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Anyone else very slow right now ???

rockfish

Titanium
Joined
Aug 27, 2006
Location
Munith, Michigan
I'm starting to wonder if my phone is working. :( We've basically been out of work for two weeks now and none of my customers seem to have anything to throw my way. Last month, I couldn't keep up with all of the orders. This is shaping up to be the worst month I've had this year, while June was by far the best.
 
I have found july and august to be tough. Lots of vacations, plants sometimes close for a week or two. Many sources of work get worried about the budget and try not to buy anything mid year so they dont run out of money at the end.

Though I am a little worried there may be more to it than the above.
 
Things have kept busy here, but apparently canada is having it slowest economic growth in 15years, I heard that last night on tv anyway. I've had about 3-4weeks of work ahead of me for a few months. Although I've taken a few days off to enjoy life a little, like going to the beach yesterday :D . I also put work on hold for a few customers until $ comes in. I think there's more and more companies struggling financially, gotta watch out as it can put us smaller shops out of business pretty quick. I now schedule most of my work in order of who pays first.

I'll say that I don't really expect things to keep up as busy for too much longer, but I'm also not worried. Thats the way it does.
 
That happens to me once in a while, but I enjoy the "time off" and work as hard as I can doing paperwork, maintenance, and getting some things done around the house.

Things were kind of slow for me last week, but right now I'm waiting for the UPS delivery and I don't know when I will have a day off again.

I think this would be a great time for you to touch base with your customers and even tell them you are slow now and could use some work.

Hope you get some work soon :cheers:
 
Another friend of mine who also owns a shop mentioned to me that every time he would slow down, instead of taking off a little early to enjoy the summer, he couldn't pry himself away from the shop in fear of missing a phone call.

I'm exactly the same. I can't seem to get away from here, even when I do. The shop is my life 24-7.
 
Rockfish, time to start knocking on some different doors.

Last month was a record for us, and on the 18th of this month we have already surpassed last month, so this is going to be a really good month. Backlog is enough that if parts, castings and material shows up we will be quite healthy for the next 6 months if nothing new shows up.

The POs keep rolling in, the quotes keep rolling in and our two main customers(clients) are getting slammed with some big orders. We actually had a walk in trying to salvage a cement mixer and knew it wouldn't be cheap, that was nice, and it was fun, it was a section of a plastic gear, made a silicone mold off of an existing piece and poured it. We've been working with an artist, and he just got a business loan the other day to run out a bunch of prototypes (fancy furniture) so that should be a good little chunk right there.

One customer is prototyping some equipment for the oil industry and already is guaranteed 20 something units. We helped them out a lot with the engineering on it (for free because they are a good customer, and they don't even bother going elsewhere for quotes anymore, we just keep our prices fair, and always deliver) that should be more money.

The department of defense stuff is rolling right along, and the government seems to be buying all kinds of stuff.

Another customer who never did a lot of business, seems to be ramping up also, I think his stuff is mostly going overseas.

So the work is out there, you just have to go find it. If I were you RockFish, I would go seriously looking for some small government contractors, the ones that don't actually make anything, but buy and sell and make up repair kits. There are at least four that I know of in my area, and it is a very small population area. They use tons of bushings, spacers, pins, screws(stuff that is up your alley), and the government is always looking for that stuff. Where I used to work, the boss was always trying to get me to quote piles of little round things, say on average about 20 quotes a day of that kind of thing. I would tell you who it is, but you would never get paid, 4 months on a $100 invoice :rolleyes5:.

Good luck, you'll get there.
 
I'm a little bit slower than usual, but not too bad yet. I have been quoting tons of work, but not getting a lot of it for whatever reason. I think that when it gets slow, other shops quote really low so they have work for their guys. Some shops have machine payments to make, which makes it tough to quote against. They will do work just to break even so they can pay the bank next month. Hang in there, it will pick up, it always does.
 
Is a lot of your work "walk in " stuff? Since none of mine is, I deal mostly through Emails, and once in a while on phone but its minimal. I use the cell, so I can leave the shop. There's been a couple times when stuff was sent to be delivered and I wasn't here to receive it, but they come back.
 
