That statement is only good after the fact. If the truckers you are not moving, they are not making money.
I usually agree/like everything you post, but I have to agree with Beanscoot's ***essment for the boring bar set-up, its downright dangerous even if it has worked for a long time. I only want to point this out because I know there will be some "home taught/learn" machinists out there and they need to be aware that this set up is all wrong. It may work fine taking minimal cuts on an aluminum housing, but put a piece of steel in the lathe and try to use a set up like that and someone is asking for trouble. The bar is plenty strong enough, but that length gives it a lot of leverage against the holding "fixture (?)". It would not only be easy for it to grab and overpower the holding fixture, but easy to move slightly and cut the wrong size. That is a good size lathe that is being used, and I guarantee that it has the power to do these things. A boring bar at the very least should be moved back so it only sticks out far enough to p*** thru whatever is being bored. Thats how you get rigidity, and accuracy. If he went ahead and machined the boring bar flat for most of its length, he could do that. Again, not trying to cast aspersions, just don't want to see anyone get hurt because they think this is a proper way to set up a boring bar.
Good junk yards around us have disappeared with the cost of s**** hitting record amounts years ago . Not only the cars being s****ped but machinery raw materials as well. Also redevelopment with housing and business have taken a few of our last vintage yards and some great ones . As a manufacturer for many years materials has always been a issue. We would order 6 months ahead with no POs but speculation of receiving a order. This was based on history and statistics of customers projects and sales . When JIT was implemented in the 1990s that changed a lot of thinking . It also put the buck on our back and books in which we had to carry much more inventory . We no longer got large POs but small ones with long delivery dates. The customer could bring in more product and move in dates. That JIT (just in time) over the years left us with unwanted materials and s**** obsolete parts due to materials or design change. We changed our thinking and do the same as our customer a version of JIT. This works good if the supply chain isn’t interrupted. With lead time of 2 3 4 or even 8 months out a lot can happen. With 90 % of alloy metals coming from over seas transportation becomes a factor as well. There was a commercial on TV many years ago about a cheap automotive plastic part that was .50 cents. It said with out this cheap part your car wouldn’t work . I don’t remember what the point of the tv ad was and maybe someone else remembers it That’s interesting and disturbing as how critical the supply chain was back then and now. I was looking to get a new set of tires for the 1932 ,big and littles but they only had odd sizes . I have been checking for about a year now and still no luck on a set.
I haven't bought from Coker in over 20 years (Usually use WWW) & have been very happy with Diamond Back - never had a problem with the last 5 sets (4 WWW & 1 smooth sidewalls). Purchased these last year & received with in 10 days. This is the last one for me, be 80 on tax day & arthritis keeps coming to places I never knew it could.
People and companies get caught up in ideas and think it must be right because all the big guys are doing it. My last employer was a weapon systems manufacturer. They used to use the excuse that it costs too much to store and inventory excess inventory. Of course they knew the gov would cover the cost of ordering things again. As an example, we had a small part that was about 1" square sheetmetal with a dimple in the center like an Xmas ornament. Now, if we ordered 1 of them, they cost us $135 ea. The supplier had to buy a full sheet of steel, perform a set up and then make 1 part (which they didn't do). When they set up, they ran the whole sheet and tossed the extras in a drawer. From then on, it was free money. If I ordered 1=$135.......10=$13.50 ea..........and 100 cost us $1.35 ea (It wasn't exact but you get the idea) This was true also with expensive items. Another item was $10,000 each and only one supplier made them with about a 6 month lead time. I was made aware of the fact that most of the old ones were getting beyond repair and we should look into getting NEW ones. Our parent company was ordering them one at a time. I contacted the supplier company and talked to the owner and told him that I could not buy 25 of them on one order (no justification yet). I made an agreement with him that he would require a "minimum buy" of 5 on any order I placed, and I guaranteed him that I would place at least 5 orders in the next 2 months. By the end of the 2 months 25 were on order, and another customer wanted 10 more. First customer wanted to keep all 25, but a little talking and they agreed to share......and I got 10 more on order. Forgot to mention that by buying 25, I got them for $2750 ea. So 35 X $10,000= $350,000 35 X $2750 =$96,250 We also had a local supplier (machine shop) that opened his shop close to us. Then when we placed an order, he would use all the material he purchased for the order and make as many as he could. This allowed us to get many parts immediately without having them in our inventory.......and he became our "go-to-guy". Made a fortune, sold the shop and retired. One last example of govt waste. We pulled a large bunch of inventory off the shelf and was going to dump it because we showed no current needs.......nothing scheduled past a certain date. Common sense tells you that if you are in the business of making a certain product, you don't throw away parts you already have and have paid for. You will either get more orders (the expected normal thing) and have the parts already on hand, or you won't get new orders and you can s**** it then. Since it was a vital weapons system used not only by us, but many of our allies.........it wasn't going away any time soon. So they piled all this stuff up on pallets and boxes to be carted off. Then the computer started kicking out orders for replacements, many of them with an urgent requirement. Went out and found most of these urgent needs were waiting in the s****. Perhaps many of these suppliers will learn from this example of supply line futility and plan ahead for the next one. On a personal note, I keep my supplies of toilet paper well stocked these days............. I learned my lesson.
