Business

[starweld]

Just wondering how business is for everyone. I live in Indiana and we are busy, but not making much$$. How is it for everyone else that is in the business?

[dabar39]

So far I've been lucky enough to still pay the bills, several of my friends and competitors have closed up shop in the last year because of how slow it is in this area. I have been doing more in the way of repairs than anything else and trailer sales have come to almost a standstill.

Several of my landscape and lawn maintenance customers have closed up and new construction is virtually non existent around here. Several of the local packing houses are not planning on staying open much longer either. We went from having about 60 fruit packers to less than two dozen in the last couple of years.

I have a friend who owns a moving and storage company and he says that more people are moving out of the area than are moving in, seems to him most are moving to the Carolina's and out west to the New Mexico/ Arizona area.Things are getting mighty tough around here.

According to the local papers by this time last year we had 462 foreclosures, this month alone there were over 1600 in the Treasure coast area of Florida and unemployment at this time last year was at 3.8% and this year we are almost 11%. This is an area serving three counties of about 2 hundred thousand people.

[Jetmekdc-10]

I live just south of Memphis and until about three weeks ago work was steady but all of a sudden it has just shut down. I also do dirt work/bushogging type of stuff and the calls have stopped coming in on that also. I ramped up the advertising to no avail. I have gotten several calls from Welders looking for work. Hopefully things will settle up and get back to normal soon. A shop that I worked at part-time has closed. He had several welders working for him. Fortunately I love potted meat sandwiches. Adam

[starweld]

Like i said before, we have been in business for almost 25 years, and i think this is as bad as i have seen it. We do alot of industrial work and everything is based on the dollar, we built our business on relationships, but in todays market they care more about money than quality and service. Just my thoughts. But we are still eating every day so i guess we are lucky.

[Bodybagger]

I'm doing a lot of security related items... locks, gates, grilles, bars, and a lot of repair of burglary damage. Doing a lot of stuff to thwart prying of coinboxes, etc. Guess it's a sign of the times.

[turboglenn]

Around here commercial work is just picking up after about a 3 year standstill in all aspects of home and commercial real estate work ( I do both painting and welding) As far as home remodel and retail/walk-in work i haven't really seen a decline at all, as a matter of fact, everytime gas prices drop a few pennies it seems work picks up in relation. To bad crude went up 16 dollars a barrell yesterday, we might be in for another big hit

[Bart]

While I'm not welding business my auto shop's spring and summer was much better than last year. But September has really fallen off. My cash flow is steady and I've been able to keep my overhead down so I'm paying the bills.

On average 1-2 dealerships a month have been closing for about the last six months. Some of them have been in this area for 50 years. The paper plant down the street has cut there production in half and laid off a lot of people. On Monday I read that unemployment in California is at 7.7%.

[lanceman73]

So far I've been lucky enough to still pay the bills, several of my friends and competitors have closed up shop in the last year because of how slow it is in this area. I have been doing more in the way of repairs than anything else and trailer sales have come to almost a standstill.

Several of my landscape and lawn maintenance customers have closed up and new construction is virtually non existent around here. Several of the local packing houses are not planning on staying open much longer either. We went from having about 60 fruit packers to less than two dozen in the last couple of years.

I have a friend who owns a moving and storage company and he says that more people are moving out of the area than are moving in, seems to him most are moving to the Carolina's and out west to the New Mexico/ Arizona area.Things are getting mighty tough around here.

According to the local papers by this time last year we had 462 foreclosures, this month alone there were over 1600 in the Treasure coast area of Florida and unemployment at this time last year was at 3.8% and this year we are almost 11%. This is an area serving three counties of about 2 hundred thousand people.

Usually, repair only jobs are the sign that no one wants to spend money on new equipment. This is good for the repair business.