Chapter 10

“Damn, Jimmy! I am in need of a good fuck. Can you help me out now, darling?”

I swung round to see what the reaction was from my other wives, but they all gave me the nod. I ignored the nearby presence of Elizabeth and Isabella, and simply took Marjory by the hand and began leading her to her new room, which I remembered from the tour.

As the pair vanished from sight, a shocked Isabella asked Lily, “Is he always like this?”

Lily showed a surprised face. “Like what, Isabella? Like a husband doing what his wife wants him to do?”

“Well, yes, but in front of other women! That seemed rude of him.”

“You weren’t watching, Isabella. Marjory took the offensive, and Jimmy capitulated, after checking with the rest of us that we didn’t object.”

“You didn’t object? But you said nothing!”

“Nothing needed to be said, Isabella. Jimmy looked round at each of us, and we all nodded to him, to say it was fine by us. You and your mother didn’t get a vote, which is why you didn’t notice. Next time it may be me asking to be fucked. Parents make love with each other as and when they feel the urge, and that may not necessarily be at bedtime. Remember, our target is for us all to make love with Jimmy every day, the poor man. Often that is not at night, though because he is usually at work all day, it could be any time during the evening.”

“Oh. I don’t have the experience to know about such things. I haven’t even been on a date: Pa didn’t approve of boys coming round to our house, and I could never agree to anything at school, as he might fly off the handle and that would put any boy off. As a result, I am still a virgin.”

“So was I, until I got Jimmy to fuck me senseless. Sharl, Cherry and Charlotte helped me out in persuading him.”

“But they were his wives! Why would they do that?”

“They checked out me and Flora for a while, to make sure we were serious about our feelings for Jimmy. Then they warned us about probably ending up as wives if we managed to get Jimmy in bed with us. It turned out to be true, as Jimmy is addictive. We are glad we married him.”

She sighed at the memory. “Lovely. It was a memorable ceremony.”

Everyone was able to get to sleep at the new house, eventually. The sound proofing was enough to allow Elizabeth and Isabella to get a decent slumber.

I had a short commute next morning, as I was visiting the first two hangars that were now our warehouses. Marjory had been driven to her workplace by one of the other wives. I spoke to the supervisor at Warehouse/Hangar One, James Orkney he said he was, and I told him how pleased I was at how well organised they looked, even though stock was continuing to pile in every day.

He showed me what he was doing. Every item was being checked and labelled with a bar code if one was not already applied. Another member of staff was entering the bar code and description into a hand-held laptop computer, for adding to the database back at Group H.Q.

Day by day the database was growing on the website, which had its own domain name: All-Your-Parts.com. I thought it would have used the Copies name, but he explained that the domain name had to both be unique and suggest what the website was for. I took his point.

So far there had been no publicity arranged, but interest was slowly appearing via internet searching on an item, leading to phone calls or emails in enquiry. Curiously, several searches were for auto crankshafts, and where a specific one was being sought, it matched the item that had turned out to be made of gold.

I was told this by the man working on inputting data into the system, and Jim Orkney told me, “It struck me, Mr Hargreaves, that a search for this particular crankshaft might be linked to the gold one you discovered.”

“Good thinking. We still have two genuine ones in stock?”

“Yes, sir. We have them priced at a thousand dollars; they are one of the better ones. Crankshafts can be priced at anything between a couple hundred dollars and over three K, depending on the model.”

He went on, “Let me think ... yes, I think we might try doubling the price of that model, and see what interest remains. The crook must imagine that we have not discovered the gold one yet, for there has been no public news about such a find.

I concurred. “Yes. If we end up with one potential customer at that inflated price, that will suggest that he is the guy who helped make the gold one, or is acting for the guy. He will have no idea where the stock went to when it was sold by the liquidator, as the liquidator will never reveal their deals to anyone; they have their business secrets to guard. These queries may be an attempt to locate where such items are for sale, in the hope of recovering the gold one. I am certain he knows that the stock on the shelving would not have travelled very far, because of the expense of shipping all that weight of shelving plus contents, so the culprit will be able to eliminate all examples that are too distant to be the target one.”

He suggested, “Yes, I see that, but how do you prove that he was involved with the gold crankshaft?”

“That is the tricky part. He would say he simply wanted to purchase a crankshaft. The price may simply reflect desperation to find a part he needed, or he may be unaware of the normal price of that model.”

“Oops! You are right, Mr Hargreaves. We can’t prove anything from just a business order. Any suggestions?”

“If he broke in here and tried to steal our three crankshafts, we at least have him for theft ... I can’t think what else we could do.”

“That’s true. We could set up a video surveillance camera, though, and film him stealing the crankshafts.”

