Harbor Freight (arrogance)

If you don't stock enough variety to get people in the door, the cost of floor space is irrelevant.

Drift cutters can help knock down snow that is above the bucket. Ever wonder what those holes on the side of the bucket are for? ;-)

When the plow leaves a huge pile at the EOD, something that's above the bucket, I use a shovel to slice the street side face off, a little at a time and then blow that away. After a few passes, it's down low enough for the bucket to handle. Of course, I've got a whole inch more bucket height now, so that shouldn't be as much of a problem. ;-)

I'm the only one out there early in the morning and later at night. The neighbors don't mind because I take care of their driveways too.

I have always cleared about 2 feet onto the lawn. I like the extra room to open car doors, wheel out the garbage can, get the snow blower around, etc.

I also blow a path around the house so I can get to the shed, back door, etc. The mail carriers love me because I blow a path from my neighbor's driveway across the front of my house to my stoop. They don't have to walk out to the street and back in to get from house to house.

The only thing I *really* don't like about the new machine is the location of the control for the chute direction. It's in front of the console as opposed to behind it like on the Sno-Tek. I'm short and it's hard for me to drive the machine and reach over (and down) then spin the handle. As I mentioned, I'm often in tight spaces like between 2 cars, along the front of a garage, etc. so there's a lot chute maneuvering. The Sno-Tek handle was right where I could use it while standing upright, driving and turning.

They only work if it's a drift. These "drifts" were the width and lengths of the driveway and were bracketed by 5' of packed snow, some years. A 36" snowfall gets to be a drag.

With the salt, the berm turns to ice and will laugh at any snow blower. The whole thing has to be dug out with something stronger than a snow shovel.

;-)

You get door service? I haven't seen that since I was a kid. We've always had a box by the street. They just drive by. If there was any snow in front of the box, the kept driving.

I see that. No, I wouldn't like that either. Mine was behind the bars. Both of those look like the control goes to the top of the auger chute? The crank went to the bottom of the chute and drove a worm gear riding on a spur gear on the chute. It tended to get jammed with ice. It all worked OK in dry snow but it was useless in slop. I had to do sloppy snow by hand. Wet snow is heavy stuff, too.

And its always good business to sneer down your nose while insulting your customer? They sure as hell didn't etch that one in stone and send it down the mountain.

Instead of taking care of the customer whether its your vain arrogance and stupidity for refusing to stock a low turn rate item he WILL NEED or his for not already having one the fact is that its a lot harder to get a customer back than it is to keep them in the first place. The customer still walked out.

If you don't understand it or you refuse to understand it then there is no point in visiting Ed's Country Hardware store either. I didn't even have to go there to know he won't have it, and if I ask he will treat me like dirt for asking. I'll just skip that place and head for town to get ALL of what I need.

Just because the bank and I share ownership of an 800 million dollar combine it doesn't mean I have cash on hand to buy every spare part I should in your opinion, and dead simple items like a bolt should be available at any hardware store where the owner doesn't have his head up his....

Oh pleeeeease, that is not how the retail world works, those that remain in business. It is a daily occurrence that customers walk out of stores all over the world and empty handed every day. One does not remain in business by continuing to buy an item that no longer warrants space on the shelf or by stocking "everything" and not ever selling some of it.

And referring back to all those lathes, 60 was it? I seriously doubt that those lathes were in his stock. Certainly he had access to a source that he could become a middle man with that variety. And of those 60 lathes they certainly would be shipped direct to the customer and not from a single source/manufacturer.

Several woodworking stores sell and stock SawStop. You can buy a table saw right when you walk inside and pay and load it in your truck. BUT with a very popular model and is the original model, you cannot do this. You pay and the saw is shipped direct from one of Woodcraft's sources. This is why their catalog has more in it than you can go to the store and walk out with. That is ONE example of many.

