.]

In practice, stacking half that was about right. Fang Bai didn't have that much money—he could only put 10,000 Yuan into buying TVs and needed to keep some funds for operations.

Getting a bank loan back then was indeed easier, no collateral needed, but you had to have connections or an introduction.

Without background or ties, once you had fixed assets, getting a loan was also straightforward.

That said, Fang Bai prioritized color TVs but also picked quality black and white TVs, since few families could afford to spend nearly a thousand Yuan on a TV, while most households could manage a cheap black and white set.

Plus, with his limited funds and the on-site color TV situation, he needed to carefully balance the ratio of color to black and white TVs.

Around six in the evening, a staff member urged him: "Boss, you'd better hurry up—it'll get dark soon and we'll knock off. You can keep picking tomorrow if you want."

"Alright, let's weigh them right away."

Fang Bai didn't want to stay overnight here, especially since he'd already booked the truck and set a time.

He figured he was just about done, so he started weighing and recording. After the TVs were weighed, they were loaded onto the truck.

The TVs Fang Bai had picked were all intact units. TVs of the same model and brand weighed the same, so he tallied how many of each quality tier, model, and brand there were, then calculated the total weight.

Weighing was just to show the customer how much a single TV weighed.

So, tallying the weight was quick—done in just a few minutes.

There were 170 color TVs and 220 black and white TVs in total.

An accountant from Yaming Electronics tallied with Fang Bai: "Boss, Class 1 color TVs weigh 2.52 tons, Class 2 color TVs 1.20 tons, Class 1 black and white TVs 3.15 tons, plus some spare parts and voltage converters—that comes to 11,320 Yuan!"

It was a big deal for Yaming Electronics too, so the business manager came over to chat with Fang Bai and offered to waive the odd change.

Fang Bai blinked. "Manager Chen, waiving the odd change means 10,000 Yuan?"

"Haha, Mr. Fang, it's 11,300 Yuan. If I cut it that much, my boss would kill me."

Fang Bai clicked his tongue and grumbled inwardly: Fine, saving 20 is still 20—enough to cover the movers' wages.

"Then let's settle up. I'm sure we'll meet again soon."

"Alright, wish you good business."

A little later, the payment was done.

Fang Bai still had a bit over 2,000 Yuan left. If these TVs didn't turn a profit, he'd have wasted his effort.

Next, Fang Bai personally checked the loading. He was worried the TV screens might crack from bumps during transport, so he used foam pads to cushion them himself.

It wasn't until past seven in the evening that the loading was finished. Fang Bai paid the movers, hopped into the passenger seat of the truck, and set off with the driver.

Passing a small restaurant, he treated the driver to dinner. After eating, they continued on.

It was past ten at night when the truck finally reached the rental house.

At this hour, finding someone to unload was nearly impossible, so he'd have to wait until morning.

Fang Bai gave the driver another pack of cigarettes. The driver, easygoing and grateful for the smokes and free meal, said he could unload by 1 p.m. the next day and still make it back to the company by 3 p.m. He planned to sleep on the floor on the first floor, keeping an eye on the fuel tank to prevent anyone from siphoning gas in the dead of night.

A full tank was worth a lot—if it got stolen, he'd have a hard time explaining it back at work.

Fang Bai, carefree, went straight to the second floor to sleep.

If anyone tried to steal the TVs, he'd hear some noise, and the driver was keeping watch downstairs anyway.

Thanks to the patronage of readers like the hall master "Tianhai Xiangyun" and the nest master "Jianhun Platform."