I actually do a lot of that military stuff, and my customers (more than a few) are slowing down significantly. I'm not sure what's going on. I've been doing a lot of cold calling, sending business cards, faxing, etc., etc., trying to find new customers. I did add one new customer that is going to give me a try, but they are slow right now as well. Another customer that I've been talking to for months now (they've been slow) has picked up and they said that I should receive some orders in the next couple of weeks, so that is encouraging. I have another customer that is gearing up to be very busy within the next month or so, which should be very good for me. In fact, I just received an order for a handful of details to start working on Monday.

Still, July is almost half over and I haven't sold enough to pay the overhead this month. :(
 
Bummer, sorry to hear it. Locally, things are still pretty strong from where I sit. I talked to a buddy who owns a big shop down the road, he said he keeps hearing that everybody is slowing down, but he told me he is doing all the work he can handle. Same with me and everybody else I know, with one exception. A big mold shop that has kept one of my mills busy for the last 6 months is starting to slow down, but as busy as they have been, it was inevitable.
I agree with the above about the time of year, when everybody has vacation on their mind, productivity drops, espescially with the people who keep machine shops busy. No one wants to start a project right before taking off.
 
Shops here in southwest Virginia / east Tennessee seem to be holding their own, staying somewhat busy. A lot of machine shop work around here supports the coal mining industry, and coal is going wide open.

But, shops who do work for Tier 1 and Tier 2 automotive suppliers have slowed appreciably, along with the fairly dramatic slowdown in the automotive industry.

Anything to do with oil, medical, and aerospace seems to be busting at the seems.

I do wonder about the staying power of the aerospace boom, though? Airlines are fighting for survival, and I would imagine new jet orders will begin to reflect this. Whose going to buy all the jets if no airlines exist to buy them???

Also, as we eventually draw away from Iraq, Uncle Sam will be needing less airplanes and parts and such.

I hope like hell a general slowdown in industry will ease up the radical price increases we've seen for steel and aluminum. From my experience, steel prices have jumped about 30% in the last 4 months!!
 
There's an aluminum foundry I used to sell cast to and it was a 2 man operation. The owner sat around smoking cigarettes, and the worker melted aluminum, made the molds, basically did everything.

The owner constantly complained about how slow it was. I asked if they ever called around. "Why would we do that?" was the response I got.

I made one phone call for them to a busy foundry across town. The owner of that foundry was buried and said he'd be happy to sub out some work locally. I handed my cellphone to the slow foundry owner only to watch him piss a wonderful lead down the toilet. He couldn't talk to the guy.

Anyhow, it doesn't hurt to pound the pavement every now and then.

We are currently trying to drum up some more business. It's been slow on the recycling end, even with the higher prices.
 
I very glad that you guys are paying higher prices for gas. Those oil companies are spending almost every dime that they're bringing in right now. We're getting a lot of their money. As a corporaton, we've double in size in the last 5 years! We're expecting about a 24% increase this year. If we can keep some of the equipment running and find more help, we'll grow a little more.
JR
 
Sorry to hear you're slow with work right now.....it seems you are not alone in your shop setting with others I've read about in the forum (not just in this thread). I was just reading about one guy who is even selling his brand new Sharp VMC he just bought last winter.

Though being a bit on the slow side earlier this year, right now we (when I say we....I mean the three of us here - four if you count P/T help) are slammed with work and have about a four week backlog, which is steadily growing every week. Whatever orders we ship out, we are getting in and then some. Quotes are pouring in and I've been working 12 - 15 hour days trying to balance my time between quoting, programming machines and making chips. Never an easy thing to do. The only saving grace is I make sure to hardly ever, and I mean HARDLY EVER work on the weekends....ok maybe except for programming, but I do that from the comfort of my own room with my personal computer. Somehow it's much nicer and more relaxing to do it when you're "not at work".....no phone calls, faxes, or emails..........peace and quiet.

I've been wanting to buy a new Cnc lathe earlier this year (have my eye on a Haas SL-10), but have been putting it off due to fear of the unknown. Not too mention I owe nothing on any of my machines and that's a GREAT feeling! The way things are going right now though it may be happening before the end of the year if this keeps up.

Hopefully things will turn around for you soon. Good Luck....and keep digging for new customers!

