Kind of a sad day

[offroadrolls]

Last week I got a call from the President of a company I've been doing business with since the early 1990's. He called to let me know that after 76 years and 4 generations, Alfred Manufacturing was closing their doors. It seems that due to loosing business to China they'd been in trouble for the past 10 or 15 years and had pretty much leveraged all their assets to keep things a float but finally went belly up. He called me as a favor to let me know that if I wanted all my tooling they'd built for my parts over the years, he could get it all on pallets and onto my truck before the creditors knew what was what. Granted it is tooling I own, he told me the creditors would probably charge me to put it on my truck. So I went down today and loaded up 4 injection molds and 8 progressive metal stamping dies.....that's a heck of a lot of tool steel.
Here's a link about them and a couple of photos below.

https://www.alfredmfg.com/about-us/history/

 

[bob w]

Darn shame. We have to turn it around even if it costs more.

 

[Tripper]

Yep... sad!

 

[Old Iron]

I don't know what's in the future for these type of businesses.
Just a hand full of supporters is not going to be enough.

 

[Old Stuff]

I don't know what's in the future for these type of businesses.
Just a hand full of supporters is not going to be enough.

There's definitely some around the campfire conversations there for sure. How crazy sad to see examples of companies like Alfred going under.

 

[Old Stuff]

Darn shame. We have to turn it around even if it costs more.

Yes, somewhere a line has to be drawn. This is another example of why I feel like we are the frogs in the water as it's starting to heat up...

 

[offroadrolls]

I don't know what's in the future for these type of businesses.
Just a hand full of supporters is not going to be enough.

Alfred as you can see from the photo was really cooking at one time. Their biggest 2 customers were Hunter Douglas and Magpul Industries. I remember in about 2009 Alfred was running 3 shifts 5 days a week just to keep up with Magpul. Then Colorado changed some gun laws and Magpul moved out of the state. When I was at Alfred last week there was one last Gaylord full of parts used for Hunter Douglas shades/blinds on the floor.
When American manufacturers started moving their factories to China for cheap labor, several things happened, one of which was the raw materials industries were hurt badly. Many scaled back, some went out of business, both for lack of demand. Next, China scaled up it's raw materials industries to meet the demand. Today, even if there was a big push to make everything in the USA we lack sufficient quantities of the raw materials to do so. The last thing I'll say before I step down from my soap box is Americans have gotten addicted to cheap stuff. Think about it, generally we place a lot of emphasis/value on how little we pay for something instead of it's superior quality regardless of cost. I think there can be a future for American manufactures but it'll need to be consumer driven.

 

[earthman]

My parents plowed fields with horses then saw men land on the moon (?) in their lifetime. But us baby boomers have seen this country turn upside down.

 

[Bonehead]

Here in the West, we have ghost towns. Most locally are an old cabin or two, or the corners of a big building, lots of old broken bottles, and nails. But you look back at the history of those towns, and some were really pretty big, with hundreds, or even a thousand people living there. All gone because the industry that supported all those livelihoods, dried up. Most around here where mining, coal, or metals, there was a cheaper, or better place to get what they had, or what they had was just not needed anymore, (Uranium). I always consider those people who poured their life or passion into an endeavor that just disappeared. We all know that Chinese rubber, dries up faster than the old Goodyear stuff. The metals are weaker, and can't be counted on. But in a world where it is cheaper to buy new, than pay someone to fix, companies now plan on making and selling replacement items, and parts rather than build a quality item that will outlast the owner.

 

[Old Stuff]

Here in the West, we have ghost towns. Most locally are an old cabin or two, or the corners of a big building, lots of old broken bottles, and nails. But you look back at the history of those towns, and some were really pretty big, with hundreds, or even a thousand people living there. All gone because the industry that supported all those livelihoods, dried up. Most around here where mining, coal, or metals, there was a cheaper, or better place to get what they had, or what they had was just not needed anymore, (Uranium). I always consider those people who poured their life or passion into an endeavor that just disappeared. We all know that Chinese rubber, dries up faster than the old Goodyear stuff. The metals are weaker, and can't be counted on. But in a world where it is cheaper to buy new, than pay someone to fix, companies now plan on making and selling replacement items, and parts rather than build a quality item that will outlast the owner.

And there you have it. Well said Bonehead.

 

[Joe Simmons]

Picher OK is a prime example of the "ghost town effect". Hopping place in the early 1900's, nearly 1/2 of the bullets used by the USA were made with lead from the mines there. Finally closed the last mine, shut down pumps and ventilators in 1971. Town continued to fail, until 2005, when a tornado took out over 1/3 of the structures, and the government continued with "lead contamination buyout". Only private structures in town is the local AT&T central office, and Ottawa County maintenance barn. Majority of rest of structures were demolished and buried in some of the local sinkholes left from collapse of the mines.
Thinking of AT&T, I spent 24 years, started with installing and maintaining regular copper dial tone, and ended with 10GB fiber and 5G cell service. Copper has been all but abandoned, and some is now being reclaimed for the scrap value.

 

[redidbull]

Even in modern times seeing big manufacturing areas dry up is tough. I’m 67 and grew up in Stratford Ct. We had so many factories. Raybestos brakes, where my Dad worked for 33 years, Avco made tank engines, Tilo made shingles, Dresser gauges, Baird which made huge electrical panels and Beaver tractor, are gone. Sikorsky is still here. One town over, Bridgeport, made Bridgeport Machines, Hubbell electrical components, and many plating and machine companies. Shame is a lot of this has happen in less than 50 years. Lots of delis, video stores, etc also when out as their clientele dried up. Jim

 

[Bamamav]

When the underground coal mine closed up, you could see the town here start to withdraw. Family Dollar, which had only been in business a couple of years, shut down. Then the oil change/ muffler shop closed. Last year, the bank, which had been in business over 100 years, closed. This year, the auto parts/hardware store locked its doors, been open over 50 years. Another boutique style store closed. All that is left is Dollar General, Piggly Wiggly, two gas 7-11 style stores, and two restaurants. Not really noticing much change in the population yet, most everybody has to go out of county to work anyway, been that way for years.

 

[redidbull]

Covid and the internet over the years have caused alot of restaurants and retail to go out of business too. Jim

 

[23crate]

always sad to see old business closing... seems to be happening all around the world .. even downunder New Zealand this is happening ... without being malicious at all, China has effectively taken over alot of locally made products.
NZ ships a large mount of lumber (pine) to China and it comes back as furniture, all that cheaper then we can make it here.

this makes all business slow, with little growth economically, which further decreases populations expectations and security in an economy -, and the cycle continues...

just thinking...

 

[lowbudget50]

Definitely sad to hear that a company that's been in business that long it's closing due to overseas manufacturing. I tried to do my part although it may be small and buy whatever I can that's made in the us. I know it's just a label and probably isn't 100% true sometimes. I try.

A group of buddies and I are trying to plan a road trip in the hot rods next summer to go visit some of these ghost towns. Cool history for sure would be neat to see

 

[Old Stuff]

Definitely sad to hear that a company that's been in business that long it's closing due to overseas manufacturing. I tried to do my part although it may be small and buy whatever I can that's made in the us. I know it's just a label and probably isn't 100% true sometimes. I try.

A group of buddies and I are trying to plan a road trip in the hot rods next summer to go visit some of these ghost towns. Cool history for sure would be neat to see

That sounds like killer fun LB. Building memories while having great adventures!