Has work slowed for you at the end of 2008?

[Guest SAIPEM]

Just curious how the economic downturn has effected everyone here.

 

My brother is a home builder in North Carolina and he told me it's already a depression in construction there.

 

Carolina Builders closed the Greensboro Lumber yard.

I've been there in the past and it's huge.

 

I'm wondering how long it'll be before we start seeing real problems in the metal working industries.

[Guest]

I have certainly seen my contract stuff shut off completely.

 

One customer is +90 days on payment.

 

Not looking good

[Guest SAIPEM]

Sorry to hear that.

 

FWIW, I'm in much the same boat on contract work.

[ReDEyZZ]

It has slowed down here, there would usually be 10-20 cnc job listings in the newspapers on a regular basis, now there isn't any.

 

See what the new year brings.

[Kevangel]

There were only 4 ads in the skilled section want ads last couple of sundays...a year ago it was pretty much one page. There was one machinist ad. I am with Jarrett; see what the next year and new quarter bring as I am rumored to get a package of tools to build, otherwise I start looking for new business.

[YoDoug®]

At my day job we laid off a couple of design engineers in November so those of use that remain are very busy with the extra projects we have taken on.

 

As for side contract jobs, this year has been the busiest ever for me and i have made a good bit of extra money. Right now I only have one job I am finishing up this weekend and I had a meeting this morning about a new job for early next year.

[Rob @ Target Machine]

This has been a busy year for me, with new contracts still coming in. I see alot of job shops starving for work though. We are still subbing out alot of work still, no need to pull it in-house yet. Fingers crossed.....for next year.

[Justin Beebe at Folsom Tool]

We are swamped in the areospace industry. This year we bought four 5-axis mills and two mill/turn machines with more on the way. This brings us up to fourteen mills and six lathes. We work on average 55 to 60 hours per week sometimes more. We also have two other shops that are growing at about the same rate. I just hope it lasts.

[gcode]

I checked out the help wanted in the local paper

this morning. They usually run 2 or 3 pages..

A thru Z. Today is was 1/2 of one page.

Most of the local shops I'm in touch with have cut back thier hours. I'm used to working

6AM-6PM Mon thru Friday and 8 on Saturday.

We're working 8 hour days for the holidays,

I'm hoping we get our OT back after the New Year.

[Hitachi]

We are getting slower and slower out here for the last 6-8 months , shutdowns, layoffs, reduced work weeks, etc. Not a good way to start the New Year

 

Elco1971

X3 MU1 Mill L3 Lathe L1 5X

SolidWorks 2007 SP3.1

Dell Xeon 2.80GHz 2GB Ram

NVidia Quadro FX4500

Windows XP Pro SP2

[Kevangel]

http://dayton.bizjournals.com/dayton/other...05/daily20.html?

 

up to 8 percent in n. carolina...had been a hot area as it seemed everyone in Dayton ohio was moving there.

[X-L Engineering Corp]

Starting to pickup here we had a couple of slow months at the end of last year but I came back from my two week vacation and we are back at 60 hours and talking about buying some more machines.

 

Last year we bought 11 machines before July.

 

Medical / Aerospace

[JNO]

Just checked Monster for CNC in MA. Of the 8 listings,

3 agencies,

4 general ads (non Machine related)

1 job shop

 

Last year Monster usaually had 2-3 pages of ads for CNC. Not Good!

[Oppiz]

I'm on a 32 hour week.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Been seeing lots of ads for auctions. Mostly sheetmetal houses but the occasional machine shop creeps in... a little more often than usual.

 

Most of my customers seem to still be very busy though.

 

The credit crunch is causing a bunch of problems though.

[bogusmill]

We are pretty busy. Research usually picks up when the economy is down. Companies are looking for the next big product that customers must have to stay competitave with the competition who are also looking for the next big thing.

[Thee Rickster ™]

New moulds, no.

 

Casting production yes, down by 60%.

[toy4x4]

Down to 32 hrs a week. Our company laid off 30 employees this week.

[MotorCityMinion]

32,that must be the magic number. Insurance went up, hourly wages went down, and 32 hours, across the board for the entire shop here. 25% of the work force laid off throughout the year so far. Got laid off for Christmas and can't get through to the unemployment office. People standing in line all day are getting turned away.

 

Go Lions!

[[email protected]]

We're still working 9 hour days here, but we haven't had but a handful of new jobs since the 1st of the year.

My Uncle owns a Tool Shop in Hopkinsville (about an hour away) and he went from 30+ people down to 8 or 10...not looking good.

[Tony35]

we are holding are own here still working 10hrs a day 2 shifts in the machine shop 9hrs a day in programming 1 shift 2 programmers. 2009 looks pretty good for us so far. 2 new machines are on the way 1 vmc and hmc kitamuras

[?Mark]

I was just told we're down to 32hrs/week as well.

 

Man I SAW that coming over a year ago and I still let some good opportunities go by

[Kevangel]

http://dayton.bizjournals.com/dayton/other...05/daily50.html?

 

Here is a link to 100 cities and what has happened to their manufacturing base in the last year...some cities have added and many have lost. Dayton, ohio lost 3K ... L.A. 15K...detroit 22K...Seattle was up 1K

[Andy]

My shop has been 60% off for 3 months now.

Many of my customers are even worse off.

I think it will not improve anytime soon.

However, don't need much work to stay in business

luckily.

[Bruce Caulley]

December was my busiest month so far and now january looks like beating that by a good margin. We do a mix mining/medical/hydraulics/general eng.

 

Bruce