The "shelf life" part sounds like BS. Yeah, stock should be rotated, but to actually have a problem of having such an over supply of batteries that they need to be liquidated?
That just defies logic.
They are hermetically sealed in apocalypse-proof packaging. How can they go bad? :
It's much more likely that there is a supply chain of either (1) counterfeit batteries made in the facility that manufactures the OEM for Milwaukee, or (2) there is a steady supply of manufacturer "seconds"- either cosmetic or performance or both.
You're misunderstanding what I mean by shelf life. It's not like an expiration date. Simply means they may have a time frame that through their own statistics it becomes "not worth" holding onto items beyond a time limit they've self imposed, or through regulations cannot keep it any longer. Not everything is about making money at every turn - it's about making the most at the end of the journey, even if you take a loss at some intervals. TIME is the biggest commodity, and it cannot be bought or sold. A small loss (or rather, giving up a bigger profit potential) at a few turns can keep the bigger more important wheels spinning freely at the end. It's about the big picture, not the small steps.. you take a loss here to free up the potential to make more down the road.. in some cases it might be "yes - we have all this stuff that if we sell we could make "x" amount of dollars - but that could take 6 months to make that money" - or "we can liquidate all this, break even or have a much smaller profit - but we'll have liquid cash in a week and we can use that money to pay for this other stuff we need now". What is the best use of our assets TODAY, - so we can keep focusing on what we want to achieve tomorrow..
some places just can't hold onto stock for too long - has nothing to do with how long it will last.. years ago before fiber optics became a big thing, at Verizon we would have to junk, literally cut up or roll up brand new copper cables to be sent off to the scrap yard.. there's a name for this corporate hoarding of material, that places just can't keep material laying around.. there could be a cable say, 8 pounds a foot of weight, maybe 1000' long, that we needed for a job. But if there was a delay or the reel just became "over aged" - it would be junked and reordered..
Some places, not saying Milwaukee, through regulation have to abide by this. It's like corporate hoarding. Was explained to me a long time ago using air conditioners as an example. So - if you sold a/c units, you couldn't buy up units from everywhere and just keep them sitting around for months and months waiting for the summer to hit, essentially starving out your competition of supply. Big companies would have the power to put smaller places out of business easily simply through buying up a limited supply line, and leaving them with nothing to sell.
I think there's a guy on this thread that sells Milwaukee batteries on eBay. The most he'd say - is that yes they are real, yes they are from Milwaukee - and that's all he'd say about it cause he figured out how to do it, and was not gonna just let everyone in on info he had to find on his own. I completely understand why he'd not wanna share with a forum filled with people he doesn't know, it just kills me not being to satisfy my own curiosity.. lol. I'd never have to patience to sit and do all that myself anyway..
These big companies don't think or act like you or I might.. one day it's - run run run, and then AS SOON AS, a certain dollar amount in the budget, or some predetermined figure gets reached, the brakes slam on - and they'd just throw away everything they didn't use instead of leaving material to pick from for the next few months.. same reason why they might lease a bunch of trucks for 10 years, doing a one year lease. Way more expensive, but if the day comes where they decide they wanna spend money somewhere else - 20 trucks are off the lot and that money being spent on them goes somewhere else in a week.
Here - check this out.. they did this as EVERY location years back.. my garage filled up 4 40 yard dumpsters of all brand new material, and a lot of stuff just laying around. Mostly brand new stuff that we used everyday - and the fiber deployment brakes slammed on. Straight to the dumps it all went.. you'd make a fortune just selling it all back to them months later.
Again - ALL conjecture on my part.. in reality it could simply be they cannot keep more than a certain amount in the warehouse cause of fire codes, and they need to sell off 5 pallets of stuff to make sure they don't go over their limit when the next shipment arrives in 2 weeks..
