If you need anything for your job, the salvage area should be the first place you look. A visit to Salvage (Bldg. 28) reveals new treasures on a daily basis, and you never know what you might find.

"We get a lot of unusual items. I am never surprised, because I have seen everything come through here at one time or another," said Alan Conrad, Assistant Property Manager for 13 years. "The running joke is that when engineers start to see materials they built 25 years ago showing up here, it can be a good indication that it’s almost time for retirement."

Alphonso Jones, Alan Conrad and Ed Dumaop, shown left to right, move a diesel powered generator in the SLAC Salvage yard. (Photo by Joni White)

Salvage saves the Lab money by making it possible to reuse many supplies and materials. They are also able to generate money for the Lab’s general fund in a couple of ways: through sales of recyclable metals such as copper, aluminum, brass and stainless steel, and through a relatively new profit center for Salvage, sales of the old DOE government vehicles on the Web (http://www.bid4assets.com/).

During FY02, SLAC unloaded some 22 vehicles through this Web site, and made about $20,000. Leslie Normandin, Property Manager, says she feels the internet vehicle sales have been fairly successful, with the average sale returning 17 percent of the original acquisition cost.

Regular shoppers at Salvage know that fresh inventory items are added daily. Reuse at SLAC is the primary goal for equipment and materials, so an in-house excess list and a property utilization catalog of items currently available was recently added to the Web site (http://www-bis.slac.stanford.edu/main/salvage.asp).

You can view all items or search by various categories, and even see photos of many items.

If you think an item assigned to you is no longer needed or usable, contact Salvage (Ext. 2329) to arrange for pick-up. You must submit a form prior to transferring any item to Salvage. Occupational Health Physics (OHP) will need to survey and sign off on all material/equipment going to Salvage. If it is something that has little likelihood of being used again on-site, it will be offered to other government agencies. Many pieces of equipment have gone to local, city and state government offices at no charge. These agencies are able to reuse excess equipment by paying only shipping costs.

If the item is not suitable for reuse at SLAC or by other agencies, it can then be offered for sale at SLAC, or for donation to a school or non-profit agency.

The value of having a Salvage Department is understood by anyone who has had occasion to use their services, whether for temporary warehouse storage space, or by a researcher who is on a budget and may need to build a sample prototype. "Research groups do a lot of shopping here," Conrad said, "They come here and try to find what they need."