Incomploto

4 or.. Fr..no so

5 oc.. Francs, dow

19 lb. Hasp, hint

19 on. Sash, window, w & w/o glass

(Used) Incompleto (Unpacked) rc. Cost

112.50 Est. ix. t. 300 lbs. (Location 4-100)

Mr. COTTER. As you refer to the particular items, will you refer to them by lot number on that particular invitation?

Mr. KASTER. All right. The sale was published on the 8th of October with at least a 15-day notice. We have scheduled the opening for the 23d of October.

This sale is a salvage sale consisting of 56 lots.

Mr. BALWAN. How are the lots made up, and on what basis did you congregate this material? Is it similar items?

Mr. KASTER. Some of it is. Not all of it.

The thing that determines that is the screener for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. When he screens the items he will reject a certain amount of items. If there is enough rejected for you to prepare an invitation, that is immediately prepared and given to the warehouse people to get those items out of the way immediately. The screener for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare is in our office here 2 to 3 days a week at the present time, although he will stay here as long as there is property available for screening.

General MARSHALL. You mean the representative.

Mr. KASTER. Yes, sir, the representative of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Mr. BALWAN. Who makes up the catalog for him?
Mr. KASTER. I make up the catalog.

Mr. BALWAN. Do you make up the descriptions?

Mr. KASTER. I prepare the cards from a rough pencil form. I give it to the warehouse section who lot it up, and I put the best information I have on it. In lotting it up if they note any difference, such as if the items are bad or they are not worth putting into a lot, they call it to my attention, and I reinspect the item or they will put the weight to it. They will add the weight to the item. The acquisition cost is obtained from our stock catalogs, price catalogs.

Mr. BALWAN. Do you always show the acquisition cost on your catalogs?

Mr. KASTER. When available. There are some items that we cannot locate, but we always add in here estimated procurement price. Mr. RIEHLMAN. You try to give a thoroughly clear description of the article and you try to give a pretty good idea of the description? Mr. KASTER. Yes, sir. We show where the item is used, the procurement cost, the weights of the entire lot for shipping purposes for the bidders, and in most cases on machinery, for example, we will try to show the manufacturer, and if there is a serial number shown we will probably show that.

Mr. RIEHLMAN. And if there are parts lacking?

Mr. KASTER. We mark it incomplete. We do not know what parts are missing.

Mr. COTTER. Do you have a team coming from Washington, D. C., or any central headquarters, which advises you and instructs you with respect to the uniformity of the operations and the merchandising or handling of the material?

Mr. KASTER. The inspectors from the Fifth Army area or the Office of the Quartermaster General from Washington may come down, and they review our entire operation.

Mr. COTTER. When you say they review it, what is the basis? Do they assist you or inspect?

Mr. KASTER. They inspect. If you will notice in our area, you may think why don't we put the same type of item together?

There are 2 or 3 reasons why we do not do that. One is that at the time we prepared the sale they may have put all the items of that particular type we had together. We will receive like items daily, so it is hard to set aside an area and say we will put certain items in here. We have no knowledge when we will receive more. It may be a day or a month from now. We try to place them so that we can easily lot them up. We may lot these items up today, and maybe a month from now we will have in the same type of items up on another sale.

Mr. COTTER. Do you have a system whereby if you develop some particularly good methods or procedures at this depot that that can be transmitted through the system and made uniform or, conversely, if somebody else has a certain technique some place else can it be made available to you?

Mr. KASTER. Yes, sir. First we have gained a lot of good information by exchanging our invitations and through the cooperation of our legal office here.

General MARSHALL. Exchanging with whom?

Mr. KASTER. Other Government installations. Practically all of them we exchange invitations with. We mail them out for information purposes, and they mail theirs out. In going over them, if we see that they have some good clause in their material we will call it to the attention of our legal division.

We think now that we have a fairly good invitation-to-bid. We have covered practically all the items.

Mr. COTTER. This is within the Army. You don't know about the Navy and Air Force?

Mr. KASTER. No.

General MARSHALL. The disposal action at this depot is under the supervision of the Fifth Army Headquarters. I am responsible to the commanding general, Fifth Army, for this operation. Any interchange of ideas would naturally be, if there were any, within the Fifth Army.

What Mr. Kaster is referring to is interchange of ideas within the area with the other Government agencies, which our legal people work

out.

Mr. COTTER. You do not mean within the Fifth Army area? Mr. KASTER. We do go out of the Fifth Army area, but any ideas. we always present to the Fifth Army through our channels.

Mr. BALWAN. What might be some examples of something you picked up as a result of this interchange? Would it be in the fine print?

Mr. KASTER. No, we do not change the fine print in any way. We get so many of them. We have made so many changes in them.

Mr. BALWAN. What changes have you instituted in better merchandising, in attracting people to come to your sales?

Mr. KASTER. In the manner in which we present our lots. We have a wide bidder list, too. If we have specialized items up for sale we will not only take our bidders that we have in our regular bidder file, but we will go through our Thomas Register.

I am thinking of one particular case on vehicles, which maybe comes once a year, and we will have a few vehicles for sale. We will go through the screen of all of our bidders. Then we will take all of

the local telephone directories that we can find in this immediate area, and we will send an invitation to every car and used-car dealer within this area, even as far as Cincinnati and Indianapolis, hoping to receive bids from them.

Mr. BALWAN. How many men do you have in the disposal shop here?

Mr. KASTER. 59 people. We have 12 graded and 47 ungraded.
Mr. BALWAN. The ungraded work in the warehouse?

Mr. KASTER. That is right, receiving, shipping, storing, segregating, loading out, and loading up.

Mr. BALWAN. How many dollars' worth, in acquisition cost, do you sell a year, do you know?

Mr. KASTER. Offhand, I don't know.

Mr. BALWAN. What is your activity per month?

Mr. KASTER. 8 sales. We have increased it to 8 sales a month.

Mr. BALWAN. You do most of that cataloging yourself?

Mr. KASTER. Yes.

Mr. RIEHLMAN. Do you have any assistants who are qualified to help you?

Mr. KASTER. Yes.

Mr. MORRIS. I think you said you had 19 invitations this year since July 1, whereas last year you had 38 sales for the entire year? Mr. KASTER. That is right.

Mr. RIEHLMAN. Since when was that, now?

Mr. MORRIS. Since July 1, 1953.

Mr. KASTER. We have more people now and we are receiving more property. That is the big difference there. These sales are in addition to our donations, our regular donations.

We have averaged, in the last week or 2, from 15 to 22 trucks a day, that is school trucks and bidder's trucks.

Mr. BALWAN. We noticed in the briefing this morning that the receipts are exceeding your sales.

Mr. KASTER. That is right.

Mr. BALWAN. How will you overcome that?

Mr. KASTER. We will try to increase our sales. This morning we received 4 additional people, which brough us up to 59. We are going to try to increase our sales to 10 or 12 a month.

Maj. ROBERT F. HIGGINS. Our shipments are complicated by another thing. Of course, before the tonnage is moved the sale must be made and the abstract of the bid forwarded, and that has to come back before the tonnage can move.

There is a layover period, and we have got a buildup period. It has taken time to snowball. Once it has caught up, then you will notice an equalizing of your receipts and shipments, but it takes time to build up to that period.

Mr. KASTER. For instance, if you open three sales the last week of the month, you will not receive credit for the shipments going out until the following month.

Mr. COTTER. Who makes the approval?

Mr. KASTER. Anything under $2,000 we can, and anything over $2,000 the Fifth Army approves.

Mr. COTTER. Fifth Army Headquarters?
Mr. KASTER. At Chicago.