I'm saving money with Chinese products!

[Flyin6]

I would never have thought for a Kintucky moment that I could save money with all the Chinese products that are out there! Me, American born, patriotic military veteran of several wars who grew up and served with men of principle! Yep, I have discovered the shift to Chinese manufacturing is definitely saving me money.

In the past I would cruise over to my friendly Chinese store disquised as some American business, Walmart, and pick up a few flourscent light bulbs, Chinese manufacture, of course. The ones that state they have a 3,000 hour bulb life. Happily, I'd drive home thinking that the $2 I saved over the Hardware store bulbs, which happened to be American manufacture, and screw them in their socket.

Some time during the next week, I would as normal, go around the house and pluck out the few (only a few mind you!) light bulbs that burned out, and when I was over at Kroger, I'd pick up a half dozen new ones. Over the next six months I wouldn't say any more than maybe a third of them would burn out, which I would replace from the stockpile I had of them in the laundry room. I learned to keep lots of extras since the 3,000 hours seemed to come quicker than I expected.

One day I walked around the house and one of the motion sensitive lights came on. I looked up there and thought, I had forgotten that bulb was even there. I changed it out to fluorescent back in 2006! Darned thing was still working! It was about the same week, one of the overhead 8 foot fluorescent bulbs stopped working in my shop. Same thing, had been there since 2006. When I fooled around with that one, I found it was a $3 igniter that needed replacement, and not the bulbs. They are still working now 9 years later.

When I pulled that bulb, and cleaned away almost a decade of dust (FROM MY SHOP!) I noticed a little ink stamp, "Proudly made in the USA." That tweaked my interest so I got my ladder and pulled the motion activated bulb. Same thing...American made.

Once I pulled the factory brake rotor off of my old Suburban, it was shot...Kat likes to use the brakes a lot! Ah, I went down to some parts store and picked up a new one. Was cheap, like around $30! Well I installed it and on the test drive it had a pulsing brake when I applied the pedal. Warped? Out of round? But it's new! So I take it off and back to the parts store I go. The guy there says, you should turn the rotor when new!

WHAAAT? I explained that I had forgotten twice more than he was ever likely to learn and that new rotors should be true. He told me the shops always turn them before installing them!

So I drove over 1 block to Tire Discounters and asked. Yup, if they have to get a rotor from AutoZone or the other Chinese store, they turn them first to true them up. The guy there said, just get your money back and go to Kentucky motors, they have American made rotors and no truing needed. He said same thing for brakes, don't use the A-zone ones...Chinese!

How does this all save me money?

Well now I shop for American only product. I negotiate the price or pay the asking and leave it at that. I don't have to replace 3,000 hour light bulbs now anymore until, well, I don't know until when because they are all still working. And Brake rotors? I just take the factory unit and turn it for $15 and be done with it.

With all this Chinese junk flooding the US market I simply shop for American or German and buy it once, at whatever the price. I now rebuild what I can, and if I can't find it US made, well, then I learn to live without it.

The net effect, I have noticed is a lot less clutter, and I am having more money left over and less shopping sorties for the second or third replacement for a lifetime unit!

Chinese products are good by me!

[Dawg25385]

Buy once, cry once, as they say!

[KensAuto]

Rant on Big D. I feel the same way when my $5 hammer breaks, or brand new christmas lights don't work, right out of the box. We could go on and on with just about every china product out there.

[Flyin6]

Rant on Big D. I feel the same way when my $5 hammer breaks, or brand new christmas lights don't work, right out of the box. We could go on and on with just about every china product out there.

They make junk

And I'm not supporting them or US companies who use them unless I am forced to

I just screwed myself out of cheapo tools!!!!!!!!

[EL TATE]

I have this conversation many times, with many customers and it stems from something I read from Zig Ziglar. Price, vs. cost.

"Zig was telling a story of buying a bike for his son in the 70’s. There was a Schwinn bicycle  for $64.95 which was a great deal of money at the time for a child’s bike and there was also another brand of bicycle that was only $34.95 and he and his wife decided to purchase the cycle with the lower price.

Turned out they had to replace the handle bars within the first month of their son riding the bicycle and again in the second month and the price for the handle bars were $9.99 each time. They had to replace the rim of one of the tires on the third month $12.95 and by month six the bike needed a new sprocket for $50.00. Instead of replacing the sprockets Zig and his wife bought their son the Schwinn bicycle at $64.95 and their son rode the second bicycle for ten years.  It turned out the bicycle that appeared to be priced less ended up costing them more then the bicycle with what appeared to be the higher price. The bicycle with the higher price ended up actually costing less. The price of the first bicycle was $34.95 and their son used the bicycle for six months at a cost of $11.31 per month. The second bicycle with the price of $64.95 the child rode for ten years with a cost of $6.49 per year.

Pay a little bit more now, or a lot more later"

[TexasRedNeck]

Here is an alternative viewpoint.

As the resident redneck I may surprise some of you by saying this.

