I stare at the artistic montage of Today’s Machining World covers that rests against the wall behind my son, Noah. Boxes filled with old issues of Screw Machine World and Today’s Machining World lay behind my chair. We moved Graff-Pinkert’s offices last week, 700 ft. down 166th Street in Oak Forest, Illinois, and those precious copies of my magazines will not be left behind. Soon I will take most of them home to stash in my basement, but the move got me thinking about 25+ years of writing about the precision machining industry in various forms and what got me…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Our used machinery business, Graff-Pinkert, is in the process of moving its headquarters down the street this week. Right now, I am sitting outside our warehouse with Noah, looking at my beloved 35-year-old apple tree, remembering the stories of the history of Graff-Pinkert. It all began with my grandfather Louis Graff who I never met. I just packed up his portrait photo, which we never got around to hanging on our office wall, into the back seat of my car. My dad, Leonard Graff, idolized his father and joined him in the scrap metal business after proudly graduating from the…
Such an election we are faced with. How did we get into this position? How can we prevent it in the future? I have been reluctant to write about this topic, but the situation the US faces demands discussion. We face some major issues that most likely will not be addressed such as: 1) A declining educational system with kids poorly prepared for the jobs that will be available over the next decades, including opportunities in manufacturing. 2) A need for a reduction in government spending, which neither Biden or Trump seems to care about. We are swamped with Federal…
In 1988, if you had the idea to start a CNC machine tool company in Los Angeles, people probably would have said you were nuts. I recently heard an interview with Steve Forbes, owner of Forbes Media LLC, in which he talked about what it takes to become a billionaire. He said if you have a great idea you don’t need to patent it, someone may steal the idea anyway. The person who makes the fortune is the one who takes an overlooked idea and runs with it like a fanatic. He gave the example of when Steve Jobs visited…
My wife, Risa, is an educational therapist who teaches kids with learning problems in our house. She probably has close to a thousand books in her library. One of her favorites is a short masterpiece by Laura Numeroff, If You Give a Dog a Donut. It has never been more apt than now as we see college campuses filled with tents with kids and agitators from off-campus proclaiming their anti-Semitism and carrying signs proclaiming Israel’s apartheid. The response by administrators and faculty has been almost universally appeasement. “If you give a dog a donut he’ll ask for apple juice to…
Can you predict how your mood will be tomorrow? How about your business next week? Life is constantly surprising us, yet we are forced to make judgments based on flawed data and bouncing emotions. I sold the building that my father built for our used machine tool firm in the mid-1980s. The decision was based on sluggish business and having had heart bypass surgery 10 years earlier. I took a five-year lease on half of the building figuring that if I was still alive in 2024, I would be in no mood to continue to fight used machinery battles. Now…
It’s been a miserable month for electric cars. Tesla fired everybody in its charger department, Ford told us that it is losing $100,000 on every electric vehicle it sells, and Donald Trump announced he will stop the construction of new wind generators off the East Coast because he wants to save the whales. If you bought Tesla stock at $600 a share it appears you have a long wait to get even. Hybrids are selling like hotcakes, but Elon’s Cybertruck can’t catch cold. Ford’s F-150 electric is nice for Los Angeles and San Diego but not Duluth. President Biden told…
My youngest granddaughter is flying to Israel as I write this blog. Am I worried? Of course, but she has been hoping for months she could go with eight friends from her eighth-grade class in California. Our family is part of the golden age of modern Jewry. These days, my wife Risa and I wake up at night wondering if it is ending. Today is also Holocaust Remembrance Day. If you have not walked through a concentration camp and read the stories, you do not feel the chill you get when you see the photos of the emaciated survivors in…
I laid in bed moping about how crummy business has been in April. Then I saw my beautiful wife of almost 54 years snoring slightly next to me and thought, “You fool. You are incredibly blessed. Start thinking about all of your gifts.” And so I did, and I had my topic for the day. I was born in America at the end of World War II. My dad operated a machine shop with rows of Davenports and Acme machines. He was not marching in Europe or slogging through the Philippines. If my grandparents and great-grandparents had not taken steerage…
The NCAA Basketball Tournament, the less popular Men’s part, crowned the University of Connecticut as Champion for the second straight year. UConn didn’t just beat their six opponents in the marathon event, they crushed them. They averaged a 23-point margin in their victories. The final 75-60 win over Purdue was almost a moral victory for the Boilermakers. The UConn Huskies’ coach, Dan Hurley, is part of a fabulous basketball family. His dad, Bob Hurley, was the master of high school basketball in New Jersey. He coached the now-closed St, Anthony High School of Jersey City, which ceased operation in 2017.…