Harbor freight in trouble

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by 92saturnsl2
People love to trash Harbor Freight but I guess they don't realize that Milwuakee, Stanley, Irwin, most the other "good" brands have outsourced to the lowest bidder a long time ago.


Yup, this is why if you are actually a stickler on COO, you need to check. Just because it is a 1st world brand doesn't mean it is going to be manufactured in a 1st world country. Rewarding companies with our continued consumption of their products after they outsourced them is one of the things that got us in this mess of being unable to procure critical supplies in a time of crisis.

 

[92saturnsl2]

Indeed.. The fact that brand name continues to entice customers long after the factory moved overseas is why they keep doing it. They know that people who have a brand preference still equate brand with quality-- nobody gives a second thought to the fact that their tool is made by cheap labor in the same Chinese factory as umpteen other brands.

Go look where your revered Milwaukee power tools are made!

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by 92saturnsl2
Indeed.. The fact that brand name continues to entice customers long after the factory moved overseas is why they keep doing it. They know that people who have a brand preference still equate brand with quality-- nobody gives a second thought to the fact that their tool is made by cheap labor in the same Chinese factory as umpteen other brands.

Go look where your revered Milwaukee power tools are made!


Yup, 100% agree.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted by 92saturnsl2
People love to trash Harbor Freight but I guess they don't realize that Milwuakee, Stanley, Irwin, most the other "good" brands have outsourced to the lowest bidder a long time ago.

You get a tool with a familiar name but often it's made on the same (or very similar) assembly line as HF's stuff. I've tried both and I've come to the conclusion most HF tools work just fine and no worse for what I use them for, than the name brands. The exception being the really high dollar stuff like Snap On, but I can't afford that stuff anyways, and it's unnecessary as I don't earn a living using these tools.
I
Years ago HF was synonymous with cheap Chinese junk but in my experience the quality has improved tremendously. They still sell plenty of garbage but I've learned what to avoid, generally their most inexpensive lowest-tiered lines.

I preordered one of their Vulcan multiprocess welders because they didn't have it in stock. Salesperson said it should be on their next truck— I waited three weeks and went back for a refund because nothing ever showed. So I guess their supply chain really is a mess. I drove to another store further away and picked it up same day. I'm making a conscious effort to get anything I need now because supply chains all around the world are coming apart at the seams because of this virus.


Very true. Some things the manufacturing is gone, not likely to return. Other things there is hope. The Milwaukee example is a great one. I've got some great domestically made (corded) tools from them. But their cordless was all overseas. They led with the high torque brushless impacts - initially there was no viable option. I like DeWalt drills. They have brought some corded and cordless options back. I needed an extra corded drill and got theirs. Ditto when their US made cordless tools came out. I already had Milwaukee so I have keep that system, but it's tough to justify buying more if they fail, I'll probably go DeWalt all the way now that they have a higher torque brushless.

I watched the project farm review of screwdriver bits. Even the Wiha bits were made in Vietnam. That's a manufacturing area I don't think will ever come back anywhere. If anything it will get shipped to India or Africa when Asian labor gets too expensive.

The key to being an informed consumer is to watch carefully COO. It's easy to be tricked. Some stuff is a lost cause unfortunately.

 

[clinebarger]

DeWalt touts USA made, But it's just assembly of offshore components.

 

[stanlee]

Originally Posted by clinebarger
DeWalt touts USA made, But it's just assembly of offshore components.


That just means it's Chinese to me. I don't really care who screws the cases together.

As for Harbour Freight, have been to two locally over the past week and they don't seem to be hurting. Bought a long reach jack while I was there. They had good inventory, all the new colors etc and plenty of people shopping. Their hand tool quality is as adequate and serviceable as any Taiwanese hand tools. I'm not exactly sold on the power tools and there are lots of reasons for that (they lie on batter specs, lines of tool and battery options aren't expansive enough, they aren't that much cheaper.... For example their high torque impact kit is $229, DeWalt's kit is $275 on Amazon and they have countless tools and batteries in the 20v line up).

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted by clinebarger
DeWalt touts USA made, But it's just assembly of offshore components.


As noted - lots of stuff is gone. As manufacture rebuilds here, bit by bit, other parts may be reestablished here as the value proposition of world away supply chain versus the worlds largest economy being local work its way out (rock bottom oil prices may slow this a bit). Even if many of those things are robot-made, it's opportunities for people here.

And what's truly gone forever is gone forever... unfortunately.