I scrunched up my face as I tried to make up some method of doing more than what was suggested. No ideas would come; none at all.

“Never mind,” I said. “Forget about increasing the price of that crankshaft; just price it at the normal rate. Talking about normal prices, have we checked our prices against other companies selling spares? I want all our prices to be a fraction less than other businesses might offer.”

“Can do, sir. We already keep track of prices asked by other suppliers, but some are for new items; many of ours are not new as such, simply older but unused. Our prices reflect that variation.

You know that we are setting up our packing and despatch section here, split into two, one for each warehouse? If you have a look at the layout, these empty shelves in the middle? These are for our packaging and despatch unit: space for boxes packed flat, filling materials for going round items inside a box, taping and labelling materials, and a set of industrial scales to weigh the box for cost of delivery. We will even have a pile of wooden pallets for taking heavier loads, but they are bulky and will come tomorrow where we have spare space in the truck. We hope to make a start on picking some orders today, so our local delivery trucks are being loaded with the packaging material, and each will bring a couple of packing staff so that they can set up again and be ready to prepare the first orders from this site as soon as they are picked.”

“We have actual orders? Not just enquiries?”

“Actual orders, though we have stated that deliveries will not start until tomorrow. What orders we have are mostly for car parts, most likely from people doing their own auto repairs, but someone has twigged to our good prices for nuts and bolts, and they have ordered five hundred of each size. We have thousands in stock in many sizes according to our new database, so if my guess is right, we are going to sell a lot of these if that first delivery is up to the standard the client is hoping for. A good deal on price is a good deal for whoever is buying, and profitable for us. We just want to shift stock and make a profit.”

I was at once ecstatic. “Just what I was hoping for. A website is going to be the route in the future for selling our kind of stuff. I suspect that your buyer is a firm that specialises in nuts and bolts, and is looking for a cheap source for bulk supplies that they can then sell in smaller quantities to their own customer base. All we need care about is selling our goods at a reasonable profit to us. We are not into niche markets.”

“Exactly, Mr Hargreaves. That was the idea behind setting up Copies years ago: a general source for parts of all kinds. The Yeats Group is making better use of modern business practices to enhance sales and expand our range. I like working for a company that is so forward-looking.”

“So do I, Jim; so do I.”

“Mr Hargreaves, the vans should be here shortly. Do you want to help unloading their cargo, for speed? We could use an extra pair of hands, if you don’t have more important things to do.”

“Jim, nothing is more important than getting the business operational, and if that means getting down and dirty, so be it.”

“Very little dirt involved today. Awkward piles of flat cardboard boxes, rolls of bubble-wrap, boxes of sealing tape and so on, are what should be on the vans. One van goes to each hangar, and we have another team in the next hangar to help with that van.”

Jimmy asked, “You are still aiming for the first package to go out for delivery tomorrow?”

“Leaving tomorrow, yes. Today we hope to get started in packaging the orders and have the van loaded ready to take off in the morning. We deliver with our own vans within a hundred miles radius. For longer distances, the packages get dropped off at the UPS depot. We have an exclusive contract with them for our deliveries; a good price deal for our delivery stream.”

“That seems satisfactory. Is the new digital system properly in operation for deliveries yet?”

“It is, from a few days ago. The computer printer provides a delivery sheet for the driver of the van that covers the client’s address. He just has to adjust his delivery route to fit it in as efficiently as possible. The new system means our drivers have more control over their delivery schedule now, and they are pleased at the change. They can time their own schedule so that they can have their meal, coffee and toilet breaks when it suits them.”

I was pleased to see this happening.

At this moment, the van arrived at the open hangar door and drove inside, so that the unloading would be out of any bad weather that was around, and as close as possible to the packing shelves. The driver and two other men got out of the cab and started their routine. One went to the shelving to prepare stacking the materials, while the other opened the van doors to start unloading.

Orkney told him he had extra helpers today, so the man climbed inside and started pulling to the exit the first box of stuff. Jim Orkney grabbed it to carry to the inside man, and I moved to collect the next package. In short order we had the van unloaded, and man number two moved to assist his mate with laying out the materials on shelving, to make it easy to access.

Orkney and I took a break and I was asked, “Do you want to go inspect the other warehouse, Mr Hargreaves?”

“Not really. I am sure it is much the same, but I expect I had better put in an appearance to prove I was there.”

By the time I had walked to the next hangar, the second van had been unloaded and the men were busy filling the shelves with their packaging materials. I went over and introduced myself, saying that I was simply doing a public appearance for the staff at each warehouse so they knew who I am, and otherwise they could regard me as perfect: a perfect nuisance.

