Part 21 (written 2004)

(Continued from last week)

All applicants would be given a mathematical aptitude test and that was all that was required to make a decision. I never checked on letters of recommendation, knowing beforehand that an applicant would not hand one in that would give him or her a bad report.

The traffic department had a training section, whose supervisor, Mildred Epstein, had years of experience in the field and was the teacher of all trainees over many years. The trainee learned by actually doing constructive work, namely calculations of invoices and accountings of all the commodities handled by the company. That was exactly the work I had done when I started. I subsequently established the training section for that very purpose. As a result, when the trainee was then transferred into a commodity section in traffic, where the actual shipments were handled, he or she would already have familiarity in every area.

We did not require a MBA, or even a college degree, and any high school graduate could be an applicant, and would be hired if he/she passed the interview and the test. I once hired a practicing rabbi who wanted to change his career and he worked out just fine. In fact, I also once hired a young law school graduate, who had not yet passed his bar exam, but only after he promised me that even after he passes the bar, he would not leave PB. He was hired, and went on to eventually become the president of the company in its declining years. Another time, we hired one of the few MBAs that applied, and who spoke four languages. He did not last three months, because he could not handle the mathematics.

Terminating an employee was always very painful. But when it had to be done, it was done quickly and without much talk. Fortunately, until the later liquidation of the company, terminations were few and far between.

My job, although mostly taking place in the New York office, also involved traveling from time to time. I already mentioned my trip to Providence, Rhode Island, in connection with the unloading of a cargo of zinc metal. Mostly my travels consisted of trips to East Coast or US Gulf ports supervising the unloading of shipments of steel. Not that I personally had to go—I had enough staff to be able to send someone from my department—but I wanted to go because I enjoyed being involved with something physical although I did not myself do anything physical. It was different from just sitting in an office and giving directions. I’ll give you two examples out of many such happenings.

We imported a lot of steel in coils; in those years it was mostly from Japan. Any other material that is shipped in large quantities is usually sold prior to shipment or sold as one lot during shipment. Consequently, the unloading and transshipment from the dock was prearranged before the vessel arrived and mostly did not require any personal presence of a PB representative. Steel is a bit different. Whether the steel is in coils or sheets in packages, each unit has its own weight predetermined by the steel mill abroad. If the total quantity on the ship is sold to one customer, then there is no problem. If the quantity on board a vessel goes to two or more customers, then upon arrival the units have to be separated for different destinations so that each customer will receive only the correct units for invoicing. That is where the “inspector,” often myself, would come in.

Visualize this. A steel coil, weighing several tons, is lifted by a crane out of the hold of the ship and swung over to the dock. It was my job then to identify the coil by searching for a slash of paint or identifying number and give directions to the crane operator to which part of the dock the unit should be taken. The idea was to be able to give these directions while the unit was still in transit, since having to put it on land first for identification would involve extra expenses. But also, the idea was not to ever be directly underneath the coil, since accidents do happen.

Another instance that was unusual was a shipment of 4000 tons of galvanized steel coils and packages from Italy that were unloaded in Houston. Most of it went to one customer so that the separating was a minor problem. The major problem was that the customer, whose plant was in Houston, had asked PB to take care of all the paperwork and ship the steel to his plant, for his account and his risk. The customer had told his trucking company to take instructions from us and to coordinate everything with us. Normally that would have been routine, but I had a suspicion that this was going to be a problem shipment since galvanized steel, as a semi-finished product, is quite a bit more expensive than raw steel, aside from being much more sensitive to damage. I went to Houston and upon first investigation found that the trucking company did not have enough equipment by far to be able to handle the cargo without much of it landing on the dock, and thereby incurring expenses of reloading for the customer. I consequently spent 10-12 hours at the wharf stopping trucks from other companies, and asking them whether they would like to make some extra money hauling steel. Into whose pocket the money would go was not my concern. I got grain trailers, flat-beds, auto-carriers, anything with at least five axles to carry my cargo. I was only required to get the trucks loaded and off the wharf; what happened at the other end was not my concern either. When all the steel was off the wharf, although all I wanted to do is get back to the hotel and sleep, I passed by the receiving plant to see what was going on. An unbelievable sight greeted me. There was a line of loaded trucks extending 8 to10 blocks from the plant, which could unload only two trucks at a time. And there were more problems, but I think you get the idea, that it was not all fun. I don’t think we had a happy customer, but it was all his fault and responsibility.

(To be continued next week)

By Norbert Strauss

Norbert Strauss is a Teaneck resident. He was general traffic manager and group VP at Philipp Brothers Inc., retiring in 1985.  He frequently speaks to groups to
relay his family’s escape from Nazi Germany in 1941.