How do the next six months look for your shop?

lowCountryCamo said:

I have tried but still cannot understand why machinist are paid so little compared to other trades. Can anyone enlighten me.

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Simple, most other trades compete locally, we compete globally. The plumber or electrician might have 50 or 100 competitors, most machine shops have 100,000+ and many of those are in third world countries with $1 an hour labor.

Business is good. We turn down nothing. Trying to find way's to get everything done now. Not complaining about being busy ! It was not that long ago when just about eveyone was hurting.

We have a few long term contracts, so the smaller ones come and go from week to week. We are lucky right now though, we haven't really got any competition, what we do is still fairly new.

I plan on opening a new waterjet shop in the next six months or so. I have 15 years experience as an operator and now have the means to buy a new Ward machine and be able to carry the shop for a year or two if need be. Most new shops fail quickly because they cannot make a profit until they are well known. I plan to cling on and market myself shamelessly. It will be at least a year or two before I can hire an operator, if ever. If I just break even, then I will have the coolest hobby shop ever.

The next 6 months. July has 2)4 day autocross race weekends for us. August has a week vacation in upper Maine, racing again, and a 2nd long weekend. September I plan on being at the IMTS, followed by a "work" trip to Verona with wifey. October we will be in Miami "working" for a week. Staying around home for November. December is time for a vacation so will be in Barbados for a few weeks, and holidays finish the year. Back to work in January spending a week in Vegas "working".
Tough job but it has gotta be done.
Prob not the answers Mil was looking for.

Scruffy887 said:

Prob not the answers Mil was looking for.

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Yeah, especially since the original post is almost 3 yrs old. Pretty sure THOSE six months are long gone.

Seeing as another 6 months or so has passed guess updates are due,

This year started at a blistering pace for me. Then the oil slump hit and one of my customers customers who does a lot of wood chip burners customers switched from the agro of burning wood back to burning oil, cheaper and less effort! Thats kinda had a knock on effect and created some spare capacity and so im not getting much work from there which use to indirectly account for about 1/4 my income.

That aside everything else is a little slower but stable this month. Have enough work to show a profit, but not as much as i would kinda like. Then again, i have kinda spent the last couple of years pretty backed up work wise. Currently theres enough definite work to see me through a good month or 2 as yet, but this years looking like it will be a bit quieter than last year which was pretty good really all told. So i spose a stable outlook looking forwards right now, probaly not the growth i was hopeing for but its still early in the year,

I also hope to take on some proper premises this year, but have no idea when its actually going to be, but it will finally give me a lot more space and the ability to buy material direct and in qty (at least qty by my needs!!) Weather theres then going to be a enough work to really show a profit doing that i don't know, but its something i need, hopefully it will unlock some doors and at least break even.

We are very-busy.Purchased a new Haas w/5th axis.Hopefully this will help.North of me(Detroit)area,from what
i have been told,slammed with work.They need bodies,how one guy put it.

things are slowing down.
.
oil is cheaper from fracking so oil industry is slowing down
.
15% alcohol addition to gas did not pass but stayed at 10% so corn prices are low and farmers have less money to buy equipment so farm and construction equipment manufacturers slowing
.
west port strike slowing imports and export loading and unloading. this is effecting manufacturers who depend on imports and exports to be on time. supply chain delays mean maybe a week off or more and no pay until supplies come in
.
wind energy tax credits expired? so not as many big wind turbine projects in the works, which means machine tools sold to those shop making turbines is slowing too
.
Russian embargo is effecting world markets. both imports and exports.
.
in general as of Feb 2015 things are slowing compared to 2014

Spose its update time,

Things here are good, probaly some of the best work i have ever had with the best margins. Brexit seams to be largely ignored and i have nothing to dio with oil, if anything the fear and low savings return probaly push more stuff my way as people look to invest in other tangible things they both have and like!

I got a job that will take 400 hrs in addition to the work that I normally do. I am already short a good lathe machinist.

John

Just remembered this thread, Things are really going well here, 2016 i effectively added another 2 months of profits on the previous year and 2017 i damn well made it nearly 2 1/2 months more than 2016! Here i now sit in 2018 just over 1 month in and i have enough work to make enough profit to pay all my bills for the year, just a question of how many months its going to take me to get it all done.

Seattle currently has more construction cranes than any other city in North America. I have been picking up some work from developers- paying a bit more for higher end metalwork is kind of lost in the rounding error when everything else is so expensive, which is good for me. There are 10 buildings being built right now over 40 stories each. 18,000 new units of housing. Waiting lists for concrete from the batch plants, every truck is busy every day.
I have a good job lined up for one single building that will keep me busy at least half of the year this year, and, most likely will get more.

I am expanding the shop and buying machines.
Contract commitments in this the off season and the inevitable high work load of spring just around the corner.
Last summer work never slowed as it usually does so it may repeat that act this next.
So I am ok.
I am building cash reserves if things slow down however.

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British welder working in kiruna, north Sweden.
We knock up everything you can imagine, from boilers to massive ski equipment lockers, but mainly we produce hydraulic scoops for front loaders and tractors, biggest one we made was 14.5 cubic metres. No one ordered any the last six months which is fine by us because we have so much else to do. Just me and another guy who’s been a welder for 32 years. Then all of a sudden someone ordered 2 street sweeper scoops. The most complicated ones you can get.
That’ll keep me busy for a good 6 months I’d say.