They ask you these question that you can't answer. I get asked ten
thousand times a day,
How 'bout the buy out? Are they going
to buy it out? It's just so unpredictable you don't know what
to say anymore. You don't hardly know if you're going to be operating
next year. I don't know. It's gotten down to that point now, to where
you don't really know
Page 19 if you're going to be here
next year. Even if the warehouse is going to be open. I've got friends
of mine that were in business for forty and over night they were out of
business. Gone! The warehouse just closed!
It's stressful. Maybe the farmers are a little more uptight. Worried . .
. Used to, maybe it was more laid back, more happier. Everything was a
lot more secure. Tobacco was selling good. Now, if tobacco don't do
good, you're almost . . . I mean corn's nothing, $2.00 a bushel. Soy
beans? There is nothing to make any money on anymore but tobacco.
In the '50s corn was $5.00 a bushel, maybe a man could make a little
money on corn. But now there's no money on anything but tobacco. There's
nothing that can make the money that tobacco does.
But as far as the relationship with them, I don't see them that much no
more. It's a lot of phone talk and a lot of Nextel talking. A lot of
people bringing their tobacco to the warehouse and talk for them. I just
know . . . They got cards they have to put it on. And about the only
time we talk is when they say, Put this on card number
so-and-so. Or whatever.
Used to, everybody would bring their own personal tobacco to the
warehouse on their own personal truck and come to the sale their self
and stay and wait and get their check, but it's just not that way
anymore. So that took away from the, maybe the one-on-one personal
service. That's about all the warehouse had to sell, was personal
service. And then try and convince them that you were the highest price
in the East. But personal service, like Get you off fast.
Get you out of the warehouse.
I built a new warehouse in 1997 with all that in mind. Modern, state of
the art. A beautiful warehouse. I always wanted big 20 foot doors, where
you could get a truck in and not worry about it scraping the door. And I
built me big 20 foot doors, 20 foot high and I put me a 80 foot trolley
in it with a quick unloading system that weighed the sheets hanging the
air. Bought balers and things like that. With in mind of when you came,
you came to a facility where you were in and out and gone. Where you'd
know what was happening