In Iowa: A Wizard of Odds and Ends

By Barry Hillenbrand

Tom Roller's warehouse is a monument to bureaucratic bumbling. A stroll through it stirs up visions of shattered, best-forgotten programs for the public good, and the rise and fall of federal agencies. Of course Roller doesn't see it that way. He prefers to think of his 12,000-sq.-ft. warehouse on the Iowa state fairground in Des Moines as the U.S. Government's very own garage sale.

Roller operates the warehouse for the surplus property division of Iowa's department of general services for the benefit of some 1,500 public agencies in Iowa. A beneficent act of Congress requires that federal excess property be offered to state and local agencies, virtually free of charge, before it is put on public auction. That means before all those cigar-chomping characters who excel at turning a profit from reselling Government castoffs can lay hands on it.

At first glance the warehouse, with its mounds of gas-mask bags, ponchos, entrenching tools, field jackets, might be confused with some kind of Army-Navy store. Over the past few years Roller has acquired enough military surplus to equip the national guard of a modest-size Central American dictatorship. G.I. helmets and uniforms, for instance, are much in demand as props for high school drama departments.

Almost routinely, Roller has become arms dealer for the "Cedar Rapids Air Force." He has snagged four UH-1B helicopters for medical evacuation use by the city. Two fly; the others are being cannibalized for spare parts. List price for these helicopters: about $250,000 each. They cost Cedar Rapids only $10,000, for repair and refitting. In addition, Roller has provided 17 two-seater Hughes TH-55 helicopters, some without engines, others near wrecks. Four operable craft have risen, phoenix-like, from the wrecks of the 17.

But, Roller says, "when you think of Army surplus, you think of only a fraction of what the Federal Government generates." Roaming his domain, Roller glows as he handles a 400-ft. roll of computer paper. "These are neat," he says. "Schools can use them for drawing paper."

There are rows and rows of red and orange desk calendars, nameplate holders, In and Out boxes. "Somebody in the Government thought they'd brighten up offices with these things," explains Roller. "Now we are brightening up county clerks' offices in Iowa." County clerks are abandoning their 1917 Remingtons for the reconditioned electric typewriters that line the shelves of the warehouse. Roller regularly sends a truck to Washington, D.C., where "quite serviceable typewriters" can be obtained for Iowa agencies at between $50 and $75 (list cost when new: $200 and up).

Modern Government does not run on military and office equipment alone. Through the warehouse come potter's wheels, musical instruments, looms, stretchers, record players, 50-lb. boxes of nails, humidity gauges, bottles of chemicals, screwdrivers and pliers of every shape and size, salt-tablet dispensers, ear slugs, potato peelers, X-ray film projectors, buckets of paint, faucets, even 59 forceps for delivering babies.

Part of the warehouse looks like a display at a machine-tool convention. Enormous lathes, tool grinders and milling machines stand side by side. Some are rejects, for reasons only a machinist--or a bureaucrat--could appreciate. Many come from "the Cave," an 80-acre underground federal storage facility near Atchison, Kans., where machine tools that would be needed to turn out artillery in the event of war are stockpiled.

To screen the federal discards, Roller and his counterparts in other states make the rounds of places like the Cave, known in bureaucratese as "generating points." To keep the states from squabbling over the spoils like so many relatives over an inheritance, Washington gives each state a yearly "entitlement" (Iowa's is $3.2 million), against which a few "reportable" items (meaning sizable or obviously useful things like cars and bulldozers) are charged at the original cost of the item to the Federal Government. "Nonreportable" items (meaning junk like printed circuit boards) are free. Well, almost. The states must pay for the item's transport, storage and handling.

Bizarre items spill out of Roller's warehouse. Some are shrouded with yellow tarps. Others reflect the sun. All give the impression of a sprawling museum of found art: barely used pizza ovens from an abandoned Army base, food service carts, compressors, Jeep engines packed for shipment, crates filled with 560 brand-new D-handle shovels, cargo trailers, a hay baler, a 400-amp. welder unit, manhole covers from missile silos, even a U.S. Navy recruiting truck decorated in Day-Glo colors, relic of a failed attempt to entice counterculture youths to "Go Navy."

"It's sometimes hard to tell the junk from what will move," says Roller, "but all you need is a little imagination to turn junk into hot items." He runs his operation like a small businessman. In search of hot items, he scans stacks of computer print-outs of Government inventories. It was there that Roller found one of his recent coups, 135 fancy uniforms for the White House guards commissioned in 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon and heavily reminiscent of Sigmund Romberg musicals. This fall 33 of the gold-braided tunics and black vinyl hats are proudly stepping out with the marching band of the Meriden Cleghorn high school.

Many of Roller's acquisitions never pass through the warehouse at all. Those two herds of dairy cattle, totaling 65 head that went straight to the School of Veterinary Medicine of Iowa State University at Ames. The first herd, 27 black-and-white Holsteins, arrived from an Environmental Protection Agency project in Nevada with a special bonus not mentioned in the computer printout: twelve of the cows were going to calve.

Roller has learned that one cannot always judge a hunk of Government property by its computer printout. What was listed by the Air Force as four air conditioners in scrap condition turned out to be four burned-out air conditioners used for cooling Strategic Air Command bombers on the runway. But the useless air conditioners happened to be bolted to four mint-condition International Harvester one-ton trucks, each with fewer than 3,000 miles on the odometer.

Roller's piece de resistance is a 227-ft.-long, 85-ft.-wide paddle-wheel riverboat, the William M. Black. The boat, with two 800-h.p. steam engines, 25-ft. paddle-wheels, and 68-ft.-tall smokestacks (hinged for going under bridges), cost the U.S. Government $680,000 when it was built in 1934. It was named after a chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, and for 40 years the corps used it to dredge the Missouri River. Now the boat is worth at least $5 million. Roller waged an intense bureaucratic battle to win the William Black for the Dubuque County Historical Society to use as a museum. Even after the Black had been awarded to a town in Missouri, he persisted. "It was a splendid fight," Roller recalls, beaming like a schoolboy who has just won the debating prize. "I loved every minute of it."

"Basically," Roller says, "I recycle tax money, and that benefits us all." At 32, he is clearly wild about his job. He is also flexible, inventive, full of good humor and patience: a most unbureaucratic bureaucrat. The incongruities of federal purchasing policies are not lost on Roller, but he declines to talk critically about the waste and madness he sees. Says he with a grin: "You don't throw golden eggs at the goose that lays them."

Roller's knack for hatching those golden eggs is becoming widely known. The Iowa department of public safety called recently to find out if he might possibly have some item in the warehouse that could serve as an autopsy table. No problem. Roller just happened to have the genuine item in stock. "But I knew that I had really arrived," he adds, "when the National Guard called asking for a Jeep. I mean, those are the guys who are supposed to have the Jeeps in the first place."

Some items are a lot more difficult to get from the Feds than others. "Everybody wants a road grader," explains Roller. "Hospitals are always looking for emergency generators, so they are hard to come by too." But sooner or later, he contends, the Federal Government will spit out everything that has ever been made. Everything? "Sure," says Roller easily. "I once saw a nuclear reactor offered in a listing."

--By Barry Hillenbrand

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