or is there a WHOLE LOT of repo iron sitting on some lots. I have been crusing the used equipment sites (like always, it addicting) and I see alot of expensive equipment with low hours that have been listed by liqudation companies or financial firms. Still too expensive for me, but sad none the less. I am just wondering how people are making it? Luckly I have very little invested (more of a hobby/ quasi business/ small jobs) and what I got is parked .
we have a small bank in our town that has been very generous with loaning money for years. their repo men have been busy lately. thier repo lot is near me and i see new things showing up daily. today i saw a really good looking backhoe sitting there along with several trucks and cars. sometimes some good looking boats and suv's.
I have watched the inventory at the two equipment dealers by my daughters place more then triple this past year.
I've watched the cycle many times, log prices will spike and people go and buy a bunch of new equipment and the payments to go with then the log prices drop and they have to scrounge for something to do. Bad enough the log prices along with fuel and trucking, they don't have the option of parking it till times get better, have to scrape buy regardles of the profit loss on low paying and generaly far away from home jobs till time runs out on them and they go broke. This is a re-acuring cycle and people never learn except the hard way.
Around here I see mostly old iron sitting. I've seen two big skidders in one guy's yard for over a year. On another lot I see someones old skidder and forwarder sitting since last winter and firewood piles all around. Most cuts I seen last winter was for squaring farm fields. Hasn't been a stick of wood cut on my road for years, other than 5-10 acre corners and only 2 of those.
i have logged for 30 years in the last 2 i have seen 12 mills go out and around here there are 4 of us just trying to keep are heads above water i think the one thing thats killing us the most are those showes about super loggers and the prices they tell you there logs are worth just kills me to go to a lumber yard and see what they get for a 2x6
Catapillar has hired an entire trucking firm to only haul repo iron for them and one driver told me it was seven loads a day just for him to haul repod equipment back to the company and he'd been dong it seven months straight all week long until he ran out of hours and he never left the state. I've talked to several heavy haul companies and they told me they are booked for months out only hauling repo'd iron and the list is getting longer. Talked to my lawyer yesterday and he told me he had to hire another person to help him along with another secretary to just handle the banks forclosure procedures and paperwork, the worst he's ever seen and when I asked him if we are about over it he said we haven't even started yet according to all the banks he's dealing with on realastate, turns out maybe you can't afford a 250,000-500,000 dollar house on two 10 dollar an hour jobs after all, my calculator never did have the buttons on them to get all that to pencil out and turns out maybe theirs didn't either, as far as being too bad, bull, take them down, its better than letting them slide and throw some off so they can stay, that never teaches them anything, let them learn like the rest of us have to if we bite off more than we can chew. As far as the banks being bailed out that'll get my dander up alot, they should have all failed as well, and as far as them sitting on all the repoed equipment and property, maybe they should have used the same calculators the rest of have had to use all these years, the ones that figured the actuall cost of the purchase and interest to be paid back and if you couldn't afford it they should have said no instead of "fixing the paperwork". It might be kinda harsh but I sure hope there's a lot of white collar jobs in lending and business that end up on the unemployement line soon and can get the opertunity to actullly "work" for a living since they are not very good at shuffling paperwork. As far as all the union jobs lost on the assembly lines for cat, jd, ford, gm, chrysler and all the big names, I won't shed one tear for someone making between 30-90 bucks an hour with the only investment being a lunch box and demanding more money and already getting more in untaxed fringe benefits than I make a year and then I still have to pay taxes on that besides. Maybe this country needs to learn that free isn't free to everyone and all those costs are dumped onto the one on the end and thats me, I own and operate those machines and vehicles and I end up paying all those costs one way or another.
Have any of you been getting the bums on unemployment knocking on your door wanting to know if your hiring and when you tell them no they want to use your name for their unemployment??? I've gotten so tired of this that the first qfuestion I have is do you want a job or just unemployment? The line they give me is they want a job, good, here's a shovel and go dig me a hole and thats the job criteria for the next 10 years, digging holes that I'll hire the next idiot to fill in behind you, and by the way the pay is minimum wage, they then say " but thats manual labor we do only good jobs" and my unemployment pays more than that, and these are the ones they are extending unemployment for? None of them want a job only a paycheck. Sorry about the ranting but I just went to get my vehicle liscence paid for the second half of the year and found out they went up about 50%.
Randy88 , I'm sure glad to know someone else out there has the same opinion I have about the unions and the upper class so-called white collar working class, ask them they'll tell you how hard they work every day, only to decieve and rip us off.
good post randy88
Guess who is doing all the hiring now? Financial firms. This should tell you a lot.Guess which profession has the most millionaires? Part of it is the number of them. Education.
A person gets real tired of being treated like a second class citizen after a while, I was always taught to appreciate your cutsomers because they buy your products and pay your bills without them your nothing, they are the most important thing to your sucess, but these jd workers, cat, chrysler, gm, ford or any other union worker treats me like a second class citizen who they would rather snuff out of existance than even say hello to and I'm the one buying their product and running and maintaining it buying parts and machines from them who in the end pays their wages. Have I missed something along the line??
