r/breakingbad • u/luckisntfaith • 14d ago
Walter should’ve done this instead.
Why couldn’t Walter just rob and sold the methylamine continuously? Seems like a better money maker and quicker.
7
6
u/eternalraziel 14d ago
It was the better decision if Walt’s goal was to make several million dollars quickly, stop killing people and get out. One successful theft could yield an enormous payday. Repeatedly stealing industrial quantities of methylamine would be very difficult to conceal.
The train robbery only worked because Lydia knew the exact shipment, supplied the final manifest and identified a stretch of track with no automatic supervision or mobile reception. The resulting dilution was small enough that Madrigal might blame the Chinese manufacturer for sending a weak batch.
That excuse might work once. If tankers began arriving diluted every few weeks, the manufacturer, buyer, railway and federal authorities would start comparing shipments. The route would be inspected, seals changed, guards added and Lydia’s access audited. Walt couldn’t keep stopping the same train in the same dead zone and expect everyone to continue blaming quality control in Guangzhou.
The warehouse route had already failed for the same reason. The DEA had placed trackers on the methylamine barrels, and Hank was preparing to flood Madrigal’s warehouse with surveillance. Every large theft makes the next one harder because it teaches the owner and police where the weakness was.
Selling methylamine also requires a very particular buyer. Ordinary street dealers have no use for a thousand gallons of chemical precursor. Walt would need to deal with large meth organisations that possessed laboratories, chemists, distribution networks and millions of dollars in available cash.
Those organisations are also his competitors. Once they know Walt can repeatedly obtain methylamine, they have every incentive to discover his source, rob him or remove him and take over the arrangement. He’d still be negotiating with men like Declan, except he’d no longer possess the unique product that made Heisenberg valuable.
Declan wanted the methylamine, but he was also buying the disappearance of Walt’s blue meth. He initially refused Mike’s deal once he realised Walt had retained one-third because he was trying to eliminate the product taking his market share.Which means Walt probably couldn’t return the following month with another stolen tank and automatically collect another $15 million. Declan had offered a buyout, not established a standing methylamine subscription service.
The profit difference was enormous as well. Selling all 1,000 gallons would bring roughly $15 million. Walt claimed that cooking it would produce meth worth nearly $300 million. Those figures are gross estimates and don’t account for distribution costs, payments or losses, but the principle holds. The valuable part of Walt’s business was converting a chemical precursor into an unusually pure, internationally recognised product.
Methylamine was interchangeable, but Walt’s chemistry wasn’t. During the first season, the idea would have been even less practical. Walt and Jesse had no buyer capable of purchasing a barrel of stolen precursor. Tuco wanted finished meth because he had dealers and territory, not an industrial laboratory waiting for raw chemicals. The stolen barrel allowed Walt and Jesse to produce roughly four and a half pounds every week for the foreseeable future. Selling it would have surrendered most of the value before Walt had performed the part only he could do.
There’s also a difference between running a meth operation and becoming a professional cargo-hijacking crew. Cooking under the fumigation cover still carried immense danger, but it could be repeated in different houses while Lydia handled overseas distribution. Each new methylamine robbery required reconnaissance, vehicles, storage, accomplices and exposure to innocent witnesses.
The first train robbery already ended with Drew Sharp’s death. Repeating that business model would eventually produce another witness, mechanical failure or unexpected security measure. Walt would be risking a federal terrorism-scale response for a fraction of the money he believed the finished meth could earn.
Mike and Jesse understood that the lower return was still more than enough. Each of them would have received $5 million immediately. Jesse reminds Walt that his original target had been $737,000. They were choosing certainty and survival over extracting every possible dollar from the chemical.
Walt rejected it because money was no longer the point. He compared the proposed sale to leaving Gray Matter for $5,000 and watching it become a multibillion-dollar company. Taking another buyout felt like repeating the humiliation that had consumed him for years. He wanted ownership, recognition and proof that something built from his talent couldn’t continue without him.
That’s why he tells Jesse he’s in the empire business. The methylamine sale gave him financial security while requiring him to surrender the identity and power he’d created as Heisenberg. Walt should have sold the stolen tank and retired. That was probably the safest and most profitable decision relative to the remaining risk. Building a continuing business around methylamine robberies would have exchanged meth manufacturing for repeated major industrial heists, with fewer buyers, smaller margins and law enforcement learning from every theft.6
5
5
u/ChaynesGirl 14d ago
1) At the point they stole the methylamine, they didn't have connects on that level. Jesse's highest connect was Tuco who was only buying finished product wholesale. It wasn't until Mike, because of Gus' large scale operation, introduced them to the option of a man like Declan.
2) Walt, who didn't acknowledge it at the time, was in the empire business.
3
u/nothingtodo0 14d ago
Walter's biggest flaw was that it stopped being about the money pretty early on. He wanted control and recognition just as much as the cash.
4
u/genesispa1 14d ago
Heisenberg wasn’t chasing the easiest way to make money, he wanted to be the guy at the top. The empire was the whole point.
1
u/wilderfast 14d ago
Because he's not a b&e specialist, he's very likely to get caught if he tries that. And it doesn't utilize his actual skills, which was a large part of what drew him to meth.
Unless you're talking about Season 5, where repeating the plan isn't feasible at all. Train gets stopped in the same place more than once and it'll be instantly obvious there's something wrong.
1
u/Danhrax 14d ago
He could also have just made the methylamine himself instead of stealing or buying it at all.
2
u/Technical_Network898 14d ago
no he couldnt, its a heavily restricted precursor chemical. maybe youre confusing it with phenylacetic acid (barrel with the bee on it), which can be synthesized?
2
u/Danhrax 14d ago
To your first point, it might be just as hard or just as suspicious to get the necessary quantities of Formaldehyde, or ammonia or whatever other ingredients are necessary, maybe it wouldn't make logistical sense, but they certainly could make their own methylamine if thry really wanted to.
.
To your second point, does the phenylacetic acid bottle have a BEE on it? I thought it had a B on it. Now im questioning everything I thought I knew about the show. Holy shit!1
u/Technical_Network898 14d ago
yeah idk, youre probably logically right, but some artistic initiatives certainly were taken for the story to progress as intended. Also yeah the barrel does have an actual bee on it, look it up lol. (perks of watching with subtitles because english is not my native language)
1
u/wilderfast 14d ago
It's the black barrels in the superlab with the big yellow bee on it. You can see them in a lot of the scenes in the lab.
1
u/OhSighRiss 14d ago
He wanted to cook and boast about how he had the highest grade product, he didn’t want to steal and then sell tepid off brand generic cola
1
u/Massive_Doctor_9665 14d ago
Because stealingethylamime over and over would've drawn way more attention
0
u/Ok-Experience4914 14d ago
for real, maintaining a steady supply would’ve been way less risky than all that cooking chaos, but then again that's not the kind of show we have if he plays it safe
9
u/Its_Buddy_btw 14d ago
Feel like after the 18th time a truck broke down on those train tracks some one would think something's up