Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire One week old news....but funny bad karma

There is a Briggs and Stratton small engine factory in my town.

It employs just about one thousand people with several sub factories in the area that supply parts to B&S but are not owned by B&S....these sub factories carry about 500 people.

Briggs factory workers can routinly be seen in town wearing neat/cool factory branded "T" shirts that have Made In The USA in bold letters on every side, front and back.

Today that factory as well as the sub factories lie idol.

Why.....supply chain disruptuon

Briggs has run out of a .17 cent part that goes into every single engine they manufacture on 3 seperate lines.

Take a stab at the origin of manufacture of this part that cost so little but has caused so much....

business opportunity

China is not our friend.

When (if) this ends, we'll go back to business as usual so fast it will make your head spin. We are lemmings, on an inexorable march towards....

The bad news is B&S isn't looking for a local replacement of this sub twenty cent part....they are waiting on the Chinese factory to ship them some parts

And, the fact they are in bed with our politicians should trouble us all enough to go the polls.

their call..., is it a machined or milled part? or some plastic gizmo?
Hard to wait around for that part it would seem. but I am just .02ing here

Stamping

Can’t believe they don’t start making that part themselves

They should

Two of the surrounding suppliers are injection mold shops and die shops

Business as usual.
DAMN the disruption - to obtain it locally would cost 18 cents!

B&S is low on the list of power plants I would buy for everyday use. Honda Gx on everything if I had my choice.

One of my former students worked on the assembly line at the GM plant in Spring Hill Tennessee where they once made the Saturn. When the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan a few years ago, the had to shut down production for lack of parts- - - - -and they were making CADILLACS!

\Good grief!
Jerry

What a joke

Precisely.

This is the main reason I will never patronize Walmart or Sams. I hold them primarily responsible for the rise of Chiner as a world threat and for America's reliance on and addiction to cheap crap.

I hope and pray that this is a wake up call for America to rebuild and repatriate our world-leading manufacturing capabilities and companies, respectively. Perhaps Trump will be instrumental in accomplishing this goal, but I'm doubtful it will ever happen.

***

Now for my rant regarding Chinese crap, which, I penned about a year and a half ago. I've posted this before on the 'fire:

I won’t discuss my personal experiences and examples here, but every single time I have purchased a Chinese-manufactured product, I have been disappointed. The fact is that Chinese made products are built to a price-point, which often results in major quality issues. Companies choose to manufacture their goods in China for one reason and one reason only – to increase their profit margins. While there are certainly some Chinese-made products and parts that are built to a relatively high standard, i.e. Bosch, the great majority of these products are much lower quality and use inferior materials and labor than their American, German or Japanese counterparts. Even the highly-specified products Bosh has manufactured in China do not match the quality of those they once produced in Germany.

Personally, I am not interested in supporting or enriching China by purchasing their products. China is not our friend and they have all but declared economic war on America. From their currency manipulation to their push to undermine the U.S. dollar as the world’s preeminent reserve currency, China is giving their companies an unfair advantage in the world market and they are doing so at America’s expense.

Too many companies and people in America do not understand the true cost of buying products made in China. Failure to consider all costs is a problem we face as Americans when we choose a product based upon price alone, a price that is invariably cheaper for Chinese-made products.

Take, as an example, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Brooklyn and Staten Island. $35m in steel production was outsourced to China, never mind that Chinese steel is inferior to steel produced in America and never mind that six bridges in China collapsed since July of 2011 (as of this initial writing(6/18)) due to inferior Chinese steel. Even the official Chinese news agency acknowledged shoddy construction and inferior building materials as contributing factors to these failures. If this isn’t enough, consider that California purchased Chinese steel to renovate and expand the Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Numerous problems with faulty Chinese welds and inferior steel led to huge delays and massive cost-overruns, which far outweighed the cost savings CA was expecting by purchasing Chinese crap. Not to mention the fact the Chinese steel production is heavily subsidized (subsidies which are illegal under international trade agreements) by the Chinese government. As more and more cheap Chinese steel is dumped onto the American market, more and more American jobs are lost as Chinese jobs increase. EDIT: Trump’s tariffs have done much to rectify this situation, but there’s much more to accomplish in this arena.

All this doesn’t even take into account the vast increase in pollution Chinese steel mills produce compared to their American counterparts, pollution that is crossing the Pacific on the jet stream, which ends up in America. Chinese industry does not have to meet onerous EPA regulations either. Nor does this take into account the fact that purchasing Chinese-made products supports an authoritarian/Communist regime (albeit one with a Capitalistic storefront).

Obviously, this is not limited to the steel industry, but the steel industry is one which is easily explained.

Regarding contracts American companies have with Chinese companies, contracts are viewed very differently in China than they are in the United States. Regardless of the contract, Chinese companies start cutting corners as soon as production begins. While American companies demand low prices and expect a certain level of quality, the Chinese manufacturer simply does what they want, without regard to the agreed upon contract. What many don’t understand is that any company doing business with China largely does so on a cost basis. Choosing a Chinese manufacturing company based upon the lowest-bid will invariably result in tainted, inferior and sometimes dangerous products.

The Chinese handle business a great deal differently than Americans. They are unconcerned with contract law, copyright law, patent law, safety issues and environmental issues. Redress with Chinese companies producing inferior products is often an exercise in futility regardless of contract as most are not written to the standard required for iron-clad guarantees and even if they were, good luck prevailing in a Chinese court. They simply do not believe in a level playing field, regardless of what they might say in negotiations.

Although I am not wealthy, I would rather spend a more on a known, quality product that does not support Communists and does not encourage economic hardship for America. I'd rather know that the odds were in my favor that I'll be happy with the quality, performance and warranty, which I expect from a quality manufacturer. And it goes without saying, but I’d rather support American companies.

Obviously, people are free to make their own choices. I would only, respectfully recommend that Americans consider the true cost of that Chinese-made crap-product that saved them a few bucks.

Fantastic post!!!!!! You Sir are a man after my own heart!

China happened

Very insightful. Thanks.