No More Shop Vac

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  • twistsol
    Veteran Member
    • Dec 2002
    • 2893
    • Cottage Grove, MN, USA.
    • Ridgid R4512, 2x ShopSmith Mark V 520, 1951 Shopsmith 10ER

    No More Shop Vac

    NEWS: Shop Vac Corp is shutting down.

    Chr's
    __________
    An ethical man knows the right thing to do.
    A moral man does it.
  • Carlos
    Veteran Member
    • Jan 2004
    • 1893
    • Phoenix, AZ, USA.

    #2
    End of a once pioneering company run into the ground by not staying ahead of the competition. 1700 people to be unemployed.

    Comment

    • LCHIEN
      Internet Fact Checker
      • Dec 2002
      • 20914
      • Katy, TX, USA.
      • BT3000 vintage 1999

      #3
      Wow, some things you think of as fixtures. Shop Vac was Eponymous.
      Click image for larger version  Name:	shop-vac-wet-dry-vacuum.jpg Views:	0 Size:	20.7 KB ID:	840784
      that said, I have two Ridgids and a Fein. Maybe that explains it.
      Last edited by LCHIEN; 09-22-2020, 10:07 PM.
      Loring in Katy, TX USA
      If your only tool is a hammer, you tend to treat all problems as if they were nails.
      BT3 FAQ - https://www.sawdustzone.org/forum/di...sked-questions

      Comment

      • cwsmith
        Veteran Member
        • Dec 2005
        • 2737
        • NY Southern Tier, USA.
        • BT3100-1

        #4
        A lot of that seems to be happening. Seems like everything gets gobbled up by big corporations who then off-shore it and the smaller domestic companies just fall by the wayside or live with thinner margins and when something happens like this pandemic, they collapse.

        I was just discussing this kind of thing with a friend of mine the other day. When we were young, back in the 60's a young man or woman could get a job anywhere, doing almost anything they had a kin too. Today the whole area looks more like a third-world country with the vacant buildings, lost jobs, little prospects, etc. The shoe factories are gone, IBM, and hundreds of supporting companies gone, Link Simulation (aviation simulators) gone, GAF gone (film and camera mfg) and dozens of others... with nothing replacing them.

        When I was twenty, there must have been at least a hundred factories, a dozen machine shops, more than a dozen printers and engineering sub-contract firms, and more than a hundred good restaurants, dozens of department stores, and probably at least forty car dealerships and a similar number of shoe stores. Even hobby shops numbered close to a dozen and more than that for movie theaters. Today, most all of that has disappeared.

        About the only thing that has flourished is drug stores and hospitals, even though the population has dropped significantly.

        Used to be I could buy fresh bread, made that day in a local factory-like bakery, places like Sunbeam and Stroemans. We had two milk plants, both of which delivered milk door-to-door, and probably twenty small, family-owned bakeries, and even four roller-skating rinks. Today the bread is 15-times the price and is made a few hundred miles away and it arrives with "good by" dates that are two weeks into the future. The milk plants are gone (along with the supporting farms) and now there is only one bakery in the entire county that I am aware of. There is a roller-rink, but its only open a couple of days a week. Gone too are miniature golf places, and most of the theaters. The Drive-Ins are long gone and forgotten. Lots of bars though!

        How did all this happen? Corporations gobbled up much of it and most of it then got off-shored. When I went to work at Ingersoll-Rand's Painted Post plant in 1973, we employed over about 4,800 employees and it was the largest compressor plant in the world. Today, they have less than 600 employees and most everything is made in China and India. Pathetic! This is what has happened to far to much of America thanks to some pretty selfish and shortsighted management and their supporting politicians.

        CWS
        Last edited by cwsmith; 09-23-2020, 12:01 PM. Reason: clarification and spelling
        Think it Through Before You Do!

        Comment

        • Carlos
          Veteran Member
          • Jan 2004
          • 1893
          • Phoenix, AZ, USA.

          #5
          Weird that in NY you can't get local bread and milk. I live in NW Phoenix and have a large number of made-today options for bread, bagels, and donuts. The very first commercial corner going into town has two options for bread, one for bagels, one for donuts. There are more as I head farther in. That's not counting the sandwich and pizza shops that bake on site. Eggs are grown all around me too.

          Comment


          • cwsmith
            cwsmith commented
            Editing a comment
            Yes, but you mention you live in "NW Phoenix" a rather large city. I suspect that in NYC they've got the same situation. But here in the greater Binghamton, NY area it's all gone. You want fresh, made today, bread and you're SOL. We've got Walmart and three grocery chains. Wegman's bakery bread is like $6 for a small loaf and it's as hard as a rock; their sandwich bread is stale, hard and comes in from who knows where. Price Chopper and Weise is similar, with breads that are shipped in from larger cities and it's most always stale. I started buying French bread at the local Walmart. It's actually pretty good if you go to the kitchen and ask for something that was made today. But they don't like to do that and today, they no longer entertain such requests. I've spoken to the manager and he doesn't have a clue, telling me that "it's put out every day"... Yes it is, but the fact is what is put out today was made two days ago! They hold it in the kitchen and that's the "orders from HQ" they constantly tell me.... I gave up even trying two years ago.

            Milk, I believe is from Syracuse or maybe Rochester as an off brand. Major brands come from somewhere else.
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