Imports from Asia are rising again. China is allegedly going to allow its currency to rise. Scrap steel is leaving the U.S. and foreign steel is rushing in to fill the warehouses. Much of the trade in goods travels in metal shipping containers, those 20 and 40 foot long boxes you see on rail cars and trucks everyday. Normally about 20 percent of the containers on ships at any given moment are empty, especially those headed toward Asia. This imbalance costs shipping companies billions of dollars each year, but it presents a gigantic entrepreneurial opportunity for inventors and engineers to…
Author: apalmes
By Noah Graff Many of you have heard in the press this week about the scuffle between John Paxson, the Chicago Bulls Executive Vice President, and Vinny Del Negro, the team’s head coach. For those who don’t know the story, here’s a brief synopsis. Paxson had told Del Negro to limit the amount of minutes for the team’s starting center, Joakim Noah, because of the player’s plantar fascitis which has plagued him all season. According to a story on Yahoo Sports, on March 30, after a game against the Phoenix Suns during which Del Negro used Noah two minutes over…
By Emily Halgrimson Not long ago completion of an advanced degree was assumed to lead to a higher wage, but this isn’t always the case today. With jobs hard to come by in today’s economy, lately there’s been an influx of people headed back to school for the piece of paper they feel will eventually lead to that coveted high-paying job. Unfortunately for them, some companies are bypassing the well qualified but expensive employee for less expensive, less educated workers who they can train on the job. Companies are also realizing the benefits of hiring people with real world job…
By Lloyd Graff Alan Bentsen needs a Davenport for his living room. The piece he’s searching for has four legs and weighs around 3000 pounds—without cushions. During the day, Alan is a toolmaker at Harva Company in Schoharie, New York, where they run CNC mills on military jobs, but at night and on weekends he restores old machinery because he loves the mechanisms and the feel of the weathered stuff. Alan’s dream is to find a 70-year-old leg-type Davenport screw machine and totally restore it to running perfection. When finished he’s going to place it on a hardwood floor in…
By Lloyd Graff I recently read Jodi Picoult’s new book House Rules about a teenager with Asperger’s syndrome, a mental disorder on the autism spectrum. It made me wonder if people who read this blog have experience with hiring employees with Asperger’s or perhaps have Asperger’s themselves. Autism in any form is a devastating brain malady, though I know people with advanced degrees who have been diagnosed with it. It strikes me that with the right structure a person with the diagnosis could thrive with good supervision. A job shop with constantly changing demands is probably the wrong milieu for…
By Lloyd Graff I play a little game with myself everyday. I take a moment to think of five things I feel grateful for and then visualize them. I consider this planned minute part of my daily exercise regimen, like stretching and walking on the treadmill. Tuesday, my Fab Five included getting to watch the NCAA basketball tournament final game and experience opening day of the 2010 baseball season. Monday night when I was watching the Duke vs. Butler epic I kept saying to myself at each timeout, “What a game!” and “I can’t believe how great this is!” My…
By Lloyd Graff Hunter Jamison and his two brothers Scot and Terry own and operate Millipart Inc., an aerospace machining firm southeast of Los Angeles in Glendora, Cal. Their father Jim Jamison started the company in 1954 after tiring of selling hardwood floors. Millipart recently bought a new Kitamura vertical machining center with a 30,000 rpm spindle. I asked Hunter, who has a daughter in college, if he felt a third generation of family was destined for the business. He was unsure, but then mentioned that his sales manager was third generation with the company. “She started here when her…
By Lloyd Graff Chuck DeLong says he “can’t deal with people,” but he loves his old CNC machines, which he cajoles to run perfect pieces like other people baby their pet Corvettes. DeLong’s machine shop is out in the sticks, yet only 30 miles from the Charles River in Boston where he keeps his 37-foot Silverton Sport Fisherman. He says it’s the boat he doesn’t use because every fill-up is $1100. When he isn’t boating Chuck is running his Hardinge CHNC-1 and CHNC-3 lathes which he claims make parts just as exquisite as a 2010 Mazak or Mori if you…
By Lloyd Graff The variety of small business permutations in America always surprises me. In the rolling prairie of Northwest Indiana-Amish Country—Eli L. runs 3 1-1/4″ RA6 National Acme screw machines without conventional horsepower electric motors—the normal power supply. He has been making fittings on these workhorses for 25 years using a jerry rigged diesel generator connected to a line shaft to power his machine tools. The Amish are adamantly opposed to being hooked up to the power grid but are not Luddites. For instance Eli, who runs his shop with his children and grandchildren, has upgraded his screw machines…
By Lloyd Graff The BNSF Railroad, Warren Buffet’s recent $27 billion acquisition, is putting 11 miles of railcars back in service after storing them for close to three years in track between Helena and Great Falls, Montana. The railcars will be handling additional shipping containers, timber and coal. *********** General motors is raising domestic production, rescinding the axing of hundreds of dealers, and predicting a profit for the year. An Initial Public Offering is being considered for 2010 to begin to pay off the $50 billion Federal bailout loan. *********** I saw Andrew Logan of Logan Clutch who makes clutches…