By Lloyd Graff June 3rd, and the world looks a lot different than just 30 days ago. GM finally did the dirty deed and filed, and the stock market reacted with relief. It appears suppliers are going to get paid from the Feds lending as the reorganization goes forward. BorgWarner stock is up 80 percent from its low and Johnson Controls has also bumped. All of the commodities are zooming with copper near $2.30 and ArcelorMittal stock more than double from its yearly low. Obviously, the markets are signaling a bottoming of the economy. One of the most encouraging aspects…
Author: Noah Graff
By Lloyd Graff Over a dozen years ago I developed a wonderful business relationship with Ed LeClair, who used to be operations manager at Curtis Screw Company LLC., of Buffalo N.Y., one of the largest precision machining companies in the U.S. Among Ed’s many responsibilities at Curtis was buying used machinery, which put us on the opposite sides of the table, but we developed a great rapport even while we were negotiating like pit bulls on the price of Schüttes and Acmes. It came as a shock when Ed told me he was leaving Curtis in 2007 to…
What do Marv Albert, Michael Vick, Eliot Spitzer and A-Rod have in common? They are all disgraced public figures who are or have been recreated as guys we’d love to meet for a beer at Applebee’s. Marv is doing the NBA semis on TNT after the forgotten shame of cross-dressing and acting rather badly with his erstwhile girlfriend. He was banished for a year and basketball suffered. Marv is the master of calling a game. The heir to the great Marty Glickman, Marv has surpassed the glib Glickman and has no peer in sports broadcasting. Michael Vick is out of…
By Lloyd Graff Auction prices today are very hard to figure. I talked at length with Dennis Hoff of Hoff-Hilk Auctioneers about his May 26 sale at Bystrom Precision, a small CNC shop in Minneapolis. The magnet pieces in the 150 lot sale were three L-20 Citizens, Type VII new in 2000 with Iemca Genius barloaders.Hoff says he told the client the sale price for each of those machines would be in the $30,000 to $40,000 range. The day after a long Memorial Day holiday is a lousy day to do an auction because people are just getting their plants…
Paul Huber of Comex comments on the recent Bosch auction in which 75 Escomatics were sold by Asset Sales Corporation. Paul came to the U.S. as a Tornos service engineer and is now the wise man of the Swiss screw machine industry.
I had a chance to talk to Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board on Sunday. In my opinion, Stephens is one of the most astute observers of the Middle East political morass who I have read. He is a young guy but he has spent several years in Jerusalem and knows Israeli-Arab relations as an insider. Benjamin Netanyahu, former and current head of Israel, met President Barack Obama on Monday, and the big topic was what to do about Iran’s atomic weapon program. Stephens feels that the U.S. must stop Iran now because it will have a…
Derrick Perkins of Liberty Research in Gonic, New Hampshire, has a creative approach to customer acquisition. He targets a long running job which he feels he can refine and then virtually own once he cracks the code. His approach is to design and build his own equipment to elegantly and efficiently run the component in play. Perkins and his team of designers and toolmakers essentially invent the machine to make the part. He would rather build a special machine than buy existing technology in many cases because he is always looking for the “unfair” advantage versus his competition. He…
At the 2009 Precision Machining Technology Show, Noah Graff interviewed David Holscott, consultant to the Precision Machined Product Association Education Foundation.Holscott said he was pleased with the PMTS show’s student attendance, which he projected to be about 225. However, he remains concerned that people still do not sufficiently emphasize to students the importance of post high school education nor do they recognize the potential for vocational schools to lead to fulfilling careers. Question: Do you fear that in five years the U.S. manufacturing sector will not have a sufficient skilled labor force?
At last week’s PMTS show Lloyd interviewed Wes Skinner, head of ManthBrownell Corporation, of Kirkville, New York. They discussed the ups and downs of the brass market, now dominated by Chase Brass and Mueller Brass in North America. Until recently brass has never sold for more than the price of copper. In the following video Skinner comments on the difficulty in dealing with this brass bar duopoly.
By Lloyd Graff With the machining community so riddled with woe at the moment, the guns and ammo boomlet is manna from heaven. It’s a great time to be in the gun business. The buzz on the Web is that Barack Obama is going to push for a ban on assault riffles, something households need more than refrigerators. Evidently, Obama’s campaign reference, that “bitter” small-town Americans “cling to guns or religion,” has fueled a tremendous surge in gun and ammo sales. People are buying AR-15s, the civilian version of the M-16 military rifle, like 42” HD televisions. At $1000…