HWI / Do it Best Corp. 05.22.15

 

            This article may be a little history, and a memory or two.

It seems that Do it Best Corp. is celebrating 70 years in business this June, way to go DIB!

 

            A few years ago (1971) I went to work for HWI. As it turned out, I was one of the few initial Cape employees that had actually worked in a warehouse. I remember my first day at HWI, after completing the new employee paper work, the manager asked if I would go help an employee who had been working on a shipment of pipe fittings for 2 days. I was told that Mike was in the back of the building. I found Mike and told him I was sent to help him.

            Mike explained that he had been working on this for two days and it was all messed up. I looked his work over and said, “We need to start over”. Mike almost panicked, as I wanted to erase everything he had done.

            In those days the receiver had paper copies of the PO with the packing list and freight bill attached. The checker would use hash marks on the PO, above each line item checked, to indicate how many he had checked. I erased all the hash marks from about a ten page PO.

            Then, I unknowingly, began to teach Mike how to properly check a truck load shipment. We went to the first pallet and check in each carton, identifying them with location numbers. Then I asked Mike to move the pallet away from the checking area (once moved we will not attempt to check the same items twice which Mike had previously done).

            We went to the second pallet and checked it, then moved it away. It took about 2 hours for us to correctly check and move the shipment.

 

            I started with HWI in June of 1971. I was called to start on the first day of June but being in the National Guard I had a two week summer training to go to. I started Jun 14^th, 1971.

            HWI celebrated their 25^th anniversary in 1971 and I will post a photo of the item presented to each employee and their guest at the profit sharing meeting. I don’t remember the exact amount of my first profit sharing check but it was about $2.00. Not bad for two weeks work.

            Looking at the photo of the gift, you may notice that the dates are 1946 to 1971 which equals 25 years in business.

            Time passes quickly when you are having fun and another 25 years passed. HWI celebrated again, this time it was the 50^th anniversary and the photo below is of a Coke bottle that was given as a keep sake, or one could just drink the soda. 

            If you will allow me to point out something, the dates on the Coke are 1945 to 1995. At some point the beginning date of HWI moved from 1946 to 1945.

 

            I also have a knife celebrating the 50^th anniversary, I am not sure if it was given to me or if I purchased it, but I believe it was the latter. I noticed it is numbered and it is 0076.

 

I look forward to the 70^th celebration.

 

* Odd the 7 in 70^th looks like the way I write an F as in Ford.

Don Ford