Is an Acme-Gridley the mink coat of machine tools? A well made product that still does a great job, but nobody wants another one. In 2025? No. Not yet.
On today’s podcast, Lloyd and I talk about our used machinery business over the last year. We saw one customer drop 20 million for five INDEXs to replace every cam screw machine in their shop.
At the same time we sold machines to a multinational automotive supplier who is buying hundreds of Davenport screw machines—many older than me—I’m 45 by the way.
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Interview Highlights
The Mink Coat Discovery
This Thanksgiving, while going through my mother’s closet, my dad found her 40-year-old mink coat in perfect condition. Once worth $10,000, ChatGPT now values it at maybe $250 to a dealer. The discovery sparked an uncomfortable comparison to the cam screw machines in our stock.
“Of course, mink means Acmes to me because Acmes helped pay for the mink,” Lloyd reflects. “These are very functional, valuable machines that were running good parts where we bought them and we feel they have value, however… we have to doubt ourselves.”
He poses the question that haunts our business: “Let’s say it is 1-5/8” RB-8 Acme. How much money could somebody potentially make on that machine over the course of one year?” He figures $25,000 to $50,000, maybe more with the right job. “We would sell that machine in that price range. Yet we find no buyers. From an economic standpoint, to me that makes no sense.”
A Brutal Year
The machinery dealing business has been tough this year. While many of our customers’ businesses remained steady, indecision paralyzed buying decisions—particularly around tariffs. “One of the polls I did on LinkedIn asked if indecision because of tariffs caused them to not buy equipment this year.” Fifty percent said that was one reason why they had not bought equipment.
And I will never forget this year’s deal from hell. ”We bought a machine in Germany, sold it to a company in the United States, and then BOOM—tariff. We went from an amazing deal to… I’m amazed we didn’t lose money.” I hate tariffs for a lot of reasons. This one was extra personal.
The $20 Million Paradox
The market presents striking contradictions. One of our customers recently got rid of 30 cam screw machines, selling them for “$2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a piece,” then spent over $3 million each on INDEX CNC multi-spindles—$20 million total to replace their entire shop floor.
“I was shocked,” Lloyd admits. “The question was, are they that much better than a 1” Acme?”
I explain the economics: “They make an entirely different kind of part. They make a part that you could make a dollar from where you make 10 cents from an Acme part. Or they’re making $10 on that part, and on the Acme, they were making a quarter.” The new machines can handle medical parts, complex geometries—the kinds of high-margin work that justifies the investment.
The Davenport Bet
Meanwhile, another customer is betting the opposite way, buying hundreds of Davenports for facilities in Mexico and China. Today’s Davenports have a similar design to their original one from 115 years ago. The company is buying so many they’ve ordered Davenport’s entire production capacity for new machines while simultaneously buying used ones. Good ones, bad ones, anything they can find to rebuild.
“There are many uses for small parts as bushings or as inserts or pins,” Lloyd explains. “And if you’re catering to a world market… they’re saying to themselves, we want to tremendously expand our capacity because we believe there is a market there and people have abandoned this market.”
The China Question
Lloyd sees a broader pattern: “The Chinese appear to be able to make good product, not maybe the quality of product being made in the United States or in Europe, but close to it at a fraction of the price.” He worries about Chinese companies producing chips “90 to 95% as good” as NVIDIA’s but selling for 30% less. “They’re able to make an electric car now in China and sell it in the Chinese market for under $10,000, and they’re selling them now in Germany for as low as $16,000.”
“In my mind, we’re in a war with China—an economic war.”
Gratitude
We end where we began—with gratitude. “I get the privilege of working with you,” Lloyd tells me. And I tell him that I have a gratitude list every day in the morning, and he’s on it.
Readers, listeners out there—In an industry facing profound disruption, all I can say is adapt, keep picking up the phone and stay grateful. Even if you’re selling machines that might be the mink coats of manufacturing.
Question: What machines did you purchase or get rid of in 2025?
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2 Comments
our company has been running acmes since WWII. we are down to 16 acmes, they do a great job. a couple of issues:
1. the old guys that love them are disappearing fast ( we are fortunate to have two extremely talented “old guys” and a young machinist learning the acmes)
2. our machines are plain variety and don’t do any pick off or secondary work, just the way we were set up. because of this we have tremendous investment in secondary, but the bottom line is nobody want to stand and chuck parts in secondary (think young people coming into the trade)
3. in ten years i have never found anyone developing tooling for slow turning spindles. all the new technology is geared toward: the faster you spin the quicker you can drop a part.
4. our investment in swiss has paid off. we are making the same long running jobs and in all cases we have been more productive, in two cases we were able to offer cost reductions to our customer and in one case we took a fairly large job that was a looser (just covering overhead) and made it into a winner.
5. in the same vain we have replaced 7 acmes with 1 swiss and 3 CNC bar machines, faster to set up and smaller foot print
after all that we do have a few acme parts that the CNC and swiss cant touch (mostly larger diameters). we are keeping a couple minks in the closet.
Threw away 7 Davenports and one Acme this year, bought one Nakamura; using 41 Acmes, 3 Davenports and 15 Nak, Haas, Mazak, Leadwell and Omniturn CNCs.