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Shutdown: How long could you go?

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Comatose

Titanium
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Location
Akron, OH
Well, it was an interesting few hours this afternoon at our Pittsburgh R&D shop. Mid-afternoon the governor announced a closure of all "non-essential" businesses in the state for two weeks. No specifics. This evening they issued clarification saying that "Industrial manufacturing" was on the "essential" list and we could keep working.

But that's PA. Ohio where the main plant is has been being... aggressive... about shutting things down. I'm not sure we'll be running next week. For the employees, if the relief bill goes through the Senate then maybe they'll get paid through shutdowns. But what about the owners?

How long could you go, paying all your bills like normal, paying all your taxes and employees like normal, with zero income before you hit a breaking point. What's driving it?

All our machinery is paid for, our mortgage, rent and taxes, insurance and payroll is about 150k a month minimum with no variable costs. We have outstanding parts on order (scheduled) of about a million and a half. I have no idea how understanding our suppliers would feel like being, so that's a big question mark. We could go three months pretty easily. Six months of no income would be about it before I called it quits. I think I play more conservatively than most, electronics having larger swings and spikes than most.

How about you? would you make it a month? three? six? It's easy for the politicians to say "STOP" they get paid anyway
 
Honestly, very little time. A month without cash flow will be extremely unpleasant, especially if the creditors expect everything to be paid as usual.

As always, banks and financial services win. Small business and homeowners lose. Why we continue to put up with that and shout down the folks who say "this is wrong" is something I don't understand.
 
If this last more than 60 days the 1927s will look good, the ripple affect will be mind blowing, I saw what happen in Montana when the saw mills and paper-mill would shut down for 6 weeks....Phil
 
It's small solace, but the people most vulnerable (those 70 and older) are in some ways the easiest demographic to shelter in place. Most are retired, don't have to show up at work, and have some sort of Social Security etc.

Most of the young will get COVID-19, recover in a couple weeks, and have immunity. Many probably already have done so, but without testing we don't know. Connecticut's governor today said they had 200 nurses out of commission (they'd come in contact with a COVID-19-ill person). None of them could get testing, so none could get back to work.

Had we responded like S. Korea, Singapore, China, etc. we'd already have tests and we could have gotten mainly through this in a few months. Both the likely trillions of economic losses and the excess deaths are directly attributable to the "it's a hoax" BS we were being fed for the first two months. Pisses me off the Pres. today gave himself a "10" for his leadership.

The other pisser is that we've been using borrowed trillions to pump up the markets, this week near another 1.5 trillion (with about zero effect). Way we're doing this, the benefits aren't going to the millions of small and medium sized businesses most affected.

I do think between emergency payments (though more debt) to workers and an eventual widespread availability of testing we'll be able to safeguard key workers at first and provide an all-clear to others who get the virus, lose 2-3 weeks, and come back with some degree of immunity. If a company can operate with a reduced workforce, and there's cheap and widespread testing available fairly soon, the disruption to businesses may not be as great as the impacts for those medically vulnerable. Just my guesstimate.
 
Our burn rate is close to $600k / mo and we are already seeing a big drop in proposal activity and present jobs are in some cases getting the brakes pumped by our customers.

One of our customers contacted me today and said their protocol required that they not allow visitors from Coronavirus hotspots and one of our engineers getting ready to assist in a startup was from Seattle. Not going to happen, he will work remotely from home. We can work with this but the customer will have to pay in terms of a less efficient commissioning of his production line.

Another customer said no visitors period. None. We are in the midst of commissioning a piece of equipment in their facility and us getting paid is contingent of getting the machine into production.

We can last 6 months assuming we can complete and bill for work we already have, after which it will be a quick end, if the brakes continue to be pumped, layoffs will happen and it will be over sooner . . . I signed personal guarantees on the building loans for the business. What do you do with all your household stuff when the bank repossesses your home?
 
. . . I signed personal guarantees on the building loans for the business. What do you do with all your household stuff when the bank repossesses your home?

That would really piss me off, M.G. We've given trillions to the likes of the DJIA 30. Meanwhile a terrific, truly value adding business is at risk.

Only thing I can think of -- assuming you can get testing and keep the doors open -- is that while other businesses are tapering down operations they could be sending you all those now idle machines for a controls retrofit. If you can safeguard your employees, maybe there's a conscientious PR program you can use to bring in some new business?
 
It won't be ALLOWED to get as bad as some expect. Simple reason no one is really "exempt" from the effects. All will share the pain. Most contracts have "force majeur" or "Acts of God" clauses.

Biz partners generally ALL being hurt will WANT to work things out, resume "normal" when and how they can.

If Hooverments do nothing else, they will impose flexibility, in a manner similar to the old soldiers and sailor's civil relief act,1940, updated as SCRA, 2003, etc., etc.

EG: When a person with a good job and obligations to match suddenly had to go to war on $47.88 cents a month, the whole COUNTRY was involved, and we had to carry-on sanely, not viciously, and find ways to share the burden.

IOW parts of all this are not entirely "new".

It is a true GLOBAL emergency and beyond the immediate fixing-up of any one bizness. Or even the best-resourced of State or National Hooverments.

Just in case anyone MISSED that minor detail...
 
That would really piss me off, M.G. We've given trillions to the likes of the DJIA 30. Meanwhile a terrific, truly value adding business is at risk.

