Manufacturing in the US shouldn’t be so hard
There’s an automotive parts manufacturer in my hometown. The company has grown over the course of its 19-year life, from around 20 employees two decades ago to 45 full-time employees today. Despite the dirty nature of much of the work, the facility is kept clean, open, airy, and bright. There are no shavings on the floor or fumes in the air. The men who weld, bend, blast, and powder coat the metal parts and send them to the warehouse for packaging and shipment do so energetically.
“Honestly, [the work] is very satisfying,” the shop’s lead welder, Joe, told me during a recent tour of the facility. “I’ve always wanted to do things with my hands, and I’ve always enjoyed welding. I never dreamt that I’d get to do something like this with cars, you know — this is typically something you see on TV, and I have it right here in my backyard. It’s very cool. Every single thing I make here gets bolted into somebody else’s pride and joy.”
The positive mood of the fabrication shop is evidently a reflection of the company owner’s ethos toward his employees. Joe said that at company picnics, families are invited to take rides in the company race car, and that he and his co-workers are “treated wonderfully.”
It’s the way manufacturing in the US should be. And there could be a lot more of this kind of society-boosting work to go around if the government did some things differently. Running a company this way — they lose money by only using American-made steel — comes at a cost and is only possible if the owners are committed to their country and fellow citizens.
“Our margins are thin, and one false move and we’re breaking even instead of making money,” one of the company’s engineers revealed. “But for 19 years now, [the owner] has made enough money to continue. He lives humbly with occasionally getting something nice for himself — but nothing extravagant. The easy solution would be to go off-shore and buy all of our materials a lot cheaper, or even subcontract the stuff to China. But our boss doesn’t want to do that — he wants to have a business here. If it’s something with two ends welded in it and powder coated, we could absolutely outsource that, have it come next month, and you got a stack of 2,000 of them and make 20 to 30 percent more, but that’s not what [our owner] wants to do.”
It's also not what a lot of serious car drivers want, either.
“You can buy this piece in China, or you can have Walt [our machinist] make it. If Walt makes it, he makes it of US 4140 CrMO Steel, so when you launch your drag car, and the trailing arms pull out of a Chinese one, it’s better to have Walt make it.”
This article was originally published by The Spectator. Read the full piece here.
