Was traveling home forom a trip to HF the other day and noticed three
big flaat bed trailers loaded with allkinds of mahcine tools parked
outside a warehouse here in town. On them was all kinds of machinery.
Press brakes, mills of the horizontal and BP type , lots of lathes and
surface grinders, drill presses, and 5 Grob and DoAll bandsaws and
various other items. I just had to stop and take a look as something
like this is a rare sight in this area. I then found out that the
warehouse there is used by the State of Alabama to store equipment as
such that is deemed salvage, and from there it goes to the aution yard
or salvage yard. On looking arund at the various pieces on the
trailers, I opened up a draw on a lathe cabinet only to find it full
of lathe accessories...............follow rest, tool posts of the
Dorian brand, inserts, tool holders, even micrometers etc was in those
draws. The fellow stated they had been on those trailers for about 3
weeks at that point, and were destined to go to the auction yard.
Pityfull thing about it, all the draws were full of water besides the
tools being in them. The grinders had a ton of wheels with them as
well, most of them new, and they too were all submerged in oil slicks
and water. Heads tilted on the knee type mills had water just laying
inside them. One would think that if a concern like the state was so
interested in getting some money out of these machines that reasonable
care would have been used in their storage when they were moved
outside. Most of the items I was told were fully serviceable but new
equipment was purchased to take their place so that they had
essentially been stored inthe warehouse for a few years until it was
decided to send them to auction or salvage. They go through all that
storage process just to place them outside in bad weather and get
ruined. They are now setting outside in the states auction yard for
the next sale in about 2 months, still exposed to weather, and rough
handling.

Just can't figure out the establishments way of thinking. Odds are
they removed perfectly good machines, due to age, and the requirement
to spend money that is allocated to departments budgets or loose the
unspent amount off the next year allocation of funds, only to replace
these machines with China made junk. Its typical of government waste.
They do it all the time in the military. They get x amount of a
budget, and if its not all spent, that amount is reduced from the next
years allotment they get. So folks spend money just to spend it, and
in the end perfectly good merchandies is scraped or trashed or taken
home, but our taxes always seem to keep going up to cover all these
unnecessary expenses.


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