What is stupid in this short story you are writing. Every single store in the world does not tell their customers what they need or want is stupid. But every single store has and has always not had something that a customer wanted and that is because it does not fit in the business plan. I have only heard a store employee say, sorry/or we do not stock that. That tells you the situation. You are not getting it there. And probably not the quart of milk that your wife told you to go get. He does not go on to say, what they/you need is not important, like you said, that would be stupid. Why would anyone think would happen? That would be directly. Iindirectly he is probably thinking that he needs to get the milk at the next store.

When you have competition and yes every like business is competition, whether you are the best or the worst. You have to first have a sound business model and stick to it. Pleasing the customer is an important step but absolutely not the only important step necessary to have a sustainable business.

YOU can please some of the people some of the time,... you know the rest.

DOH! But one of those other customers that came from one of those other stores wanks in to your business and buys what you have.

You CANNOT be everything to every customer.

So if you buy everything, you go broke and close the doors.

Certainly variety is a draw but you have to be able to control your money. I am not sure if I have ever heard of a company that started out offering everything. No one really knows what is going to sell with a start up business. So you start with inventory that will sustain the business. Add variety as business warrants.

Now you are just being a comedian.

We get salt, we get berms, we get ice. Just dealt with berms that were higher than the bucket by a least 6" inches. Cleared them with a shovel shave and blow. 3 EODs and some street work.

There's a hydrant under there someplace. This was after a thaw and refreeze and I'm sure you know what the does to a snow plow berm.

Door service for mail, newspaper, packages, etc. Up until the previous guy retired, the paper was "doored" in inclement weather.

("Doored" is what we called it when I delivered papers in NYC. You put the paper between the storm door and the entry door to keep it dry. Takes longer but the tips made it worth it.)

We've basically had 2 mail carriers since we moved here 30+ years ago. The first one watched our kids grow up and when we see him around town he always wants an update. (He ushers at some of the local theaters and AAA ballpark, so we run into him a couple of times a year.)

The current one just about always stops to chat if I'm outside. She's really nice.

I'm going to guess that you have no clue who delivers your mail or at least don't know anything about them or their family.

Yes, they both control the chute from the top. That part works fine. There are some Ariens models that have "Quick Turn" levered system instead of the "Ice Drill" style like mine. The lever is mounted on the console. I'm going to see if mine can be modified but I doubt it.

If you look at the Sno-Tek you'll see that the deflector has 2 metal "U" brackets attached to it. The small one is the original, the big one is my mod. The first year Sno-Tek didn't come with a remote lever for the deflector and I couldn't reach the "handle" from behind the console, so I extended it.

Now I have remote deflector control but I hate the chute control. Can't friggin' win.

It is a consumable. If you don't have a shear pin, a commonly used item for your machine you are not operating very smart and the bank would be smart to foreclose. Don't blame your incompetence on my lack of $2 shear pins.

When I had to use one of the two that came with my snowblower I bought two more at Lowes. Call John Deere.

That just looks like snow. In a smallish storm, the plows would pack the driveway waist high with ice. It took a garden shovel to get through it. A digging bar would have been a better tool but would wreck the driveway.

Large storms would usually drop a fluffier snow which was easier until it went over the impeller.

The post office doesn't allow it for new routes. It's been that way for a long time. We have mail boxes by the street but new developments have to have a central set of boxes for everyone in the development. Not even at the road.

I did that, though half my route was apartments with an enclosed foyer (for lack of a better word) for four units. I had to deliver it to the door, inside the foyer.

We have different carriers every day. Well, at least four during the week. They're all nice.

No, I don't see them at the theater but I recognize them and wave when they go by. They do come to the front door with large (= won't fit in the box) and ring the bell.

Mine didn't have the chute control. It was a manual setting with a large wingnut to adjust the distance. It was a pretty basic unit, comparatively.

I was the local Woodcraft today. They had three models of SSs in stock. They didn't have any of the Laguna saws in stock but sold one anyway. ;-) They also had all three models (16/32. 19/36, and 25/50) of the Supermax drum sanders and a couple of Jets. I didn't know that drum sanders were so popular.

They were short of the mid/high end lathes because the lead time is so long, at least three months, and they're selling like hotcakes. They had four mobility kits for the Revo 18/36 ($700 for wheels) on the floor waiting for something to put them on.

