Standing on a treasure trove, Fang Bai was overjoyed.
Next, he continued observing for another half hour.
He discovered that as long as he chose carefully, combining two old TVs into one finished unit on average would not be a problem.
Or rather, it would be best to pick ones with good screens and casings, where the internal issues could be fixed by replacing a few parts.
It could be said that there was huge potential here!
As soon as he made up his mind, Fang Bai asked the staff about the specifics, then left the site to find a truck first.
There were no private freight trucks in this era. To haul goods, he had to find the State-Owned Fleet.
T City had a port and a thriving transportation industry. Fang Bai took a rickshaw and, guided by the driver, quickly found the State-Owned Fleet.
He needed a 9.6-meter box truck. This kind of vehicle could carry around fifty cubic meters, with a rated load of no more than seventeen tons.
After negotiating transportation with the relevant person in charge, Fang Bai settled on a price of five hundred yuan.
This price was extremely expensive for the times. Fang Bai haggled, but they refused to budge on the fee. Take it or leave it—their service attitude was truly awful.
There was nothing he could do about it. They had Iron Rice Bowl jobs, after all. Whether they earned more or less had little to do with them.
The fleet's pricing clerk said that traveling a little over one hundred kilometers did not cost much less than traveling two or three hundred. Fuel costs were not high, but the vehicle itself was expensive. Loading and unloading took time. Four hundred yuan was the daily charter rate, while one hundred yuan covered round-trip fuel and other expenses. Going an extra hundred kilometers only added forty yuan in fuel costs.
This differed somewhat from how later generations calculated fees by mileage, and it sounded rather unreasonable.
But after thinking it over, Fang Bai could understand. Nowadays, a truck only made one trip every few days, while in later times, it could make several trips a day.
Moreover, information did not flow freely, conditions varied, and fee standards differed enormously from region to region.
Fang Bai was helpless and could only agree to pay.
After waiting for a while, he rode with the driver to a nearby Porter Hiring Ground.
There were few people who could drive freight trucks in those days, so truck drivers earned extremely high wages.
Fang Bai was very polite to the driver and gave him a pack of cigarettes first, lest he be unenthusiastic about the job.
Upon reaching their destination, Fang Bai began looking for porters.
"Moving TVs at Yaming Company this afternoon. Half a day's work, five yuan in wages. Anyone interested, sign up quickly. I need four people."
Fang Bai shouted for workers. The pay he offered was quite high.
Loading and unloading were not part of the driver's duties, so Fang Bai did not expect him to help. Besides, the driver would not think much of earning five yuan for half a day of porter work.
And being a porter did not seem to carry much status.
In later times, as long as there was extra money to be made, drivers would still help move goods.
Or if there was not much cargo, some drivers would even be willing to help unload for free, just to finish sooner and take on another load to earn more.
Life was not easy. How could it compare to the comfortable lives of state-employed drivers nowadays?
"I'll do it, boss!"
"Boss, pick me! I'll do it too!"
The moment Fang Bai finished shouting, people ran over to sign up.
Time was tight, and he was in a hurry. Otherwise, people would still take the job for two or three yuan for half a day. Many porters had come from the countryside to do odd jobs.
Fang Bai picked four young men and had them get into the truck to head to the factory together.
At three in the afternoon, Fang Bai returned to the electronics warehouse of Yaming Electronics Recycling Company and began selecting goods.
TVs were stacked two or three layers high across the open ground. Some were still in boxes that had never been opened. The staff told him he could only choose entire units one by one and could not dismantle them to select individual parts.
Fang Bai had no objection to that. It was a reasonable requirement—otherwise, how would they make money?
"Move this one. Take the matching cables and controller with it, and put them in the open area."
"Move this one too. Be careful not to damage the screen."
Fang Bai selected goods quickly. Whenever he picked one out, the porters beside him moved the TV he had chosen to an open area first.
He tried to select units with good picture tubes and screens. To him, as long as the circuit boards could be repaired, nothing else was a problem.
An hour later, he had selected over a hundred TVs. Most were 21-inch color TVs, and whenever he came across a repairable 29-inch color TV, he did not pass it up.
It was just that 29-inch color TVs were relatively rare.
