Picked up some free stuff - work closing

[vrinner]

Among a bunch of other stuff like a **** load of recently certified Amerex fire extinguishers, steel, copper pipe, EMT, stainless steel storage racks, hose and electrical reels, and some tools, I got the following noteworthy items when my company was closing up shop in CA. Bitter sweet for sure but still some nice grabs.

Haaga 477 sweeper. Perfect size for my shop to keep the floors clean.
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3 sets of parts bins with all the containers.
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A wire cart with some wire on it.
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A bunch of stainless steel cabinet drawers that I plan on making workshop cabinets out of.
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A few trashcans on wheels and a dirty rag container.
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[DTE]

That's quite the haul, all nice stuff !

 

[BPJOOP93]

Nice score. Merry Christmas. Sorry about the job loss. If I read that correctly

 

[dfiler2]

I know it's Christmas, but you ****

 

[58Yeoman]

Good haul.

 

[cdestuck]

When live gives you lemons, make lemonade

 

[PelicanPines]

Prints label... attaches it to the OP's forhead… " I **** "

 

[Tractorsellr]

Great score.

 

[vrinner]

Luckily I didn't loose my job...at least for the time being and I'm staying local so not too bad. Don't want to say too much online.

Oh...and to add to my suckiness...I also got two really nice workbenches (one heavy steel and one stainless steel) a bench grinder and a Wilton 4800 vice.

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[mrjaw14]

You majorly ****! Nice vice

 

[southalabama]

Nice score

 

[colt zantop]

1st off, glad to hear you still have a job, second, you ****! Hahaha

 

[tarmy]

Christmas Suckage...

The best kind...

 

[ken w.]

I wasn't going to post until I saw the vise. Now , you really ****.

 

[vrinner]

Thanks for all the sucky comments! Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

 

[Dumber than lumber]

You lead the “you ****” herd. For now.

 

[NUTTSGT]

You ****, for sure, but what ***** the most is others losing their jobs.


However, rightfully so, you took advantage of the situation and not others, congrats on the haul.

 

[mmb617]

It's a bittersweet thing when the place you work closes but you get some goodies from it. That happened to me about 20 years ago when the plant closed but I was able to score some nice metal carts that I still use a lot in the garage.

 

[Paxtonshelby]

Nice stuff! But I really would like to see more pics and info on the Boss and the SVO!

 

[vrinner]

Here is a link to some pics of the SVOs and Boss.
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8141865&postcount=653

Basically I'm a Mustang SVO nut. Got a few of them...all in various states. My main big project is an 86 thats turned into a full on track car build. Currently has a 380rwhp 2.6 liter motor (stroked 2.3). Although hasn't been on the track in a couple of years, hope to get it out soon now that I have my garage finished so I can get back to work on it.

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The Boss 302 is a 2013 Laguna Seca version. Bought the car a few years ago with 300 miles on it. Then we had a Farris Beuller episode with my wife putting about 1800 miles on the car in a couple of months without me knowing about it. At that point I said f-it and decided to start using it for track days as an easy way to get my fix while my SVO was not running. Really cars are meant to be driven so better to do that instead of being too pissed. Besides, my wife lets me have all the cars and build a garage so it's all good.

Here are some additional pics of the Boss. It's basically stock but still a great car to toss around and have some fun with.

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[rayra]

Quite the windfall. And should provide enough material for many projects to come.

 

[NUTTSGT]

I thought that was the front corner of an SVO.

 

[McFarmer]

Can’t imagine why a business would be closing and just letting the stuff go.

Any chance a bank is involved ? They might come looking if there is.

Sorry, I haven’t read all the thread.

When the school closed they weren’t going to offer shop classes and told me they would let me know when they decided what was going to happen with the equipment.

Hadn’t heard anything for a year, talked to the custodian and he said they just let everything walk out. Except for four shop made metal working benches that went to the dump. Along with the four Wilton bullets they each had on them.

 

[topcok88]

Can’t imagine why a business would be closing and just letting the stuff go.

Because it costs money to store stuff, move stuff and even sell stuff. Witnessed a few businesses go under (welding and machine shops) and it is very difficult to find buyers of what many here consider valuable. A VMC/HMC/turning center, material, benches/tables and other “stuff” can cost more than its worth to move. Other similar businesses don’t want to sit on something they may never use, most home shops don’t want to pay the money it costs to move some equipment and when a business is in financial crisis the last thing they want to do is spend more money.