Of course they can't carry everything but they keep a lot more expensive inventory in the store than one would expect. OTOH, their Festool inventory is really shabby, particularly accessories.

Evidently there is a happy medium. I don't know if HF is there, mainly because there isn't much there I want.

HF isn't a new business. It seems they're always in trouble.

Did Ed sell him the combine? If not then why does he expect Ed to stock parts for it?

DerbyDad03 snipped-for-privacy@eznet.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Don't your hands sweat? I never can use the same pair of Nitrile gloves twice...even though I've tried.

Ooh, congrats on the new toy--uh tool. I've got an old one that my Grandpa bought used and it's done a great job these last two winter storms. I just didn't know enough about the Tecumseh HS50 engine to get it going again, so I replaced it with a very nice Predator from Harbor Freight.

Puckdropper

snipped-for-privacy@notreal.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I find 30-40 tricky. It feels colder than it does at 25 for some reason. Maybe it's the humidity? Usually 30 involves melting and thawing, even if we don't have snow.

I've got one set of gloves that fit nicely in my coat pocket. Thick enough to be warm above 20F, thin enough to stuff in the pocket and forget about. I wish I could find another couple pairs, I tore these ones up quite quickly. (They were cheap.)

Puckdropper

Yes, my hands sweat. Read the paragraph just above your response.

I agree that there is no way to directly put the nitriles back on when they are wet, but if you take them off by the cuff so that they end up inside out, the perspiration will evaporate and you (I) can use them again and again.

As I mentioned, once they dry and you turn them "inside in" just blow into the cuff to pop the fingers back out. I've often used the same pair a half dozen times before they wear out.

Sometimes I have "overlapping pairs" i.e. one pair is drying while I'm wearing another pair. Situations where I need to take the gloves off multiple times during a project.

I was lucky (pure luck) that I stocked up during a sale just before the pandemic hit when the priced jumped from like $6 to $18. I got a few boxes on sale for less than the $6. I recently ran out and I think I paid $14 per for a couple of boxes, but my daughter's boyfriend had given me a HF gift card for Christmas, so *he* paid $14 per box, not me. [Don't try to convince me otherwise. ;-) ]

Nice job giving the old machine a new life.

Maybe he treats you like dirt (if that's even true) because you have a lousy attitude. Attitude begets attitude; both positive and negative.

"Dead simple items like a bolt" is not the same as "the exact bolt that you needed". I'll bet he stocks hundreds of different sizes and types of bolt. He just doesn't stock the one that no one (except you) buys. How hard is that for you to understand?

Do you stock every single flavor of ice cream on the off chance that a guest might want some Tillamook Marionberry Pie? What, you don't? What a terrible host you are.

And don't come back and tell us that the bolt you wanted is "common". It's not common for his clientele. He told you that. He's not in business to make only

Evidently and eventually. Precisely. I have not seen Harbor Freight financials so I could not say with certainty if they are in trouble or not. But any business remaining in business during the past 2 years is doing something right. Is HF public or private?

I could not say.

Some stores do stock a lot of inventory. But possibly, and this has happened to me in the past, items on back order show up all at once. You tend to be over stocked as a result. With supply chain difficulties you order as much as you can and hope for the best. This is not totally unlike a back order from the source.

I recall way back when GM was having issues with catalytic converters. We were replacing 4~5 per day and we could not get enough. This seemed to go on for years. I finally got my back ordered converters in a single shipment of over 200 units. I typically ordered 10~15 every two weeks. To put that into perspective that increased the value of my inventory by 20%. This was 40 years ago and GM parts was in Houston also. I did not stock the obscure stuff, I let the other dealers bloat their inventories with these odd parts. I stocked items that moved and bought the odd stuff as needed and daily. GMPD was not in particular happy with me. They wanted me to keep a 120 day supply of parts. I saw no need for more than 60. So my inventory was probably half of what they thought I should have.

The 120 day supply was to buffer their inability to supply parts. I had plenty of other sources than GMPD to get GM parts.

So what may appear to be a well stocked show room floor could be back orders or product finally being delivered all at once.