Note the Bruce Springsteen song, "My Hometown":

Quote
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown


I'd rather have someone screwing together cases in a plant, than sitting on welfare.

 

[4WD]

Totally disagree … a job is a job.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted by 4WD
Totally disagree … a job is a job.


Think you were replying to stanlee, not me. I agree.

 

[4WD]

Originally Posted by JHZR2
Originally Posted by 4WD
Totally disagree … a job is a job.


Think you were replying to stanlee, not me. I agree.


Right … 100% … And the final assembly plant absolutely matters as well … We have a prominent member who works at the Arlington plant where my Tahoe was built. When I toured there as a kid they still built the GTO !
How many kids were put through college by that plant through the decades.

 

[ABN_CBT_ENGR]

Personally, I am about as hard core USA first and 'charity begins at home" type as anyone can get but being an expat engineer and seen it from there and here and moved plants over there I have to state for the record that "business" wont come back until the reasons they were forced to leave ( notice that wording) in the first place.

Don't buy the hype about salaries- in the grand P&L that's a minor direct cost. Here's where the truth really is.

A combination of regulatory costs ( scrubbers, Environmental studies and all kinds of stuff including more costs for disposals of stuff)

Ancillary costs ( policies and lawsuit protection, hosts of compliance issues that cost money)

Business taxing structure

And all other costs such as transportation and even things such as international agreements and favored status

a host of more that all combined created an "adverse environment' for many businesses.

I have actually had CEO's of Fortune 100 companies tell me this personally.

Other countries simply don't have all those "hidden" costs ( many are "legislated" out of country- not driven by a "profit motive" as is commonly pontificated by the media)

Until those issued are mitigated, don't hope for much improvement but I do hope that if there is even ONE "good thing" that comes from this current "experience" is that the "people' finally wake up and see this for what it is and what the back room goals really are and immediately start addressing it at the "proper level"- otherwise we will get the meal we sold our birthright for and all the subsequent sorry when the fullness wears off.

It may be too late then because there are truly bad people out there who sit in the shadows patiently waiting for the moment.

 

[clinebarger]

Originally Posted by 4WD
]Totally disagree … a job is a job.


Right … 100% … And the final assembly plant absolutely matters as well … We have a prominent member who works at the Arlington plant where my Tahoe was built. When I toured there as a kid they still built the GTO !
How many kids were put through college by that plant through the decades.


No doubt that Arlington Assembly pumps a ton of money our(My) local economy, I've personally made money working on plant employees vehicles! I don't dislike Dewalt either as I have some of their tools that are as good as any! I was just pointing out that their "Made in the USA" is a misrepresentation in my opinion.

I wish Dewalt would cater a little bit more to my field/trade, If they made competitive cordless ratchets.....I'd buy more Dewalt tools!

 

[4WD]

Yeah it's similar to the age old debate on American content in foreign cars made here. But I'd rather see a job here … and a part from Mexico … than either be about China. I felt that way a decade before the current disaster.
I'm not sure how much folks pay attention to place of origin … many never knew one of the best made cars ever, the Ford CV, came from the great north.
There will always be some use & abuse of the red, white, and blue image. I laughed when I heard American Axle Manufacturing was building a state of the art factory in Mexico … but it's been a while now and they have made a bunch of good kit.

 

[Job]

Just a question. We see in these times how important home country manufacturing capability is. DeWalt, etc have factories in China, they aren't generic Chinese factories. DeWalt makes the products there to resell here. Like Apple and so on. In times of need B&D which owns Dewalt and many others, has the know how to step up and make their products in the USA. Does HF have that capability or are they a store front?

 

[ABN_CBT_ENGR]

Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Just a question. We see in these times how important home country manufacturing capability is. DeWalt, etc have factories in China, they aren't generic Chinese factories. DeWalt makes the products there to resell here. Like Apple and so on. In times of need B&D which owns Dewalt and many others, has the know how to step up and make their products in the USA. Does HF have that capability or are they a store front?


HF is an "office" and nothing more.

Here's what actually happened with China ( was there off and on for decades and saw it progress)

The first prime mover was unfavorable Business climate created politically in the US- that got companies looking

China didn't have the same end goal as say India or Mexico or others- their end goal is domination and their culture is the long game.

They offered to actually build and buy the factories and other concessions ( like a beguiling serpent with a fruit) because they wanted both the manufacturing processes, technology and machinery as well as training the incumbent workforce. Hard for businesses to refuse all that.

