Photo By Jeffrey Landenberger | As retail salesman, traveling auctioneer and scrap sales manager, 35-year DLA employee...... read more read more
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PHILADELPHIA — Greg Ortiz, one of a handful of remaining certified auctioneers still with the Defense Logistics Agency, will depart DLA Disposition Services in June, taking memories, experience and a worn auctioneer’s gavel with him.
An agency employee since 1977 and the long-tenured scrap sales manager, Ortiz spent the first half of his career at Fort Hood, Texas, where he first operated a retail sales store, selling everything from clothes to appliances and horses to the public. In 1986, he became Texas’ de-facto traveling auctioneer for DLA and began traveling heavily in support of the sales mission.
“We had an auction every week (at Hood), and then, in between, I’d drive down to San Antonio,” Ortiz said.
He also called auctions in other sites, sometimes selling every item in the office he was working in, including the chair he was sitting on.
“I couldn’t tell you the number of auctions I called, but it was a lot of them,” he said. “You can tell by looking at that hammer, it’s wore out.”
It’s a wonder his vocal cords aren’t worn-out as well, with all those years of calling out sales with the loud, motor-mouthed delivery style auctioneers are known for.
“It does go pretty fast,” Ortiz said. “When you’ve got 300 items, you can’t take all day.”
Ortiz cited travel and training opportunities, and coworker and customer relationships as the reasons he stayed with DLA for the past 35 years.
“You have personal interactions with all these customers,” Ortiz said, “and they’re still in the scrap business, and it’s not, ‘Sir,’ anymore, you know them by nickname. That’s very rewarding.”
| Date Taken: | 05.25.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 06.26.2012 13:11 |
| Story ID: | 90622 |
| Location: | PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, US |
| Web Views: | 18 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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