Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The Aluminum Piston Story


                                            The Aluminum Piston Story
                          How I beat the scrap yard crooks at their own game
                                                                1963
                                       Written 1/2014 Re-written 7/2015
                                                        Howard Yasgar


By November of 1963, my good friend Lou Gladstein had closed down his auto wrecking business, and that also closed down my job in Florida.
Helping Lou to manage the auto wrecking business had been the reason I came to Florida in the first place.
Unfortunately Lou’s former manager had had already embezzled all the companies funds, forcing Lou to close the place down.   
At the time, I had just gotten married in Connecticut, and Lou had convinced me that coming to Florida to manage the auto wrecking business would be like being on a honeymoon.
It just happens, that at the time, my mother had just leased a tiny hotel on Collins Avenue on Miami Beach, and Lou knew that was another incentive for my coming to Florida.
My good friend Lou was in the used car business ( Or stolen car business) in Stamford Connecticut.
So to further entice me to go to Florida, he offered me the use of a nice 1959 Plymouth to make the trip with.
Lou had suspected that manager of his auto wrecking business in Miami, was stealing. So when I confirmed it, it was no shock to either of us.
When I had arrived in Miami, my wife and I stayed for a while in my mother’s hotel on Collins Avenue, but after a few weeks, we rented a house trailer located in a trailer park on NW 79th Street in Miami.
The trailer park was cheap and much closer to Lou’s auto wrecking yard.
As soon as I got to Lou’s auto wrecking business, I tried to get things in order, but every day a new and unknown debt appeared.
I soon realized the full extent of what the manager had done.
He was stealing everything, he had even failed to pay the rent for more than six months.
Once I found out the extent of his embezzlement, I knew that straightening out all the problems was almost an impossible task, so my recommendation to Lou, was that he close the yard down, and that was exactly what he did.
Once the yard was closed, I had to make a decision about staying in Florida or returning back to Connecticut.
It was kind of a difficult decision to make, because if we did stay in Florida, how would I earn a living?
Our living expenses were small, and we found that living in a trailer park was a big novelty, and an adventure for us.  
We met people there that I never would have met otherwise. Most of our neighbors in the trailer park were either just going to jail or had just been released from jail.
As I remember it, we were paying twenty dollars a week rent for a semi furnished trailer.
To make our lives more comfortable, I bought a good used television for only fifty dollars.
It was a nineteen inch black and white television, that was formerly a pay to view TV. It still had the holes drilled in it for a coin box that had once been attached.
Eventually we decided to stay in Miami, I was still driving the 1959 Plymouth automobile that Lou had given me to make the trip to Florida.
The Plymouth still had one Connecticut “Junk Dealer” license plate on it.
The plate was from the set of 2 that Lou had given me to use.
That license plate that always created quite a bit of controversy in Miami.
Anyone that saw it, wanted to know what it was all about, because no one in Miami had ever seen a Connecticut Junk Dealer’s license plate before.
Once Lou’s auto wrecking business was closed down, I did what I knew best. I started driving around looking for used auto parts.
I started buying things like used engine crankshafts, and old automobile starters and generators.
I would buy them, and then re-sell them to Miami auto parts rebuilders.
In order to do this, I kept using Lou’s 1959 Plymouth, loading it like it was a truck, that was until the Police confiscated it, and said it was a stolen car.
One day I was stopped in traffic, and the Police noticed the Connecticut Junk Dealer license plate, and they questioned me, and that’s when they found that I had no registration papers, so they impounded the 59 Plymouth right then.
When I tried to recover the car, the Police told me they that it was a stolen car. They said it appeared someone had ground off the engine serial numbers, can you believe that?
When I called Lou up in Connecticut to tell him what the Miami Police had said, Lou simply said the cops in Miami were full of shit and not to worry.
Lou had another car for me, it was a 1958 Ford station wagon.
Lou said the car was parked at his boat dock on the Miami River. I suspected it was probably also another of his stolen cars he had brought down from Connecticut.
Lou, then calmly told me to find out where the Police had stored the 1959 Plymouth, and he said that I should go there and remove the Connecticut Junk Dealer license plate from the car.
I did just as Lou told me, and I never heard another word from the Police again.
While I had been managing Lou’s auto wrecking yard, I had met a Cuban fellow named Renato Cepero, Renato was a sharp Cuban who owned an auto parts store on 27th Avenue in Miami.
Renato  was buying used automotive engine crankshafts, and rebuilding them for export.
I loved dealing with Renato, because he needed a steady supply of used engine crankshafts, and he paid me $15.00 for each good one that I brought him.
Now, finding good crankshafts for Renato wasn’t as easy as it sounds. (See the Crankshaft Story). The crankshafts, all had to be the certain models that were, popular in Cuba, because I think that’s the country that he was shipping them to.
