Technical Top Brand Names Gone to $Hit

I bought rear axle seals for my OT Power Wagon , Dana 60 full float axle . I always try to purchase best as possibly available . National Seal was my go to brand . So I ordered from non chain local parts store locally . When they arrive , they ( box) now says “ National Equivalent” . Great ! What’s next ?

What really is a shame is you can not buy USA made stuff , even if you choose to pay more for quality .

 

The reality is, it was probably a re-packaging plant, or a local storage unit for the company rather then a production plant.
Actual production there probably ended, or really dropped off a couple years ago.
At least that was how those things worked around here. The company kept the paid for building and kept a minimum crew to shuffle stuff in and out of the building until it was cheaper to close the building and move on.

 

Overseas facilities can, and will make whatever quality level they are instructed or contracted to make.

Time and again I have had to explain this, and that the decision to make anything of a lesser-quality is at the behest of the executives and the boards-of-directors, most often located in the US.

 

Also, many years ago we could demand quality because if you did not give it to us, we would go to your competitor. Sadly, when we weren't paying attention the crappy companies bought up the good companies. Too bad that only hindsight is 20/20. Larry

 

Is that more, or less preferable to them being completely dropped from the product line?

 

Its not all doom and gloom. There is still some damn good USA-made gear that I go out of my way to buy, to the point of having it freighted all the way down here. Mastercool. Ridgid. M/T. Stroud. Dart. Edelbrock. ARP.

Cheers,
Harv

 

More preferable, to me anyway. If it's a decent product at a decent price, I couldn't care less where it was made, I've been over that for a while now, it's the way of the world. As I said, I've been told that just like here, China has different levels of quality also. And hell if it is made here, it's more than likely made with steel from China. As long as I can get the part I need to keep my car on the road, country of origin is of little concern to me these days.

 

I once saw proof that a major bearing company (who shall remain nameless...... not Timken) manufactures bearings without their logo stamped into the casing for the cheap end of the market, and with their logo for sales through their own company. A very cheap brand of bearings came out of the very cheap brands packaging and, low and behold................ the major manufacturer's company logo was stamped into the casings !!!!
Two possible explanations.
1). They produce two different price/quality bearings, and the wrong bearings ended up in the wrong packaging
...... OR.....
2). All the bearings that come out of the factory are exactly the same quality, some are logo stamped and some are not.
All I will say is that things are not always as they seem.......

 

I am going to bust something out that many of you here might not be familiar with, and that is The Fiduciary Responsibility of the Executive.

If you are an officer or director of a corporation, you are a fiduciary. If you are an officer or director of a corporation, you have fiduciary duties to the corporation and to the shareholders (including to minority shareholders).

One of the fiduciary duties of every member of the C-Suite is to maximize return for investors (shareholders), by acting in the best interests of the corporation.

To put it in plain terms, if every opportunity to minimize the cost-of-production, and the cost-of-operation, the involved parties can be terminated. If that is found to be deliberate, it is called corporate malfeasance.

Corporate malfeasance involves the management of a company deliberately hiding the financial reality of the company, and it is a crime that can be tried in criminal and civil court. Under tort law, malfeasance has legal repercussions in civil court and the plaintiff can sue the defendant for monetary damages.

TL;DR: corporations do this because they essentially have no choice.

 

https://schatzbearing.com/made-in-usa/

 

Unfortunately though, fiduciary duty has morphed somewhat over the years...
In, let's say 1960, the duty of corporate execs was to protect investor dollars and provide a dividend to the investors based on the profitability of the company. The idea was that they were in essence paying principal and interest back to the investor. That was a good deal for the company and the investor in the long run. Most companies were run by professionals that knew the product and business. Quality and reasonable pricing helped ensure the success and future of the company.
Today's investment picture is different... Investment groups, hedge funds, big money interests control companies today. These investors don't know (and could care less) what the product is or how it is used: they are only interested in the bottom line. But the "bottom line" has changed since 1960.... it is no longer the Timken family pockets (or those of investors), it is the stock value! Investments today are a shell game operating at lightning quick speeds and designed to appear to be based on a company's product and profitability, when in fact the only thing that matters is how to attract more investors through smoke and mirrors rather than actual honest representation of the companies. Companies get bought, gutted, exploited and sold with the sole purpose of raising the stock prices of the PARENT company or fund. It is capitalism at its ugliest!!

