Strange Week At Work

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Buffalo20

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This has been a strange week at work, 3 unusual jobs and a lot of driving.

1 - I was sent to revamp an older boiler in a boiled egg processing facility, they are capable of hard boiling 1.2 million eggs in a 3 shift, 24 hour day. Their current processing rate is about 800,000 eggs a day. Trucks bringing in raw and taking out boiled eggs, all day long. This may be tightest run shoestring operations, I've ever work on, it seemed the accounting staff, were calculating the repair cost, as we were working, leading us to jest, they might shut it down, when a certain dollar figure was reached. We got them up and running, on a temporary basis, to their joy, but were disheartened, when we told them they need about another $30-$40,000, more to bring them up to long term acceptable standards.

2 - Worked on a boiler in a maple syrup co-op, processing syrup from Northern NY and Vermont. The operation is huge, they processed (according to the manager) about 650,000 gallons of syrup, last year, hoping to go over a million, next year. Most of the syrup is sold overseas and to industrial accounts (flavorings). I got the boilers running, we were running close to 1000 gallons of propane an hour, with the propane coming to the facility in train cars. Unfortunately I was unable to acquire any syrup for personal consumption, no small containers, they ship the processed syrup out in stainless steel 55 gallon drums, but I did get a discount coupon for syrup from a local vendor, so for $10, I got a gallon of Dark Amber.

3 - One of our customers, a 50 employee production machining/plating/job shop operation has decided to close up operation. I've serviced their boilers for almost 40 years. The owner said the business is way off, along with,operating cost, taxes and gov't regulations and finding qualified workers are making operation rough and none of the sons or SILs have any desire to continue, so a sale/closure at this point is the best option. Its taken almost a year, but the sale is now final.

The whole plating operation has been sold to a company in Canada, tanks, conveyors and related equipment is going to be boxed up in conex boxes, for shipment to an Arizona/Mexico border town, where it goes from there is unknown, except by the purchaser.

All of the machine tools and related equipment, is also going to be packed into conex boxes, for shipment to the purchaser, for use in Belize. The owner looked into an auction to sell the equipment off, but because of tax options and equipment liability issues, an auction became an unviable option, so a package deal to the Belize purchasers. I tried to buy a couple of pieces of equipment and was told, they had to be sold out of the country or destroyed, to avoid possible liability issues. So no die filer for me.
 
Yea, That is the problem Lawyers get involved and now trying to purchase equipment from a shop is almost nil as they are afraid they may get sued because the person go hurt. What happened to sold as is at your own liability. That way it could not come back on you. Then you could get some good deals, instead of busted up and put in the dumpsters etc. Or shipped out of country.
At least you did get the coupons from the one place.
You should have tried for one of the 55 gal barrels full, I would take the barrel even a little of the content. Use it so little that the last bottle wen bad before it got used up.
 
I bet that plating operation is going down south into Chihuahua, Mexico area. I know of a shop west of there that is Canadian owned. I doubt it's going there, who knows. Sorry to hear that.
 
Plating lines are hard to keep running with the changing of regulations based upon the wind direction that day. We have a lot of stuff plated and if we could find someone here in Canada who is more local and willing to learn how to do our stuff there is an easy $3M per year available. We are not interested in setting up our own line as it will take years of work to get permits etc. It is called government interference!
Pierre
 
In the mid 80s I worked for a company that set up rinse lines and chrome recovery for plating operations.
We had one customer that was running a dirty operation and took all shortcuts possible.
The local laws wouldn't allow them to flush any chrome contaminated water down the drain but it was legal for them
to dump it in the ditch, which they did. Even after a rain the ditch water by that shop was green.
 
1 - I was sent to revamp an older boiler in a boiled egg processing facility, they are capable of hard boiling 1.2 million eggs in a 3 shift, 24 hour day. Their current processing rate is about 800,000 eggs a day. Trucks bringing in raw and taking out boiled eggs, all day long. This may be tightest run shoestring operations, I've ever work on, it seemed the accounting staff, were calculating the repair cost, as we were working, leading us to jest, they might shut it down, when a certain dollar figure was reached. We got them up and running, on a temporary basis, to their joy, but were disheartened, when we told them they need about another $30-$40,000, more to bring them up to long term acceptable standards.
OK, a bit off topic ... but years ago when my father ran the candy plant for a local grocery store chain (Fred Meyer, Portland, OR ... now part of Kroger), they asked him to take a temporary assignment in their food/dairy plant. He told me how they made boiled eggs for potato salad. Instead of boiling them in the shell and having to laboriously shell the boiled eggs, the workers cracked fresh eggs into sausage casings. The casings were tied off, boiled, then split, and the "egg sausage" chopped for the salad. I thought it was a very clever solution to what would have been a labor intensive process.

Did the egg processing facility you were at boil the eggs whole and shell them for sale (as I've seen in some stores), or did they do something like the sausage trick? Enquiring mind wants to know!
 
Mental note to myself... Don't buy any potato salad from Krogers or any other store. Make my own!
 
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