Dad worked for a firm that made tantalum capacitors, and one day the truck carrying the raw metal was hit by a train on the way to their plant. Tantalum prices

Dad worked for a firm that made tantalum capacitors, and one day the truck carrying the raw metal was hit by a train on the way to their plant. Tantalum prices being the way they were, they had the workers out there along the tracks picking up the chunks of metal from the weeds, collecting the pieces in plastic bins. It was sent back to the smelter to be reprocessed, but the temporary shortage caused real problems with their delivery schedules.