[Milsurplus] Your Tax Dollars At Work, part nnnnnn

[Peter Gottlieb]

Nobody but 0.00000001% of the population cares and that applies to military and 
commercial.  Once equipment is deemed to have no value it is gotten rid of.  My 
company recently changed direction and moved from a 100,000 sf manufacturing 
facility to a 20,000 sf office.  Rows and rows of 20 foot high industrial 
shelving full of all manner of tools, components and materials.  For several 
months we went through it and took what we wanted, donated to makerspaces and 
friends (some ended up in Battlebots!) and it barely made a dent.  Then we 
separated into recycle and maybe useful and the maybe useful went to an 
electronics surplus recycler (I've seen bits pop up on ebay) and the 50 tons of 
plastics went direct to recycle and it seemed unsellable.  Big machinery like 
injection molding machines were essentially given away due to the cost of 
riggers to move it. We were lucky because engineers run our company, most other 
places they would have just called in a scrapper and told everyone to stay away.


On 3/12/2017 1:02 PM, Todd, KA1KAQ wrote:
>
> On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 4:59 PM, Hubert Miller <Kargo_cult at msn.com 
> <mailto:Kargo_cult at msn.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     WHY would the military discard value in this way? I do not get it; seems
>     to contravene logic. I suppose profit-loss is just a foreign concept when
>
>     you have a fixed allocation.
>
>
> Nick hit some of the reasons Hue, the others probably have to do with cost and 
> potential cost, as in liability.
>
> First, keep in mind that government is anything but efficient. And our current 
> version is a bloated sloth. Expecting them to be able to set up and manage 
> anything in a fiscally-responsible (much less profitable) manner is wishful 
> thinking. Between the cost of the people involved, the red tape, multiple 
> forms, transportation, etc etc, they'd lose money. Hell, they'd start losing 
> money just talking about it in committee.
>
> Then you have the potential costs of liability if anything goes wrong. In our 
> litigious P.C. society when no one is responsible for their actions anymore 
> and inanimate objects are the cause for problems, it becomes a whole lot 
> easier just to say 'screw it, dump 'em in the ocean'.
>
> Somewhere I have a photo of a massive barge out at sea. Running down each side 
> of the barge are rows of M48 tanks if I'm remembering correctly. In the center 
> between the rows is a large commercial bucket loader, pushing one of the tanks 
> backward over the side. Well, maybe they were making an artificial reef? Who 
> knows, but I remember thinking, what a waste. Sure, there's not a big call for 
> old tanks but why weren't they at least being scrapped or 'recycled'? Probably 
> due to the cost of demil'ing and whatever else. Maybe they were considered 
> somehow contaminated/toxic and clean up for scrap sale was deemed too costly.
>
> Kicking R-649s out the door of a Sikorsky would be a child's errand in 
> comparison, a run to the corner store. I'm with you and I'm sure many others 
> here in wanting to see these old relics preserved. Sadly we are but a tiny 
> sliver of an even tinier group of hobbyists and preservationists. Most folks 
> could care less.
>
> ~ Todd, KA1KAQ/4
>
>
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