They are ENTITLED to always get more no matter what and maybe if these companies asked the buyers just once their opinion I wouldn't so upset but they quietly tack on all the costs and pass it along to me and I'm supposed to just shut up, kiss ass and say thank you to them for what they have done for me???? You might not have to deal directly with them but I do, some live in my area and others have retired here, my kids have gone to shcool with some over the years and to be honest its a terrible shame people think they are more important than they really are. I had one budge in line in front of me telling the person at the counter we were at "don't pay an attention to them [meaning me]I'm a john deere worker and I need service now, they can wait until I'm done I'm important " surprisingly the person behind the counter told them to step back, he owns about 20 pieces of jd equipment and has paid for it and in my book he's important to MY business because he owns a company that does a lot of business here your just a flunky employee. I about fell over, tipped them well, and they've had all my business since, its the only time in my life I ever heard anybody tell it like it is in public and actually stand up to them. No I'm not a union man, don't get me wrong unions did do a lot of good in the past, but somewhere along the line its gotten out of hand and nobody has bothered to put it back into perspective, its easier to just pass it all along for someone else to deal with and pay for.
When cat went on strike a few years ago demanding more after getting over 80 bucks an hour including free fringe benefits I blew a gasket and told my local cat dealer once they get a grip on their business and its attitude maybe I'd be back to buy some equipment, I've since got rid of all my cat equipment and bought others, are they different, no but their labor costs are lower and their equipment costs less as well and as far as I'm concerned just as good if not better than cat. Its a lousy reason to buy or not buy but on that day I'd made up my mind enough was enough.
Gm and chrysler got a bailout from the government and on that day I made up my mind I'll never buy another one of their products either, when the vehicles I'm using are shot or need replacing I'm buying something different, what that is Im not sure yet but its not going to be from a company that got a taxpayer handout to keep the doors open, maybe if they attempted to manage their company and keep it in the black but to spend millions wastefully and expect someone else to pay for it, no way, in my opinion they're done and I'm done dealing with them. Too big to fail, bull, any well run and well managed company can survive in this day and age, always has always will, an american icon, what a crock, lets associate an american icon with a bankrupt failed company, thats how history will remember them, and thats what I told a gm salesman as he tried to sell me a new 48,000 dollar diesel pickup just as the bailout deal was going through, I told him maybe he'd better sell it to some gm worker who needed more money to assemble it, or a head ceo who got paid 1million to tell others how great is was, seeing how the salesman drove a honda himself and that was parked around back so nobody could see it.
i know of 2 companys that have gone out of business and lost @ least 1 piece of equipment each. around here logging has slowed down bad.... :(
Fellers, I like this Randy88! He's good folks!
(Fellers, I like this Randy88! He's good folks!)
Maybe Jeff could give him another tree in his profile :D
No its not just you Randy.... Its a lot of us and I sure as heck hope its the most of us when we get to vote these next two times...
Keep the Faith, Jerry
My Link Belt Processor was a repo.. Sat on a dealer lot for just over a year. Then i showed intrest in it, The dealer gave me the key and the Information of the bank that had it told me to talk to them or just take it, they didn't care what happened to the machine as long as it was off there lot. :D Went and ran the machine found what did and didn't work on it, Made phone calls to guys, companies to find what it was worth, then I called the bank and tried to work a deal.. They wanted 7 grand more than i was willing to give.. The guy at the bank told me to look at the pictures, its in almost perfect shape. The pictures he had must of been of it when the last guy first bought it, cause it looked nothing like the pictures in person. They then tried to sell it on Ebay, about a month later i got a call taht they accepted my offer of $18K.. Went picked it up put about 30 hours and $200 into it and had it working out in the woods.. In the last year and a half i've sunk about $5000 into it, fixing all the leaking hoses, Bent and blown Cylinders, Re-wired the Head, and a few sensors.. Sor for around $23-24K dollars i have a $40-50K machine
maybe we should send that to the white house ? nothing else we have sent there has worked in years.
Quote from: Cedarman on July 23, 2010, 10:29:59 AM
Guess who is doing all the hiring now? Financial firms. This should tell you a lot.Guess which profession has the most millionaires? Part of it is the number of them. Education.
My how they soon forget. Just a few months back they were saying it was going to take more than just an MBA to get one of those jobs. You were going to have to prove your worth or your out.
Ditto on the Randy88, Jeff, give him some mo' trees.
Ironwood
We're getting a little off-topic but I blame Randy88. I have xm in my machine & I listen to alot of talk-radio. I'm shocked at the number of people who call in and talk about how much they have contributed to their unemployment funds. As an employer I will tell them how much. NOTHING. It comes out of the employers pocket. As soon we lay someone off our rates go up even if we haven't layed anyone off in years. The thing that infuriates me the worst is that we have had guys we laid off years ago come back 2 or 3 jobs later and tap out our funds before they head on to their next employer.
Employees pay into it here, but the employer has to match all that plus 4% on top, then 30 % on top of EI premiums, and then $0.27 per $100 paid out in wages to the WCB to invest in the US stock market and brag about their profit margins. That's the compulsory part by law. So by the third tier there, your paying tax on tax. The WCB is run just like an insurance company, deny all claims and then start fighting.
Sorry about that, are other areas hit with repos like it is around here along with foreclosures? Everyone tells me that it takes longer for the tough economy to get to my area and also longer for it to pass, so if what I'm being told is correct then most of the other areas are already improving and things are getting better and work is picking up, mills are ramping back up production, machinery sales are improving, people are being called back to work, unemployment is down, obama has saved us all and the furture looks bright so to speak or are all the banks and economists full of it and this area sucks just as bad as all the others? You know that dangle the carrot on the end of the stick thing, just hang in there and it'll get better just like all the oher places already have, thats my opinion but was wondering if its the case.