 

Had an old ford truck with a Dana rear axle. Bought seals. Made in USA. Leaked.
Bought Dana seals and it stoped leaking.
that was 30 years ago
I’ve got chain store brand crap in my 63. Over 30k miles and still going

 

Yup.

 

I used to work in a parts house back in the late 60's when when brands like BCA, and BOWER, and NATIONAL, and TIMKEN, and AC DELCO, TRW, SPICER, and a ton of other parts were made in this country.

Back then, you could get DELCO ignition parts, in the cool box with the metal lid and the string that you pulled to open it, and the box left over, found a place in your tool box for nuts and bolts etc, etc, etc.

Those days are gone sad to say, and those cool boxes, with the metal lids, cost way too much to manufacture in today's world.

For my two cent's worth of opinion, to me, the terrible notion of "planned obsolescence" reared its ugly head, in the year 1970, to me that was the tail end of good things that were manufactured, name any category, anything past the year 1970, the quality slowly started to go down.




Boy I sure miss the days of when pride in craftsmanship, meant something, but as stated by others, the bean counters truly do have a lot of influence on how stuff is made anymore.

Even the realm of swap-meets, is fading, but if you know what you are looking for, and can spot the older stuff that was well made, it seems that its still showing up on those swap-meet tables, along with a ton of other crap, sad to say.

Your results may vary !

Thanks to all that have expressed their opinions.
Thanks from Dennis.

I am kind of partial to the older IHC trucks, they were built to last a life time!

 

Had Orange Chicken for dinner tonight. Chinese food made in the USA. Strange times indeed.

 

How many of you guys are old enough to remember when Sears had two lines of hand tools? The good ones, of course, were Craftsman. They also had a "Economy Line" called Dunlap.

 

Strange times in my home town in Australia as well. A local Italian restaurant is owned and run by an Indian family.
The really weird bit???................ the food is excellent.

 

By not getting human nature in this sense I mean doing things like laying off half the staff in a department store, to make the bottom line look good, the result being the remaining staff are pissed off and not happy workers and the customers are pissed off because they can't get service, then moan, which in turn pisses the staff off both because of shitty customers to deal with and the crappy circumstances they didn't create themselves. Next thing the business is on a downward spiral. At which point it starts to have a not very good bottom line at all. Often the business gets sold before that happens and the new owners get to fold it.

 

With all due respect, I don't think orange chicken would be found in China. That's American Chinese

 

This reminds me of a story.
The first time my dad heard my grandfather use the F-word. (in conversation not anger)

While enroute to a fishing trip in the '58 Country Squire they got behind this car full of kids. At the stop sign the silhouettes of 2 big heads and many, many little heads were seen through the back glass. You could not stuff another kid in that car.
My grandfather said to my father, " Look at that son, that fellow has nearly F-ed Himself out of a ride"

Think about what this country has F-ed itself out of.
But hey, we can make tik tok videos.

 

Humans, unfortunately, are 'only human'............... and most are only just....

 

yes to both of these . At work we sell a “ premium Chinese fork lift “ HELI . It’s not really made in chine but assembled from some high end parts and with the HELI parent company being over 50% state owned they also get first dibs on steel out of the foundry’s .

there is a 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 th line of everything in China .

a buddy of mine owns a high end female clothing company with of course manufacturing in China.
If he buys his materials in North America or Europe . The tag can say made in Europe or North America .
A few years ago he was telling me he can buy better quality fabrics out of China then what he can get elsewhere .
The clothing looks and feels better , but the tag now says “ made in China”. The stores he sells to won’t / can’t sell his product at the stated price point as the tag says China . We will only pay so much for a made in China thing .

at work I have to go through the horse and pony show with the HELI forklifts and pointing out the ZF transmissions , rexroth hydraulics , zapi electrics etc etc . So folks get over the “ Chinese junk “ mentality .


Yes the majority is junk but it’s because we as consumers are choosing price over quality .