After 60 years, Benz is Pepsi-Co’s longest tenured employee.
Benz came to the U.S. from Germany in 1949 at the age of 25. When he started at Pepsi on Sept. 1, 1952, he didn’t know anything about making pop. At that time, the local branch of the company was in Bismarck. The only flavors were orange and 7UP and Benz remembers mixing the drinks by hand.
“The syrup was below and the water was on top and we had no mixer,” he said.
Since then, Benz has done just about every job at the company, from changing tires to unloading trucks. He still shovels snow from in front of the building when the weather is bad.
“Mike (Benz’s supervisor) never tells me what to do, I just go do it myself,” Benz said.
Benz said he likes to keep the building looking nice and knows he’s the best for the job.
“He takes a lot of pride in his work,” said Mike Hatzenbuhler, product availability manager and Benz’s supervisor.
Benz said he does it so people will come back. That’s also why he likes to buy his coworkers and visitors a pop. Mike Bryant, unit sales manager, estimates Benz has bought about 15,300 bottles of pop for people in his 60 years with the company.
“He buys pop every single day,” Hatzenbuhler said.
Before Pepsi, Benz worked on a farm in Hensler for one year. The house he lived in with his family had no washer, no refrigerator, no heat and they cooked on a wood stove. He said living there was too hard and they moved to Bismarck.
Benz said four different companies asked him to work for them in Bismarck. He said he doesn’t know why so many people wanted him but it was the independent franchise owner, Jim McGurren, who persuaded him. When the company moved from its original location in Bismarck at the corner of Front Avenue and Fifth Street to Mandan in the ’70s, Benz followed.
“I don’t like to change jobs,” he said.
To this day if you were to pour him a Coke, Benz wouldn’t drink it.
“I was a Pepsi guy from day one,” he said.
His first day of work, Benz said he showed up in a striped suit and tie. The company told him to take a week or two to adjust but he said he wanted to start working right away.
Benz made 85 cents per hour when he started with Pepsi, raising four kids on his salary. The company was selling its 7-ounce glass bottles for 5 cents a piece. The company had five brands. Now it has about 500 products, Bryant said.
Though he works far fewer hours now, Benz likes to bring cookies and share stories of his time with the company with his coworkers. He remembers chopping dry ice into pieces with an axe and dropping it into the tanks where the pop was made. About once a month he said he would have to take the tanks apart to clean them.
On the assembly line, Benz said he would have to hold bottles of pop up to the light to inspect them and make sure nothing unwanted got in. He would help load and unload the trucks by hand, moving case by case. When sugar would arrive, he would help unload the 100-pound-sacks, making steps with the bags so they could be stacked to the ceiling in the cramped warehouse.
Benz said he will continue working as long as he’s able. He said McGurren signed a contract with him that guaranteed he would always have a job with the company if he wanted one.
“He’s here as long as he wants,” Bryant said.