Fang Bai had calculated that one cubic meter could hold fifteen to twenty 21-inch color TVs. A 9.6-meter box truck could theoretically stack up to a thousand 21-inch color TVs.
[The outer casing dimensions of an old 21-inch color TV were roughly 50–60 centimeters wide, 35–40 centimeters high, and 30–40 centimeters deep.]
In reality, being able to stack half that many would already be good enough. Fang Bai did not have that much money. He could only spend 10,000 yuan buying TVs and had to keep some capital for operations.
It was indeed easier to get a Bank Loan in those days, even without collateral, but one needed connections or an introduction from an acquaintance.
Without a background or connections, getting a loan would become easy once he had fixed assets of his own.
That said, Fang Bai prioritized color TVs, but he also chose good-quality black and white TVs. After all, relatively few families could afford to spend nearly a thousand yuan on a TV, while cheap black and white TVs were within reach for most households.
Combined with his limited funds and the condition of the color TVs on site, he needed to carefully balance the proportion of color TVs and black and white TVs.
As it neared six in the evening, the staff urged him, "Boss, you need to hurry. It'll be dark soon, and we'll be off work. You can keep choosing tomorrow."
"Alright, let's weigh them now."
Fang Bai did not want to stay overnight here. Besides, he had already booked the truck and set the time.
He felt he had selected enough, so they began weighing and recording the goods. Once the TVs were weighed, they were loaded onto the truck.
The TVs Fang Bai selected were complete units. TVs of the same size, standard, and brand weighed the same, so they only needed to count how many TVs there were in each grade, size, and brand before calculating the total weight.
The weighing was merely to show customers how much a single TV weighed.
Therefore, tallying the weight was very quick and was finished in a few minutes.
There were 170 color TVs and 220 black and white TVs in total.
The accountant from Yaming Electronics Recycling Company calculated with Fang Bai. "Boss, Class 1 color TVs weigh 2.52 tons, Class 2 color TVs weigh 1.20 tons, and Class 1 black and white TVs weigh 3.15 tons. With some spare parts and voltage converters added in, the total comes to 11,320 yuan!"
This was also a large order for Yaming Electronics Recycling Company, so the business manager personally came over to exchange pleasantries with Fang Bai and said he could waive the odd amount.
Fang Bai blinked. "Manager Chen, does waiving the odd amount mean making it 10,000 yuan?"
"Haha, Mr. Fang, it means 11,300 yuan. If I cut that much, our leaders would kill me."
Fang Bai clicked his tongue and grumbled inwardly, Fine. Saving twenty yuan is still saving twenty yuan. That's enough to cover the porters' wages.
"Then let's settle the bill. I believe we'll be seeing each other again soon."
"Alright. Wishing you prosperous business."
A short while later, the payment was completed.
Fang Bai had a little over two thousand yuan left. If these TVs did not work out, all his efforts would have been for nothing.
Next, Fang Bai personally checked the loading. He was afraid the TV screens might be shattered by impacts during transport, so he personally used foam padding to separate them.
It was after seven in the evening when loading was finally completed. Fang Bai paid the porters, climbed into the passenger seat of the truck, and set off with the driver.
They passed a small restaurant, and Fang Bai treated the driver to dinner. After eating, they continued on their way.
It was past ten at night when the truck finally arrived at the rental house.
At this hour, it was too difficult to find people to unload the truck, so they could only find workers the next morning.
Fang Bai gave the driver another pack of cigarettes. The driver was easy to talk to, and in consideration of the cigarettes and the free meal, he said that as long as the unloading was finished before one the next afternoon, he could return to the company before three. He would sleep on a makeshift bed on the first floor that night, since he needed to keep an eye on the fuel tank in case someone stole fuel in the middle of the night.
A tank of fuel was worth quite a bit of money. If it was stolen, he would have trouble explaining it to his unit.
Fang Bai was carefree and went straight upstairs to sleep.
If someone tried to steal the TVs, he would still hear some commotion. Besides, the driver was downstairs keeping watch.
Thanks to Hall Master "Tianhai Xiangyun," Platform Master "Jianhun Platform," and other readers for their donations.
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