This raised a few smiles, and I was able to ask them about preparing for a delivery tomorrow, if they had any orders to send out. Again, they had several new addresses that the driver had never been to before now, so they would be checking the local map.

Most of the parts in this warehouse were small boat and small aircraft items, but a few orders were bulky, such as waterproof casings for the boat engines. I expressed my surprise, as I understood that waterproofing would also prevent the essential air getting to the engine. They told me that this was simply upper protection from seawater or rain getting down to the surfaces of the engine. Water that might get down below the engine would be disposed of by the bilge pump.

The man in charge said, “You obviously have no experience with small boats, sir.; if I may say so.”

“Too true. I have always lived far from the sea, so boats are not my thing, gents. Do we sell bilge pumps too?”

“We do, sir. Our range of stock for the small boat people is extensive.”

I gave a short laugh, and got a questioning look from the other man. I explained, “I was imagining small people with boats – small boat people! I know what it means, but my warped mind saw it the other way around. Sorry about that.”

The man raised his eyebrows but declared, “Okay by me, Mr Hargreaves. You have a reputation for getting things done, so that is all that matters. We have another truckload of parts arriving this afternoon, so we are getting on fine with the transfer. It is aircraft parts this time, so that just leaves agricultural parts for the next load or two. Doing the barcoding and adding to the database all at the one time works well.”

I asked, “Do we not do parts for domestic white goods?”

“No, sir. A lot of customers scrap their failed machine and buy a new one, as the cost of calling out a repair man is not worth it, compared to replacement. The only people who fix their machines can afford the call-out, so they are not looking for spares. All the spares usually come direct from the manufacturer as well. There is no business for us there.”

“A weird situation,” I declared. “The manufacturer should build their machines more robustly, so that they don’t break down in the first five years or so; but I suppose that means they would sell less machines than their competitors. If there was a minimum standard that all white goods manfacturers had to adhere to, that would solve the problem, but businessmen are not going to spend cash that they don’t have to, unless they are forced into it; so it would have to be a Federal set of rules, and getting standardization through Congress would be nigh impossible to agree. There are always people with vested interests in keeping things are they are. Any changes mean more expense, and business as a rule hates expense. Damn short-term thinking, if you ask me but I am in no position to argue. Invention and improvements means more expense called investment, but they don’t see the same long-term results for any other changes.

Years ago, the President tried to get the country to switch to the metric system, which the rest of the world was swiftly embarking on, but big business lobbied and got that cancelled because it would cost them in the short run. Stupidity rules as usual, for the rest of the world went metric, so now American big business has to produce to two different sets of standards; one for the US market and metric for the rest of the world: doing both is more costly than if they had switched to metric years ago. I learned about this while in lived in Britain. They had some folk that objected for the same reasons, but the government pushed it through, so they could sell to Europe, and now everyone accepts it as normal. The old Imperial measures were a hotch-potch that built up over centuries, and were so out of date, you wouldn’t believe. Here in the US we now call them our Customary System, but that is just to avoid the dreaded word Imperial.

Sticking to Imperial measurements, in a Republic, seems extremely odd to me, as I have seen the benefit of simple metric measures elsewhere.

The exception is domestic power supplies; these vary by country across the world, according to which form of electricity supply system that the country has; they vary a lot, which means selling to each country is a task in itself. Standardisation is never easy at the start.”

The man was perturbed at this news.

“I have never heard about all these facts before. They didn’t tell us anything about that in school.”

“Yes, almost everything in the rest of the world is metric: kilometers instead of miles, and square kilometres instead of acres, for example.”

“But why make a change at all? And why metric?” the man wanted to know, quite reasonably.

“Simplicity. Everything is based on ten or multiples of ten. A square kilometer is a square which has all its sides one kilometer in length, and a kilometer is a thousand meters. That makes it easy to calculate lengths and areas in comparison to the number of feet or yards in a mile.”

“But we are used to our acres and lengths like feet.”

“Which feet do you mean?” I asked him. “Some States use both International feet and US Survey feet, others stick to one of these. The two American standards for a foot are only a tiny bit different, so for small measurements, like the area of a house plot, it makes little difference, but if you are talking about things like a long road length, it can make a cumulative difference.”

“You trying to confuse me, Mr Hargreaves?”

“Nope, just pointing out how confusing our national measurements are at the moment. If we switched to metric it would soon be simplified, but the changeover costs would have to be incurred first. That is where big business doesn’t want to spend money.

According to the World Factbook, there are only two countries in the world, apart from the US, that have not adopted the metric system: Liberia and Myanmar. The US is out of step with the rest of the world, and being different costs international businesses in the US all the time, year after year.”

“I can see why you are one of the bosses, and I am not, Mr Hargreaves. You know so much, and so many important things about running a business.”