I worked at a factory that did brass and aluminum forgings. We got an order to make a large number of brass manhole covers. The covers start out as a brass slug 6" in diameter and about 8" long, and are hammered into the 24" round street manhole covers. Each slug weighs 88lbs. The brass arrives in 6" diameter 30' long sticks of brass and the slugs are cut to length with a saw. After the cut, the slugs are put into steel hoppers about 4' x 4' x 4'. The full hopper weighs just over 2,000lbs each.

We came in one morning (at 5 AM) to find the garage door in the receiving area standing open and 4 tubs of the brass slugs were missing. We called the Police and of course, the 1st move the Police did was notify the local scrap yards about the theft. It didn't take very long to solve the case, about 3 miles from the factory, they found a full sized 1 ton GMC panel van broken down along the side of the road. The thieves loaded all 4 tubs of the brass slugs into the back of the van (with the factory's fork lift) and the rear axle on the van had broken from the 8,000lbs of brass loaded into it. The police caught up with the thieves still walking about a mile farther down the road.

What makes the whole story even more funny is that the guy that was in charge the scrapping detail in the saw department couldn't understand why the thieves would have taken the tubs of brass. In his words " What were they thinking? The most they could have gotten out of that stolen brass was about 1/2 its scrap value, how would they have made any money from that?" I asked him what he thought they might have gotten from the brass at 1/2 the scrap value? His reply was "Only about $4,000." Then I asked him how much he thought they had spent to get the brass? " Maybe $100." he answered. Then I asked him how long it took them to break in, load up the van and leave? "Less then an hour" he responded. Then I asked him how long it took him to make $3,900? (This was in the early 1980s). He had this dumbfounded look on his face, so I went back to what I was working on (I was working in factory maintenance at the time). I think it took him more then an hour to understand that an hour's work and maybe $100 out of pocket expense, to put $3900 into your pocket was pretty good money at the time.

And they say thieves are stupid.