Counting On It Groups Work On Firm’s Inventory To Help Pay For Their Activities

Sun., March 9, 1997

Virginia De Leon Staff writer

No one went home cross-eyed.

Five hours of counting nuts, bolts and engine parts - 25,000 pieces in all - was tedious work Saturday for 190 people at the Western States Equipment warehouse.

But the grind meant money - money to spend at Pilgrim Lutheran Church and Christian Heritage School; money to buy meat for the Eagles Travel Club’s camping trips; money to finance the senior party this June for University High School students.

“Everyone looks forward to the inventory,” said Muriel Eickstadt, an Eagles member. “You wear your oldest shoes, your grubbiest clothes and all you do is count.”

For the last 10 years, Western States Equipment, a tractor dealer, has hired outside help to do its annual inventory. They pay members of church groups and other organizations $5 an hour to count fan belts, gaskets, cotter pins - thousands of pieces worth $3.5 million, said David A. Leder, the company’s shipping foreman and inventory control analyst.

In three large warehouses, the nearly 200 “counters” made their way through rows of machine parts packed in yellow boxes and stacked on 7-foot-tall shelves.

They worked in pairs: While one counted the used tractor parts, the other wrote the figure down on a piece of paper. Another pair later double-checked the numbers before they were typed into the computer.

“We’re all going to have vision problems,” joked Marilyn Grove, a mother of a University High School student, as her fingers separated a mound of pins into groups of 10. “But it’s a bonding thing.”

For Western States employees, the annual inventory count makes their jobs easier - no longer do they have to work overtime to make sure the computer data match the actual number of parts in the warehouses.

For various schools and organizations, it’s a profitable fund-raiser. The Eagles, for example, made about $1,700 last year, Eickstadt said.

Work started early. At 12:30 a.m. Saturday, Western States employees started printing out parts information on nearly 2,000 pieces of paper. Counters arrived at 6:30 a.m. Except for a 20-minute break for coffee and doughnuts, they counted nonstop - some out loud as their fingers became blackened with grease from the parts.

“This is excellent,” said Barb Clarkson, who drives from Cranbrook, B.C., every year to count with fellow Eagles members. “It’s dirty but fun.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos

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