That's what started the now everywhere "Chinese knock offs"- they were perfecting the back engineering processes.

Theres more than one agenda ( other than bottom line profit) in play with the CCP plan and end game. They continuously laugh at us because we willingly suffer from stage 96 cognitive dissonance and allow it to continue for the sake of a dollar not realizing we are building the very thing that will eventually destroy us.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by ABN_CBT_ENGR
Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Just a question. We see in these times how important home country manufacturing capability is. DeWalt, etc have factories in China, they aren't generic Chinese factories. DeWalt makes the products there to resell here. Like Apple and so on. In times of need B&D which owns Dewalt and many others, has the know how to step up and make their products in the USA. Does HF have that capability or are they a store front?


HF is an "office" and nothing more.

Here's what actually happened with China ( was there off and on for decades and saw it progress)

The first prime mover was unfavorable Business climate created politically in the US- that got companies looking

China didn't have the same end goal as say India or Mexico or others- their end goal is domination and their culture is the long game.

They offered to actually build and buy the factories and other concessions ( like a beguiling serpent with a fruit) because they wanted both the manufacturing processes, technology and machinery as well as training the incumbent workforce. Hard for businesses to refuse all that.

That's what started the now everywhere "Chinese knock offs"- they were perfecting the back engineering processes.

Theres more than one agenda ( other than bottom line profit) in play with the CCP plan and end game. They continuously laugh at us because we willingly suffer from stage 96 cognitive dissonance and allow it to continue for the sake of a dollar not realizing we are building the very thing that will eventually destroy us.


Yes, in China, R&D is very much something where many steps are skipped because they do IP transfer partnerships so that most of the work is done for them. This is most evident in their nuclear power plant designs which are essentially just tweaked versions of the French EPR. Everybody (AECL, Westinghouse, EDF/Areva...etc) in the nuclear industry partnered up with China, as they were one of the only countries actively pursuing new builds, so China provided funding on condition of partnership and IP transfer/collaboration which they then used to develop their own reactor tech, the Hualong One, which will be the unit they construct going forward, having "acquired" the IP rather than having to do the R&D themselves.

 

[ABN_CBT_ENGR]

Oh yeah Overkill, they have mastered that art indeed.

What gets me is the people so blinded by greed or under the delusion that somehow they will "play nice" if they get money and not take over the world are actually the ones doing all the heavy lifting for them.

Like Pogo said, we have met the enemy and he is us.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by ABN_CBT_ENGR
Oh yeah Overkill, they have mastered that art indeed.

What gets me is the people so blinded by greed or under the delusion that somehow they will "play nice" if they get money and not take over the world are actually the ones doing all the heavy lifting for them.

Like Pogo said, we have met the enemy and he is us.

 

[KenshinHimura]

Originally Posted by 4WD

I'm not sure how much folks pay attention to place of origin … many never knew one of the best made cars ever, the Ford CV, came from the great north.


A bit OT but that reminds me of a story when me and my mom were looking at cars about a decade or so ago. We went to a Ford dealer in Avon Lake Ohio, to look around and see what was all in stock there. We had a young salesman about 5 or so years older than me. Asked him where a few of the vehicles were build (Escape, Focus, F150) and he stated all of them were built in Mexico. He then told us that the only car that ford had that had any American made content was the Crown Vic. He then told us that if we wanted something built in the USA then was to buy a Kia. I then happened to ask where the E-150 was made. He stated that the van was built in Mexico as well. After that, we left because we had had enough with this guy feeding us bad information. My parents ended up getting a Chrysler 200 as doing more research in finding that the car and motor was built in Michigan with the Transmission being cast and machined in Indiana.

Generally for me, if the Vin starts with a 1, 2

, 4 or 5, it is good enough for me to consider buying. J, K and 3 will require a more specific look at the breakdown sheet to see the percentage of where all the components come from. A vin that starts with L will not be sitting in my driveway.

 

[stanlee]

Originally Posted by 4WD
Totally disagree … a job is a job.


I'm talking about the tool not the politics of it. They put a big USA sign on the box when every part in the box is made offshore. It's misleading.
A job is a job. Well a savings is a savings and that's why you don't have any . they lobbied good and hard to make it that way, ignore and excuse 20 years of bold trade violations and competitively unethical practices to keep it that way... But let's praise them for "assembly" jobs. Why should I be so eager to support the ones who sold us out? Do what they did and go for the savings.