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 William
M. Pitzer
President of Amalgamated Enterprises, Inc.
Retired. Owned a 5 & 1 in Richland, WA from 1981-1999
Operates the AUTOCAREFORUM.COM email pitzerwm@owt.com
Many years ago, I got the bright idea that I wanted one of those 35' x
8' office trailers, why I have no idea. An acquaintance of mine had a
lot of them and was using them for firework stands. I asked him if he
had one that wasn't being used. He said he needed all of them, but sent
me to a guy that had 9 of them. When I talked to him he would sell 1 but
really wanted to get rid of all of them. Seeing an opportunity, I went
back to my acquaintance and asked him if he wanted to do a joint venture
50/50?? Now the only reason you ever want a partner is for brains or money!!
He said sure. I had the money but I had never done anything like this
before and I can't sell water in the desert. My idea was that he would
help sell them. I don't do anything without a contract so I wrote up one
and showed up at his office the next day with the agreement. This was
such a small deal he was really surprised that I had written this up.
End result was that in three weeks I had sold all 9 trailers and was at
his front door with his cut in small unmarked bills.
About 6 months later, I think because I was so business like and had succeeded
with his money the first time. I received a call from him saying that the
government was holding an auction with a bunch of these trailers. Was I
interested?? I thought well sure, I had unloaded the 9 and doubled our money,
so why not get 20-25 of these and do it again. I was sure that this time
he would help sell them. Of course, I write up another agreement. We bid
(sealed bids) on 100 of these, I'm freaking out, but he said not to worry,
we'd be lucky to get 10
. This was in January and I thought surely we'd have them all sold by the
end of the year. The government kept postponing the opening of the bids,
so it was May before we ended up with 67 of these. Again, I'm freaking out,
25 is one thing 67 is a lot more money than I had wanted to put at risk.
He assured me NO PROBLEM, piece of cake!! The first problem was to take
possession, they were 50 miles away, buried in sand, flat tires, or no tires.
We hired a guy to move all of them for a flat fee to a vacant lot my now
partner, had on a busy city street. Just before the last ones were removed
from the government reservation, I get a call from the guy and the federal
police had him stopped and wouldn't allow him to move until a federal towing
permit was obtained. Crap, now what. We only had like 10-15 left there.
I ask to talk to the cop, no go. I ask for his bosses name and call him.
I explain that the government had wanted these sold and gone and that they
had assured us cooperation removing them. He finally agreed that if we didn't
move them during "rush" hours they would look the other way. I instructed
this guy to work non-stop until he had them off the reservation. By morning
we had the rest of them on our lot. Next morning, a State transportation
cop was on our door step wanting to know the name of the guy that had moved
them. Seems the Federal cop didn't appreciate me going over his head and
had called the State guy. We assured him that the guy was not an independent
agent. A small legal loophole.
The next headache was that our lot only allowed the trailers being parked
side by side with very walking room between. We thought about some insurance
because you know how quickly trailers burn. As soon as we had them on the
lot some homeless people moved into some and was using "fire" to heat their
dinner. The insurance was expensive and they wanted them 20' apart, so much
for the insurance. I had been selling these like hot cakes, my partner hadn't
sold one. There was a business in town that also sold & rented these office
trailers and when he found out what we were doing he called the Dept. of
Licenses. We thought since they did not have a motor that we didn't need
a license. WRONG!
One day I'm in my Laundromat collecting the quarters, right next door to
my office. In walk 3 guys that you instantly know are from the government.
One says "Are you Mr. Pitzer"?, Yes, I am. "How's your day going"? I hate
that question!!! I said, "Well its obvious that you guys are from the government.
I know you haven't come to tell me that I have won the lottery. So, I'd
say my day has just turned to shit. What do you think". All 3 of them crack
up laughing. "Well you're right we do have a little problem". "We understand
that you are selling these trailers without a license". I said that I had
called their dept. and a woman had said since they didn't have motors we
didn't need a license. "No, I don't know who I talked to". Well, there is
a $10,000+ fine!! Okay, how do we solve this, we have no problem getting
a license. How long should it take? "Oh, just a couple of weeks". 2 months
later, $2000, and a LOT of BS we have the license.
The City also shows up and says that the lot isn't zoned for trailer sales
and we have to move them ASAP. The County also showed up and was worried
about the fire potential and wanted them moved. Before it was over every
official that could screw with us did. Of course, we weren't suppose to
sell anything until we got the licenses. Now, its Oct. and I still have
30 trailers. Still my partner hasn't sold one trailer. Every morning we
would have coffee and he would tell me "do this do that". Somewhere in here
he has a heart attack and has the balloon thing. After that I'd call him
and say, "what do you think about this or that", all he would say is "I
don't give a damn". He was a pain in the butt, so this was one good thing.
Finally, in March of the next year I got the last trailer sold. Another
problem that came up was that his accountants wanted to do his taxes one
way and I wanted it done different. I had already filed mine, so I was making
demands, but they went ahead and filed his return the way they wanted, so
now we had to worry for 3 years actually 4 because this venture covered
2 years. He did get audited but they didn't cross audit. The end result
was that we made 150% return on our money. I also learned a hell of a lot.
You do what you have to do when poop hits the fan and your cookies are in
the fire. One, big lesson, don't use short term money for a long term problem.
This was suppose to be a get rich quick deal and it ended up costing a lot
more than anticipated, and took triple the time. Funny thing, I never did
end up with one of those trailers for myself.
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