JIT ordering really only works if you have a complete vertical company like Henry had-iron mines and forests to control of dealerships.
I appreciate that if trucks aren't moving,drivers aren't making money. But, no one is moving in a 90 odd vehicle pile-up in a snowstorm and pulling up early to wait until it was clear would have saved time and money. Again, hindsight is 20-20
I have to agree that the "we can save money with on time as needed delivery" has pretty well screwed a lot of operations right now. Grocery stores no longer have a bunch of stock in the back room plus what is on the shelf. Manufactures no longer have racks full of material depending on the truck to deliver what they need for current operations to be delivered in time to be used on the intended project. The bean counters telling management that they don't need large inventories of parts and pieces but need to order and use as they go. 30 years ago I did the maintenance purchasing for one of the plants that make well known fruit juice and apple sauce. Some outfit came in to do a study claiming that they could save the company **** thousand a year by streamlining our operations. One of them spent a week watching a 50 something year old lady pick defective chunks of apple off a belt going past her and drop them in a waste chute. She had done that job for 30 years and if there was a more efficient way to do it she had already figured it out. They came around to me and went in my parts room and saw the large supply of bearings that I had in stock. Came back and said I needed to get rid of my inventory of bearings and parts so the company could invest that money in something that produced income. I told them that the biggest cost factor we had was down time and if we didn't have those parts in stock on the shelves we would have to wait hours, days or weeks to get them so we could be running again. Not long after that they left the plant and never came back, and we never heard anther thing about it. Thing was, if a bearing went out of a machine, we had one there to replace it then and there. No phone call to get one and no wait for it to be delivered. My bearing guy would even have guys from other plants in town come to our plant to get a bearing so they could be running, and he then brought a replacement back on his next stop.
I need a back window for my 64 chevelle.,3 months ago it was $185 now its $240.I kinda stepped on my **** on this one.
Maybe there were only two in this world, and now there is only one? Pretty amazing that someone makes them at all for a car that is 58 years old. There were only, what 375,000 made, to 1964 quality standards. How many could be left and how many need rear windows? Use your buy it now option.
Unfortunately we can’t do anything about shortages or low inventory. We can support our local swapmeets and car clubs to seek the parts we need. Let’s face it fellas we would rather have a original part then one that was stamped out a few weeks ago. With the cost of everything going up it is hurting the guys that do put on swaps and shows. We need to support the small vendors and join the event. The good thing is the swaps have plenty of goodies at them . Now this is my haul from this past weekend like a 32 grill shell flipper caps 2 pairs but missing flippers and other cool stuff. I seen all kinds of treasures I missed out on but good to see old parts.
Yesterday at 11:00 in the morning. I was traveling on I-80 in Iowa. In the 60 miles I traveled. I met 297 trucks rolling down the road. Do you think the 2 lane roads would be in better condition if roads would have been bad?
I went through the exact same thing at the aluminum plant I spent 35 years at... except after a well known multi-national took over the bean counters won and turned maintenance into a nightmare. I got out as soon as I could. And the folks I left behind told me that it got even worse with time...
Well, You know they made all this **** before the catalogs were mainstream, the internet, and Amazon. Get creative, get off your ***, turn off the credit card and go to a wrecking yard or horse-trade with friends. Some pretty cool ****'s been made with sourced parts and friendship. If you can't find it, move onto some other way. Who knows? You might be called an innovative individual - Tim
I'm not quite sure what your point is about 2 lanes? My point was that sitting out the storm would, in the long run,have saved time and money and,possibly, damage to your vehicle. In any case, I applaud your persistence in counting 297 trucks. Sorry you just missed the 300 club.
According to this morning's WSJ, the cost of shipping a container from Shanghai to Los Angles was $4,000 last year and $16,000 this year. Again, to all of those advocating that all of our problems will be solved by hitting the junk yards, that's wishful thinking in many parts of the country. If I were to swap out my current hot rodded Model A engine in my roadster with a oriental OHC banger with possibly a turbo, no problem. Finding parts for a HAMB friendly ride in a junk yard is impossible in many areas thanks to property values, zoning laws and environmentalists.
@denis4x4 yeah our junkyards are **** around me. I will say a buddy just dug out a 32 frame and front clip of a 5w just this year up north. So there’s some stuff around but like a pin in a hay stack. I will say the swapmeets around here are still good and some better then others. A great example of that would be the Cheaters swapmeet in Milwaukee. They had lots of old speed equipment and early ford goodies including original 32 parts . Unfortunately very few of them are like that but as Johnny Cash would say “One Piece At A Time”
While property values,zoning laws and this pesky environmentalists are all factors, plenty of "junk" yards still exist -for late model cars. The sad, but actual FACT is that the stuff we want is not worth it to a junk yard to save. Inventory = unrealized profit. If I can use my space to stock things likely to sell quickly (<90 days), why, oh why, would I hang on to the old parts that some guy might want years and years down the road? That doesn't make sense for a business. There are, of course, yards that stock HAMB stuff, but they're specialty places. There were lots of of yards when I was a teenager, but that was 50+ years ago. The 13 year old of today is looking at comparably aged stuff from the 90's. Face it, we are OLD.
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