Its just stuff, if push comes to shove, I’ll contact my largest customer and see if he wants to buy us. We won’t go down without a good effort.
 
What do you do with all your household stuff when the bank repossesses your home?

They will not. They'll find ways to work it all out.

Broad as this problem is, WTF could afford to buy bizness or sofa-bed, either one and expect to have a CUSTOMER who is any better-off.

All hands - Banksters included - will bust their collective arses to "find a way".
 
That's a remarkably optimistic take. What makes this different from 2008?

Uhh "everything" work for yah?

And that ain't 'optimism", Pilgrim. Old-warrior "fatalism" rather.

I did say ALL will be taking a share of the pain?
But it ain't 1929, nor even 2008 now, either.

Folks learn hard lessons, they look for better ways to cope, next go.

Check the two opportunists - "brothers" in Tennessee - as just gave away MOST of an 18 THOUSAND bottle hoard of hand sanitizer. F**k's sake. Any Country kid, most any country, can show you a hundred ways to make yer own!

First, the on line vendor-rapo-enabler engines shut their ass DOWN. Whom, ever wudda thot THEY would chicken-out?

Then they got MORE "attention".

Looks like they will go down for gouging, even after giving it up and making the CYA donation.

If not that "formal" justice?

Fair chance they'd be f*****g LYNCHED in public.

Microbes and viri are not the only things as cause "antibody" production.

A Society gets f****d by opportunists with any regularity, they fight back on THAT as well.

We are ALL "in it together", we, not the politicians, will JF have to SOLVE it.. just not as CLOSELY nor as OFTEN "together" in the space and time domain as usual!

We be "problem solvers". Decison-makers. We'll prevail.

Can't cope with this? Try harder. Everyone ELSE will be.

Otherwise? Something ELSE was going to f**k you up anyway, sooner, if not later.

Deal with that. Call it "optimism" only if you are one!

:D
 
I started in the machine trade in 1983 and have seen it come and go more times than I can even think about ,,, Its kinda like the old saying "what goes up must come down" I think the shops that made it past the 2008 slow down well be ok in that they should have learned how to save up for the slow times ,, I hope this is not as bad as 2008 was but I get a feeling with how a lot of people have borrowed large hoping and thinking the good times were here to stay we might be in for a harder time this go around.

Some people live life when the economy is going good and some save when the economy is good for when the bad times come back around ,,,
 
^ Like I said before, it wasn't the police. It was the neighbors.

The west is taking forever to figure this out, but most likely you will finally get there. Everybody is in it together.

Oh, yes. The poor, starving, too b***dy helplessly incompetent to even wipe their ass "West" never has accomplished a damned THING have they?

"Most likely" your narrow-minded politically-biased-oblivious ass won't know we have done it until YEARS later, either.
 
Oh, yes. The poor, starving, too b***dy helplessly incompetent to even wipe their ass "West" never has accomplished a damned THING have they?
If you'd care to take a look at the numbers, you might notice that this is not 1839 anymore. The West is fucking up bigtime.

Already has fucked up. Two months warning but you didn't do a g-d thing. Except squabble. Dispute the numbers, Jack --

Coronavirus Update (Live): 182,723 Cases and 7,174 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer

Sorry to burst your self-satisfied bubble but ....

"Most likely" your narrow-minded politically-biased-oblivious ass won't know we have done it until YEARS later, either.
No, it's Scottl et al who are politically blowing it. The China government and people figured out what to do and did it. South Korea and Taiwan same. No politics involved. Sorry if you can't comprehend that, I understand that them brain cells do get atrophied in advanced years.

If you plan on bragging then you best get on the stick. So far Italy is not a great example of "done it". And the US is not a great example of "truth in data" either ...
 
I understand that them brain cells do get atrophied in advanced years.

Folks around you might wish you hadn't been so damned greedy to be seen as a "pioneering seer" as to make a 40-year running head start on THAT part, soon as yah figured you could channel Lev Trotsky and not be caught-out a copycat.

But carry-on.

We are as f**ked-up as yah think we are, there may come a genuine shortage and we might actually need yah for use as bum-fodder.
 
I guess it depends when everybody else stops paying. If cash quit coming in tomorrow; 60 days would wipe out all of our business savings. We could maybe make it 90 days if I dug into the personal security net.

Fortunately I still have customers hounding us for parts. Though I'm concerned the large and mid sized companies I supply are going to start closing up shop over the next week or so.
 
How about you? would you make it a month? three? six? It's easy for the politicians to say "STOP" they get paid anyway

As always, banks and financial services win. Small business and homeowners lose. Why we continue to put up with that and shout down the folks who say "this is wrong" is something I don't understand.

Little guy gets crushed, and then pays for Banks not too...insult to injury.

I am in a holding position currently, but I was before all this broke out. We have a baby on the way in about 1 more month, and I am changing direction in work currently setting up a new facility for it so both of those things had my next few months already planning work to be tapered off with time off to be home mixed in. My wife was about to start a few months of paid FMLA in two weeks anyways. We are lucky to have that planned, and more so for that to even be a possibility in the first place.

More importantly it is just Me here at work. My heart goes out to the People on here who might have to figure out who else's family is going to struggle. I have very seldom had anyone counting on me to pay them, and I wouldn't wish to be in the position of no work coming up and a large payroll dependent on it.
 
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