So now, I was using Lou’s 1958 Ford station wagon just like it was a truck.
Once I found that the rear seats could be folded down, I filled up the back of the station wagon  with lots of used auto parts just as if it was a truck.
I was really surprised at how much space I had in the back of that car as well as how much weight the Ford station wagon could carry. I think I could have done an advertisement for Ford Motor Company.
The only problem I had with the station wagon was that it had no air conditioning and was obviously another of Lou’s stolen cars from Connecticut.
One day while I was driving around Miami looking for crankshafts, I saw a sign in front of a company called “National Motor Exchange Company”.
The sign said that they were an engine rebuilding and installation company.
The business was located just off NW 27 Avenue near 71st Street.
As soon as I saw the sign, I stopped to see if they had any good used crankshafts to sell.
While I was in their front office, I met Irving, who was the owner of the company.
After talking to Irving for a few minutes, I realized that Irving himself was no engine rebuilder.
Turns out my assessment was correct, Irving was a money man, an investor, who had put in money in the failing engine rebuilding business, and then ended up owning it when the original owner ran away.
I told Irving that I was in the market for buying used crankshafts, and he told me to walk around inside his building to see if there was anything I could buy from him.
I think Irving was happy to meet me.
His building was pretty big, and he had over thirty employee’s all of them working at rebuilding and installing engines in cars and trucks.
Everywhere I went in the building, it was loaded with a lot of scrap engine parts that had accumulated there over the years.
The next day, I asked Irving what he was doing with all the scrap metal in the building?
He told me that a junk man came by every now and then and picked up some of the scrap.
So I asked Irving how that worked out for him.
Irving explained that the scrap man had a scale on the back of his truck, and he paid for the scrap he picked up in cash”.
I was pretty familiar as to how junk dealers worked, so I knew right away that the junk man was stealing as much as he could from Irving, but Irving didn’t know it.
So I sat down and out of the yellow pages I called three of the largest scrap yards in Miami.
I asked them how much they would pay me for scrap cast iron if I delivered it right to their yard.
I already had a pretty good idea of what the Miami scrap prices were, but I wanted to confirm it before I said anything to Irving.
All the big scrap companies I called said they were paying around $23.00 dollars a ton for automotive cast iron if it was delivered to them.
That having been done, next, I sat down with Irving and offered him a proposition, I said that I would pay him $18.00 a ton for all the scrap cast iron he had in his building.
I told Irving that would give me five dollars a ton profit.
Now, five dollars a ton wasn’t much profit considering all the work involved, but I needed to be fair to Irving and show him that I was honest, and I needed the money.
But when I first made the proposition, Irving looked at me and laughed.
He said you must think I'm a pretty dumb guy, I'm already getting $28.00 a ton from the local junk dealer that comes here with his truck.”
I said, look Irving, the junk dealer can't pay you $28.00 a ton because he is only selling it for $23.00 a ton. He is lying to you, and is probably stealing a few extra tons from you each time he comes here.
I told him that all I want to do was make $5.00 per ton profit, and I will do all the work. I will load all the cast iron junk in my station wagon and take it to the scrap yard myself, and then I will show you the receipts from the scale when they weigh the car, I will show you exactly how much money they give me.
I remember Irving tapping a pencil on his desk while debating with himself to determine if I was lying to him or not.
I again picked up the phone book and found the big Miami scrap dealers phone numbers.
I told Irving to call one or more of them and find out if $23.00 per ton was the top price they will pay for scrap cast iron delivered to them.
Irving called two scrap yards, and they both said they paid exactly $23.00 dollars a ton for scrap cast iron delivered to them, so now, Irving knew I wasn’t lying to him.
Irving then hung up the phone, and told me to start hauling all his scrap cast iron any time I wanted to.
I spent the next several weeks hauling Irving’s cast iron to the scrap yards, and eventually I cleaned up his whole building of all the iron scrap.
Once the building was clean, of the cast iron, I saw that there were about 30 or 40 large barrels full of old used aluminum engine pistons.
Now, I knew that scrap aluminum was worth good money. At the time, clean aluminum was worth around 12 cents a lb.
The problem was, all the aluminum pistons Irving had, still had the old piston rings on them, and that made them contaminated aluminum, which was worth much less, around 6 cents a lb.
I studied the situation carefully, and I determined that if I could removed the piston rings by myself, piston scrap would then be a higher quality of aluminum and worth more money.
I made an experiment, I took a dirty piston out of the barrel, and with a little practice, I found that I could remove the steel piston rings.
I started cleaning all the pistons by hand.
I found that taking the piston rings off was labor intensive job and really hard on my hands, but I could do it.