Here is about 20,000lbs of steel, stainless and aluminum in my basement from when a previous employer said “I can’t move it”. So I asked a few friends for help and we moved it to the only place I had room. But I figured out real fast it doesn’t really matter if you don’t have a use for it. So I slowly got rid of it all over the course of a year through trading and selling for stuff I do need.

Same thing here with the Lincoln 275, heavy steel tables, and other ****. I didn’t need most of it so I sold it.


All for the high cost of free.



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[John in OH]

You definitely ****!! The vise score is especially a high-value ****!!

Quite generous of the company to allow employees a shot at the equipment before other methods of disposition.

I recall about 25 years ago a lot of machine shops that did dies and molds for the tire industry were going out of business in the Akron, OH, area. Most closed and sold off their equipment via pubic auctions and great deals were often available on machine tools and related tool and die equipment. Smaller mills and lathes sold at more or less market value, but "bigger" lathes would often not even get a bid. They probably ended up at the scrap yard.

I went to one such auction and showed casual interest in a LeBlond lathe, 16" swing, 56" btc, but didn't bid on it. A day or two later the shop owner tracked me down and BEGGED me to buy it for scrap value because it hadn't sold and he hated to see it get scraped out. It's still sitting in an old workshop on one of my farms unused. But maybe someday .....!

 

[McFarmer]

Yeah, before I just took something off their hands and resold it I would make darn sure a bank didn’t have first dibs. Banks don’t like to be messed with.

You no doubt know more about the situation than I do.

 

[topcok88]

Yeah, before I just took something off their hands and resold it I would make darn sure a bank didn’t have first dibs. Banks don’t like to be messed with.

You no doubt know more about the situation than I do.

The businesses I speak of restructured and continue to do business with different names. They left hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and material behind because - the employees need to keep manufacturing going at the new location. People who aren’t business owners don’t understand why there is so much waste - but if I said I can be doing billable work for $107-$151 an hour or paying my employees to move equipment that I really don’t need or want because there is already new stuff at the other location... What would you do? And when it can cost hundreds of thousands to move equipment that means a lot. The bank doesn’t care because they don’t own it. And why do I know this? Because family owns it and all the employees (I even invited friends) to grab stuff before it was left to the next tenants of the building. And depending on the size of machine you can’t give away a machine that weighs 25k. You have to PAY to throw it away.



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[rburke65]

You definitely ****. The 4800 is worth $340!

 

[vrinner]

Just about everything I got was going to be tossed in the trash with the exception of steel and copper that was going to scrap. Getting a few hundred feet of copper was a drop in the bucket to the rest of what was scrapped so I just got it for free.

With the company moving manufacturing to a new location there was a lot of stuff that they didn't want to move. We are talking about a 125,000 SF manufacturing building with 125+ manufacturing workers so you can imagine all the stuff we had. Dozens of trucks and containers full of stuff got packed and shipped. What I got were really just left overs that they didn't want.

The timing couldn't have been better to finish my garage and shutdown the plant at the same time.

 

[Miss the Pontiacs]

2 days after your original post and you still ****

 

[homebuilt burner]

I was involved in something like this one time. The managers were real jerks. "Everything is going in the junk, no personal gain." We threw dozens of air regulators in the scrap bin (under the watchful eye of the same managers), in addition to shop supplies (enough to equip a home shop for years). It was a really bad deal.

 

[Terranova]

It’s already been said. You ****.

 

[vrinner]

Well...to continue on the I **** theme, I just got all this audio equipment that I'll probably put some in my garage, some in the house and others may donate.

Sansui AU-D5 amp, Pioneer RT-702 reel to reel,
Kenwood KA-5700 amp, Kenwood KT-5500 tuner, Infinity, JBL and Yamaha speakers. All in good working condition but a good cleaning is in order. Non of it super high end but better than a boom box.

 

[Junkdrawer Dog]

I helped decommission an older manufacturing facility during the downturn of 1982-83. All raw materials and anything with a company property tag, such as punch presses and machining centers, was inventoried, catalogued and sent to secure storage. All this stuff was entered as surplus plant and equipment and made available for requisition by other plants within the company. Anything left was available first come, first served to the decommissioning crew. After that, whatever was left went into the dumpsters. To be honest, after the first round of packing up everything with a property tag or engraved property number, there wasn't much left. For example, micrometers and dial calipers had an engraved property number and went to surplus. Steel scales had no numbers and were free take. I think I left there with a couple Starrett scales, a wire stripper and my stapler. They ran a tight ship!