Airlines Buying Surplus Goods?

I’m a season ticket holder for the Minnesota Twins Baseball team.  Despite my ridiculous travel schedule, I do manage to squeeze in my share of ball games.  Something has bothered me since I was a little kid and I went to my first “give-away” game.  Let’s say its “Hat Night” and the hats are sponsored by Dairy Queen; does Dairy Queen really have to blaze their logo on the hat?  Sure it’s a Twins cap, but from the rear it appears to be a Dairy Queen hat.  If I’d wanted a DQ hat, I’d have gone to DQ.  The same holds true of my Minnesota Lottery / Twins coffee mug.  It’s a nice mug, but I don’t play the lottery.  The only souvenir I enjoy from any Twins game is the precious, unspoiled purity of my Kirby Puckett bobble-head doll.

On a recent United Airlines flight this week to San Diego, my friend Donna swore to me that the drink service came with napkins that had the American Airlines log on them. So it would appear that the airlines are buying surplus goods and amenities from the production warehouse stores and I’m sure it’s under the umbrella of “saving money.”

Now, I’m no expert on the quantities of goods needed, etc, but I guess I would certainly empathize with the buyer if he was told to “get ten million beverage napkins!”  When the storehouse manager says, “Say… I can cut you a deal on some surplus napkins I have.  You’d save $75,000 but there’s a teensie-weensie little problem; your competition’s logo is printed all over them.  Will that be a problem?”

I doubt this extra savings will be passed along to the rest of us, anytime soon, and it still intrigues me a bit to see capitalism work this way.  What’s next?  Will my next Ford rental car have Toyota cupholders?

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