"Stephan in Burlington" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 2 Apr 2005 18:45:31 -0700, while the Captain of the mv
Perfecto was guiding her to her next port, "Matt Barrow"
wrote:

And just how do they manage to "Supply" the company without working out a
deal?


But if they do 100 of those $ 4 billion deals a year, that means they
buy $ 400 billion of merchandise, yet their annual sales last year
were only $ 285 billion.

I didn't say (IIRC) they did them ANNUALLY, but they do a load of long term
deals with vendors which is how they manage to get great deals over the long
term.

Also, there was a interesting write-up about Wal-Mart's flight operations a
couple years ago in Professional Pilot (?) on how ANYONE in the company can
book a seat on theri aircraft (of which they have something like a couple
dozen that fly everyday.

Of course, Walton made his company by visiting every single store annually
(when they had something like 700), using his Cessna 421 (?) and he flew up
until his cancer made it unfeasible for him to fly any more.

When he finally stopped flying (just a few months before his death) he had
amassed soemthing like 8000 hours...all of it from the left seat.