From the August 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


In 1985, his son Eddie, a student studying electronics at ITT Technical Institute, lost his right arm in a motorcycle accident. In part, as a way to embark on a new adventure together, father and son — along with Ed Sr.’s brother and sisters — started an electronic salvage reselling company called Sloan Enterprises.

That same year, Ed was introduced to a woman named Wanda through mutual friends. In 1986 they were married and began a very eventful journey together.


For a while, Wanda worked in the business and I remember working with her. She was as nice then as she is now and she was always five steps ahead of you.

Business was humming along, and in early 1987 some friends informed Ed of something that would change everything. There was a GE Medical Systems refurbishment center in Milwaukee shutting down and a huge lot of salvage medical electronics that would soon become available. GE had made an arrangement with the IRS whereby they could receive several million dollars in inventory reduction credit but they would need to physically dispose of the equipment in order to qualify for the credit.

Due to environmental concerns surrounding polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a toxic contaminant found in oil used on electronics, dumping the equipment in a landfill was out of the question. Since Sloan Enterprises had access to the necessary warehouses and trucks to offload the equipment, they cut a deal with GE based on the estimated scrap value of the metal.

“We took a single GE CT 8800, weighed it, made a guess on how much steel, aluminum, copper and other materials were in it,” Ed recalled. “There were 39 CT 8800s that were selling on the market at the time for several hundred thousand dollars each and we paid $2,600 apiece for them.”

All told, Sloan Enterprises purchased 55 truckloads of medical equipment at a price of 18 cents per pound. During the 14 months it took to haul the equipment from Wisconsin to Tennessee, they began hiring individuals familiar with the equipment.

ReMedPar
For those of you who are old enough and have enough gray hair, you remember that there weren't many ISOs back in those days. Some of you remember Datascan, R Squared, Mediq and Medical Systems Support Incorporated (MSSI). These were the original independent service organizations, back when very few people knew what an ISO was. These pioneers needed the parts that Ed had so that they could maintain their systems.

August 2019 Magazine

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