sundance-communications.com Forums Member Forums Phone Booth "trunk slammers"

Why are some of yall hard on "trunk slammers" or how ever you describe a small business owner. Did you guys just jump right into a $500,000+ corporation. Everyone has/had to start somehwere and build their way up.

what the hell is a trunk slammer..........

My wife complains about me being a trunk slammer. She also does not like me slamming the cabinet doors of using all the hot water for my shower.

I started my business 23 years ago. I drove a Mercury Bobcat station wagon and went out every day and pre-wired houses. After about a year my father, who had retired from Bell the same time I got laid off from Bell asked if I would like to get into the business telephone stuff. We went out and started servicing some of his old Bell PBX accounts. We were cash poor. I remeber my first official office. It was 8 foot by 10 foot in the back office of our small town news paper. My first and only spare part was a 400e line card. I had a pager and used the pay phone at the police station to negotiate a deal to become a Thompson Alcatel Opus dealer. In the total 23 years I have been in business, I have had two really good years - 2003 and 2004. In 2002 I missed 18 paycheck. I get them back plus some in 2004. This year so far has been wonderful. I think you will find that anyone here who has been blessed as I have will never forget where they started and how they got where they are now. The reason I am on this board is to learn. I learn something every day from these guys and consider it a blessing that I stumbled over this board. If you feel unrespected by anyone here, I can say from what I have seen, the modertors will deal with it.

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An Opus dealer? I worked for an Opus dealer in the early 80's. Ugliest phones ever.. Hope to never see a Burndee connector again.

I also worked for an Opus dealer in the 80s. It was always scary to try to close strap 2 (with out shorting the others) in order to get into programming. And those burndy connectors- yuck! I had an Opus-80 in a downtown law firm that would occasionally loose its mind and have to be reprogrammed from scratch each time. Oh what fun!

and I've got a few opus phones.

This post was initially about remembeing where you came from, so to speak. Since you guys remember the Opus, you can probably relate to the overall scope of paying your dues. It's kind of like dodging bullets sometimes. I had to fight with Thompson Alcatel to get them to sell me the product without a monthly commitement. They did an auto ship, which included those rediculous non-display phones. I had three of the systems sold before we finally came to terms - I was the only "dealer" in the US. All others were "distributors". Bottom line - no auto shipments. The product worked fine until the warranty ran out and then every power supply went bad, internal memory batteries all died, an Alcatel Exercet missle sank the American ship Stark and Thompson Alcatel packed up and went back to France. No support, no decent spare parts and no customer satisfaction. Then there was the Eagle S-Class, then the ITT Aries, then the BBS. We finally settled on Comdial as our prime line. We started selling it when the original Executech 616 and 1432 came out. We're still Comdial. Have Vodavi Infinite as a side line - mid line. I've never been able to rely on just my products to stay in business.

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It was an exocet missle that hit the USS Stark, but the Stark did not sink! Had it not been for the courage, skill and training of the crew, the ship would have been lost. 37 lives were lost and most while sleeping. I knew half of them and was stationed with several during my career. The USS Stark was our sister ship and we were homeported together in Mayport, Fla. There is a memorial to the Stark and those who died by the Mayport waterfront. Just thought I would clarify a little history.

Following the demise of OPus a little more...In Texas you couldn't give away French products after the France refused to let us fly over French air space for a retaliatory bomb run in Libya. I saw warehouse full of 40-80 systems in Houston. They are probably still there.

That was a while back so I admit I got the details wrong. We just sold some systems to a company who's telecom manager had some friends die in that event. His choice for a new system as dictated by the home office in Germany was either Alcatel OmniPBX or Comdial, which they have already in one location. They bought the Comdial. Feelings are still strong after all these years. It makes me wonder if we would have as much Japanese made phone equipment and electronics if more people buying the stuff had been around during WWII.

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