Apologies if you've gone over this elsewhere, I could only find information on the daily life of low ranking soldiers.

Anyway, my question is: what would the day-to-day live of a capo involve? How involved are they in devising money making schemes? Are they purely involved in delegating the work and passing the money back to the administration, or is it a lot more hands on? I'm guessing it probably varies crew to crew, right?

Great forum by the way guys. Apologies for my newbie messages - I'm just really interested in the structure, organisation and day to day business of the mafia, and you guys know so much!

They are definitely hands on. They can have over 20 guys in their crew and are responsible for all of them. They are promoted to Captain because they've shown they are capable of earning money as Soldiers. Simply collecting money from their crew isn't enough. They need to come up with schemes and oversea all rackets their crew runs. A Boss judges a Captain based on how much he money he kicks up, so a hands off, "just let my men kick up to me" approach isn't wise.

there a mix of a soldier and a boss

A Capo is like a pimp.He has a group of soldiers and they are all making money for him on the streets,and after that he kicks up to the boss.If some1 from the crew has a problem with another crew,usualy both capo's are havin a sit down to solve the problem.

wouldn't have used the pimp term but kinda sums it up

Yes youre right bout the "pimp" word,but i thought it would be the best word to describe the relation

So a capo is basically a top regional manager for the mob. He works on commission and the more money he makes for his business, the more respected he becomes.

Similiar to how top sales guys for businesses go around and bring in new business for their company. Their main job is to gain new distributors and accounts for their company that bring in steady income and help it grow.

I think Goodfellas does a good job of showing what a Capo does through Paulie. It doesn't seem like he's creating much work so much as overseeing it and managing it. But of course in Donnie Brasco when Sonny Black got promoted to Capo, he seemed to be more hands on involved in actually scheming. So maybe there's no set rules other than kick up a lot of $$$

If you think about it , a good businessman is simliar to a capo. Its basically the same job really. The only difference is that the businessman is involved in legal activities and you don't put a hit out on someone if they fuck you over.

I think so ... Management is key...

Exactly. The better Captains create rackets as well as manage his crew. Everyone makes more money and the Captain gains influence/power.