Best Regards,
Russ
 
Slow? I would say so, 25% of the customers I had just 2 years ago are out of business. On parts that would repeat, the cycles are 6+ times longer. To explain that statement, Joe's Cycle Shop would order 20 axles a month, now it's 20 every six months. Seems none of my customers
are recession proof, need to find some of those,...............Bob
 
I work for a machinerey dealer and we cant give the machines away but we are buying them like drunken sailors on leave. We have bought 10 BPs this month and about 7 lathes as well as tooling and surface grinders and saws. We have a deal going that if we get it we will get 11 more vertical mills and a very new HLV only a couple of years old and a moore jig borer for me. Our phone only rings because of people selling credit and people selling machines I am worried but my boss is kinda happy about it he can nap longer between interuptions.
 
Well thanks to our estemed boss kicking his son's arse and sending him out to look for work
we've managed to increase the amount of work coming through.
A lot of '5 samples' kind of thing, but then the companies have liked our fast turnround and being able to deliver almost on time ;) and ordered more stuff
We've also been able to undercut rival suppliers for expensive items (think $600 a part for 30 parts.. we charge $599 :D) and some of them only take $400 of machining

We also have about 200 hrs milling thats awaiting both a programmer to get his arse in gear* and someone to setup the jobs on the machines**

Although the current economic situation is having an effect in that our more regular customers are cutting back or scuttling off to China***

But I've got $24 000 in the bank and $30 000 left to pay off the house... once that happens I'll be relatively safe :)

Boris

* me :drink:
** me again :sleepy:
*** so why's "Mr I'm off to China" giving us even more work on top of the stuff we always did for them :confused:
 
Shops here in southwest Virginia / east Tennessee seem to be holding their own, staying somewhat busy. A lot of machine shop work around here supports the coal mining industry, and coal is going wide open.

But, shops who do work for Tier 1 and Tier 2 automotive suppliers have slowed appreciably, along with the fairly dramatic slowdown in the automotive industry.

As a Tier 1, we have slowed to a crawl right now, production-wise. There are still a ton of engineering projects going on though, for which parts need to be made.
Btw, cnctoolcat, how big of a mill do you have? I need some work done on some weldments and you are fairly local. These are 8" and 10" box steel, ~10 ft long. They only have work to be done on one end. Some plates welded on, machined flat, and holes drilled & tapped. Some get cut off. I've got about 6 sets of 3 that need to be done over the next year. The first set I need by the middle of August or so. Send me a PM if you have something you can do this with.
 
Another friend of mine who also owns a shop mentioned to me that every time he would slow down, instead of taking off a little early to enjoy the summer, he couldn't pry himself away from the shop in fear of missing a phone call.

I'm exactly the same. I can't seem to get away from here, even when I do. The shop is my life 24-7.

Get a cell phone, add call forwarding to your business phone. You will be in contact with your customers all the time.

I had the same problem when I first started up my appliance service home business. I had a two way radio installed and ran it through an answering service. That way I could stay in touch with my customers. If and when some one called it would sound my horn and I could talk to my customer over the radio. It worked great but was very expensive. When gas prices started climbing in the 70-80s I could not make ends meet because of the cost of answering service and radio charges + gas. Now we have cell phones.

You can get call forwarding on your business phone and set it to dial your cell phone. What a deal. If they were around when I had my business I would not have had to shut it down.
 
Things have slowed down to about 1/2 normal here (manufacturing a discretionary consumer item). International sales have increased as the dollar sinks like a rock, but the increase in international sales is not nearly enough to offset the loss of business in the US.

I am currently enjoying a small boost in sales from the stimulus checks, but I expect things to slow down again once the checks are spent. Even with the stimulus checks, sales are below normal.

Even in a downturn, some industries will be OK and even prosper (for example, local wheat farmers have never had it so good, and businesses that serve the farmers are benefiting), and some small shops will benefit from larger companies outsourcing, but overall the economy is bad, and don't let anyone tell you different.

People have less money in their pocket because they are spending more on fuel and food. Their retirement plans are losing value and their home equity is dropping. Some of them are worried that they may not have a job much longer. To say "the work is out there" is just not true.
 








 
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