Where's the Beef?

There are people who will tell you that a certain triangle of ocean around Bermuda is a magical place where items tend to mysteriously disappear. Hogwash, I say. If there's a spot on this planet where you're likely to lose things, it's Denver.

In the late 1980s, I worked as an independent ad-sales rep for a Minneapolis-based publication serving the cattle industry. About this time, I started helping the company show its magazine, Beef, at a pair of back-to-back trade shows in Colorado's capital city. For both shows, we had the magazines shipped in boxes to our hotel so we could take a supply to the show we'd be at that particular day. In addition to distributing copies in our 10-by-10-foot booth spaces at both the National Western Stock Show and the International Western/English Apparel & Equipment Market, we'd walk both shows handing copies to potential advertisers or other movers and shakers in the cattle industry.

While the shows represented a veritable herd of potential readers and advertisers for the publication, actually getting the magazines to the show sites proved to be a tricky venture. Year after year the boxes of magazines we'd ship to our hotel - properly addressed and sent at the appropriate time before the show - would mysteriously vanish somewhere in the greater Denver area.

In our first year at the shows, the magazines never arrived in time for the apparel and equipment event. So a lone copy I'd scrounged up made the rounds to potential advertisers while we took business cards at the booth and sent issues to attendees after the show. Not until the stock show did we have our full complement of Beef to hand out to attendees.

The next year, the magazines - in boxes with the word "Beef" printed on the sides - were delivered to our hotel, but could not be found by front-desk personnel. After the desk clerk made a few calls, the catering manager showed up wanting to know how big of a party we planned to throw.

While he was thrilled we would be using the hotel's ballroom for an event, he wanted to know why we'd shipped our own steaks to the hotel for our soiree. After all, the hotel's freezers were full of boxes labeled "Beef." After a laugh, I explained that his kitchen freezers held about 3,000 chilled issues of our magazine, as opposed to a main course.

But perhaps the worst experience of all came in the early 1990s. By this time, we were used to having to track down issues of Beef for the show. So before I set off for Denver, I made a bet (loser bought coffee) with my co-workers, Paul and Bill, on whether the magazines would be at the hotel as planned. We arrived early the day before the show and discovered that our magazines, once again, were not at the hotel. So I bought Paul and Bill their coffee, and we began trying to track down our issues of Beef.

Our first order of business was to call our printers - the magazines had shipped directly from the press house - to make sure the boxes had been addressed to the right place. Once we were assured the boxes had been addressed correctly, we put our Minneapolis office on point for working with the shipping company to determine where along the route our boxes had been held up. After some waiting, the Minneapolis folks called to let us know the magazines were in a storage warehouse about 40 miles outside of Denver.

While we were glad to have found the missing magazines, we soon discovered another, more pressing problem. The shipping company had dropped the copies of Beef at the storage warehouse and, for reasons never properly explained, had no plans to get the boxes to the hotel in time for the show, which opened at 9 a.m.

The rep told us we could pick up the boxes ourselves, but the storage facility closed at 5 p.m., just a few hours away. Making matters worse, with a total of more than 3,000 magazines, we needed to transport 45 boxes from this remote site to our hotel, and we needed to get started fast if we were to make this happen. None of us liked the idea of starting the show without our magazines again, so we decided to haul the boxes to the hotel ourselves.

Fortunately, both Paul and I had driven our own cars to Denver that year. However, we both drove compact cars, meaning it would take us two trips back and forth to the warehouse to pick up all the boxes by 5 p.m.

Since these were the days before Mapquest or GPS navigation in cars, Paul called the warehouse and got directions. But not wanting to take any chances, he also stopped at a service station and picked up a map of Denver and the surrounding area.

Using the directions and the map, Paul figured out the best route to the warehouse, and we hit the road. It was already the middle of the afternoon when we found the location. Since loading boxes into people's cars was not in the warehouse workers' job descriptions, Paul and I had to cart the heavy boxes to our cars and load them up by ourselves. Packed from floor to ceiling with boxes, our poor little autos scraped over railroad tracks and bumpy roads all the way back to the hotel. We unloaded the boxes as fast as we could and then hit the road for round two.

Now knowing the route a bit better, we again raced out of Denver bound for the remote warehouse, arriving with just enough time to load the remaining boxes and leave before the workers locked the gates for the night.

Our heavily laden little cars lumbered back to the hotel, and Bill helped us unload our final stack of boxes into our hotel rooms. We placed another bet for the next year, wagering that for once, all would go according to plan, and our copies of Beef would arrive on time.

Oddly enough, we received our 3,000 magazines on time at the hotel the following year. However, through some error we received several thousand additional copies that were meant for other destinations. Paul's hotel room was literally filled with boxes of magazines with just a path between towers of cardboard to get to the bed and bathroom. In what little spare time we had, we spent the next few days addressing labels, arranging for UPS pickup, and carting boxes to the front desk for shipment. Once again, as we worked to fix the mistake, I bought the coffee.

By the mid-1990s, we finally ironed out the problems in getting Beef to the shows. But each year I arrive in Denver ready to fix whatever problem may arise. And, of course, I have to spring for the coffee if something goes awry.

- Jan Ford, independent advertising sales representative, H&P Co. Inc., Oklahoma City