Next, I took a sample of one cleaned piston, and went to one of the largest scrap yards in Miami called “Metro Iron and metal Company”,
I chose them because I knew they had an big aluminum smelting furnace, and I assumed that they would pay the highest aluminum price in Miami.
Also I chose them because I had met the two managers that were running the place, we were about the same age and I felt they would treat me fairly.
I took my sample aluminum piston, and caught the attention of one of the managers, his name was Arthur, Arthur was the quieter and less hyper of the two partners.
I told Arthur that I could bring him about five thousand pounds of clean aluminum pistons, the same as the sample that I had brought him.
Arthur was as friendly as can be, and said he would pay me 12 cents a pound for the clean automotive pistons as per the sample I showed him.
I went back to National Engine Exchange and told Irving that I could sell the aluminum pistons for 12 cents a pound, so if I cleaned them myself,  I could pay him 9 ½ cents a pound, leaving me with a 2 ½ cent a pound profit.
Irving agreed to it, so I started to remove all the steel piston rings off the pistons in the barrels.
By late afternoon the next day I had completely filled up the back of the Ford station wagon.
Then  I headed to the scrap yard to sell the load of clean pistons.
When I got to the scrap yard, I drove the Ford wagon onto the weighing scale, and got out of the car to get my weight receipt.
As I did that, I was approached by the second partner, his name was Nordy.
Nordy, walked out of the office, and reached into the back of my car and took out one of the cleaned pistons.
He said, “We are paying you 8 cents a pound for these pistons.
“My heart nearly stopped, hold on, I said, I have 9 ½ cents in them, and your partner quoted me 12 cents a lb.
I can’t sell them to you for only 8 cents a pound, I would lose money.
I didn't mention to him that I also spent the whole day cleaning the pistons and cutting my hands to shreds while I was doing it.
Nordy knew he had me, he said, I don't care what  Arthur told you, you can take 8 cents, or leave it.”
Needless to say, I was shocked, and depressed.
Nordy knew that I couldn't drive the car away, because it was late in the day and the car was really overloaded.
Even if I did drive off, where would I go? Nordy knew he had me over a barrel, and he was determined to take advantage of me.
So, here I was, with tears in my eyes, I reluctantly agreed to let them pay me the 8 cents a pound. It was pretty obvious to everyone there listening that Nordy was cheating me.
The employees instructed me to drive over next to their aluminum smelter to unload the pistons.
I drove the station wagon off the scale and backed up to where their aluminum smelting furnace was, and there I unloaded all the pistons out of the car.
I had lost money, money that I could not afford to lose, and I felt cheated by this guy Nordy, who I thought was a friend.
When I returned to National Motor Exchange, I saw Irving, and told him what happened.
Irving looked at my receipt and saw that I had received only 8 cents a lb.
He said he felt bad that they had cheated me, so Irving told me to lower the price I was paying him, he didn’t want me to lose any money.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night, I didn't understand how I could have been treated so badly.
The following day, I started to clean more pistons, but now I had an idea.
On the floor near the barrels of pistons, were neatly stacked, several piles of giant, and very heavy Mack truck engine flywheels. Those truck flywheels were solid steel and very heavy, some of them must have weighed over two hundred pounds apiece,
So with superhuman strength, and some help from Irving’s employees, we put six of the flywheels, on the floor inside of the station wagon.
I think that they must have weighed way over twelve hundred pounds total.
Then I covered them all up with the clean aluminum pistons that I had prepared.
I went right to the scrap yard and drove onto the scale, and after weighing up the car, I backed up to the secluded area where the aluminum smelter was.
Next to the smelter I unloaded all my aluminum pistons.
Once the pistons were out of the car, I then I unloaded all the heavy steel flywheels.
They were so heavy I could hardly lift them, so I rolled them out of the station wagon and onto the ground.
I then drove the station wagon back on the scale, and got my weight receipt, and my payment for 8 cents a lb.
I did the same thing for two more times, until all the aluminum pistons were gone.
By the time I was finished I had brought them 18 flywheels.
I estimated that they weighed about thirty six hundred pounds in total, which I had been paid 8 cents per lb.
Scrap yards are notorious for cheating their customers, they do it all the time, so it gave me great satisfaction to able to beat them at their own game.
When I told Irving what I had done, we both had a good laugh. Then I gave him the full 9 ½ cents per lb. as I had promised him.
Irving was so happy he sent out for pizza for everyone.
About fifteen years later, I had a reason to visit Metro Iron and Metals Company again, I had heard that the managers, Nordy and Arthur had been fired.
While I was there I took a nostalgic stroll down to the old aluminum smelting area, which, by then, it was no longer being operated.
There they were, my thirty six hundred pounds of steel flywheels, still leaning against the metal barrels just as I had left them so many years before.
 
                                 

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