I am a global economy thinker.  Shutting ourselves off to global trade is not the answer.  There are things that the Chinese and others produce very well.

America is no longer the land of mass manufacturing, nor should we be.  We invent things and provide services.  Usually when we invent something we produce it for a while and then when it becomes a commodity it moves overseas and we cycle through to the next great thing.

Remember the fax machine?, the DVD player, the plasma TV?  All invented and manufactured here for years.

Fact is that our labor costs are not globally competitive for low or moderately skilled labor.  We should seek to elevate our workforce to a higher level of contribution and not attempt to compete for low skilled labor.

My company has 6000 employees in Gurgon India.  It costs us 50% of the US costs to develop IT solutions even including the added cost of the office infrastructure which we don't account for in the US operations.  And the results of their work is at least on par with our US operations.

There are some really smart people in the world outside the US. India has more children in school in the top 25% (honors students) than the US has total students.   Our future is not manual labor manufacturing commoditized goods.  Its moving on to invent and produce the cutting edge items.

Sure, Many things are sub par coming from the pacific rim countries but there are many things they simply manufacture well and we get the value from it.

You have a smart phone, TV, tablet, or other device manufactured in the US,  nope.  is there a lot of cheesy Chinese crap, yes.  The trick is discerning value.

[JR]

I couldn't agree more guys. Sure, there are lots of things made somewhere else that are very well made. There are things I will buy made in china, some I won't.

Take my new air compressor. I could have got the home depot or sears for well under 1k, but I spent 2k and it looks and runs like it. The 5hp motor is made in the US and is easily twice the size of import motors. Sure it may have some parts made to spec from over there, but that is business.

What doesn't come up is how much we really do export. Sure it is not "even" as they say but what we export is the high end products and technical products that just can't be made by the unskilled worker. Anyone can plug in a chip or solder, but look how many of those little parts are made here and put together there.

People still by Hass CNC machines over the chinese units made from cheap castings and look for good used US machines.

Handtools are the same. Look at how they round out from a bolt head when the metal is to soft.

Yep, it comes down to value and use. Choose and pay for you needs,,,,,,,,,

[Flyin6]

Interesting and valid viewpoints JR and RN

However,

You are both fired for being unpatriotic!

[Flyin6]

OK, well, acted a bit rashly there...just gettin' in to this firing thing...sorta cool!

You both are reinstated!

You boneheads bring up valid points when thought about, ring true. The problem for me is the gamble when it is chinaman's manufacture. You just never know if you're buying something quality or junk. I mean those 3 cyl Chery engines, the one my Gator had, are Chinese manufacture and are darned good motors.

But all this Chinese junk causes me to scour the garage sales more looking for "Classic" snap-on or Craftsman stuff.

Ya know, my large SAE wrenches are 1970's vintage. And I used them the other day on SquareD...why replace something that works?

[OldKooT]

I feel be it Chinese or American made or from anywhere else.... if it's of modern manufacture it's a fair chance it's sub-par to the older stuff.

Example.... New Snap-on tools vs say the same tool 15 years ago. I buy the old ones when possible.

I buy used light bulbs all the time. People laugh at me, and they are welcome to laugh. I have some 1940's bulbs in my barn that have been working now since the 1940's LoL 

[Flyin6]

Yep, quality is now the stuff of museums!

[EL TATE]

To expound on my original comment:

To be completely transparent, the "China" and "Taiwan" made products have certainly earned their stigmas over the years, but we are manufacturing in both places at this time. The difference between the good and the bad in my opinion is us engineering vs overseas engineering. In our case, we provided the machinery to cut the gears. We wrote the software that the machines use to cut the gears. We provided the "boots on the ground" training, on site quality control, technique, lapping process, heat treatment all on site. Then when the product lands we run it through our own qc on site. Spark spectrometer for metallurgy analysis, Rockwell hardness testing, coordinate measuring machine for dimension accuracy to the frog's hair. We pull from top, bottom, middle and sides of the shipment to make sure that we're not only testing the "good ones" they stacked on top for us to test. We have rejected whole container loads of product due to failure to meet our expectations. We don't make everything overseas. We make a lot of our products right here in WA in fact. What we run into is this: when you pay someone to do a job for you, overseas or stateside, you get what they give you. regardless of what you pay for it because they will always try to hustle you to cut their costs and increase their profits, so we have to have direct control to get what we want. Even after all those expenses it still winds up costing less to do business overseas due to taxes and other associated costs. Stateside manufacturing will take a long time to get back to the quality level we used to enjoy, and in the meantime there are some very high quality products out there and then there's a boatload of crap made to look like it. Duane and I were at the SEMA convention last year, and got to see 1st hand the multitude of copy cat artists out there along with AAPEX. There was a section at AAPEX that was dedicated to exhaust and catalytic converters. I kid you not, I walked past 5 different companies selling the exact same converter. even had the same display but with different names associated with it, and each one of them professed to "make it themselves". I wish and pray that we get back to Detroit and Pittsburg building for America. Let's hope our future president gets this figured out.