Need yalls opinions

I can remember in the early 1980's, the west Texas area and eastern New Mexico was booming with machine shops on every street corner. Guys had shops stuffed in their barns out on the family farms and in garages at home as most of us have today. Then the oilfield went bust. All of the machinery went, who knows where. Used to be a machinery dealer in Odessa that advertized in one of the machinery magazines for many years trying to sell leftover stuff he had accumulated from the bust. One day, he was gone! There's a guy in Odessa that has a small shop that does work on the stuff he runs out in the field. His dad bought a brand new LeBlond NC lathe back around 1978 for a play toy. It had less than 4000 hours on it in 2005 when I visited the shop!
 
Ulma doc, it's awful down here I've given up hope I've family in California, Florida and Missouri. I'm starting to look in those directions.

4gsr, we still have machine shops on every corner I think 8 in my town alone only two are manual shops with huge machines being an electrical contractor for almost 9 years I've worked at most of them I would be willing to but I've hooked up 15-20 million dollars worth of mazak CNC machines over the years..... my buddy Randy owns of the manual shops he's my go too guy with questions he has a really great J head I'm trying to convince him he needs something new. The oilfield mentality "run it until it's junk" is king around here. A good machinist around here makes 15-25 an hour around here you can walk onto a rig entry level for 22.
 
Yep, that used to be the oilfield slogan, "run it until it's junk!". Luckily, I've never had to work on drilling rigs in my earlier days. Been out on several workover rigs in my past. Don't miss that part of the business one bit! Having more fun designing frac plugs now days!
 
4gsr, when I started to close shop in 2014 one of my customers convinced me to to go to work for them and design/build 3 Diesel electric drilling rigs just finished my 3rd earlier this year. They want me to stay on I'm not sure how I feel about it I'm tired of the oilfield I'm thinking door greater at Walmart seems pretty nice.
 
In Calgary, we have another added dimension. Not only are the machines run until they literally can't cut straight, but then they sell at auction for big $$$, around 1/2 new price. All of my used machines have come out of Vancouver for this reason.
 
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