I'm not surprised. Theres only two shops in my town, I own one, the other is for sale.
To be honest, theres just not the money around to keep them going on small jobs and things for homeowners, etc. Many things arent made to be fixed anymore, or worth fixing.
Plus, theres the many thousands of dollars I spend on insurance every year, which raise our hourly rates further. Almost all of my shop time is spent with a small handful of serious commercial customers (construction/heavy equipment, mostly) who want things done right and arent afraid to spend some money for it. They dont waste my time.
On the other hand, there are the homeowners and whatnot who arent going to pay $90/hr + materials for mobile work on their 5x8 trailer. And why would they? They can just go buy another junk one new for $500. Or, they want me to open up my shop on the weekend and weld on their new muffler for $20 taking 2 hours of my saturday by the time everything is setup, done, and cleaned up. Or the farmers who, around me, either have no money for repairs or dont want to spend money on their equipment, or they DO have money so they bought their own welder and fixed it themselves, until the new part arrives in a week. I got so tired of wasting my time quoting people for small BS jobs only for them not to materialize, or folks wanting the most jankity, hacked, sketchy **** done so they can build/fix whatever on a budget that I wasnt willing to mess with.
People arent willing to pay worthwhile amounts of money to fix things when they can buy a new whatchamacallit made in asia dirt cheap.
So, I took my sign down from the road, setup a $250 minimum/$450 mobile, and honestly it was one of the best things I've ever done for myself. If ever my current customers and ventures arent filling the time chart, I'll go seek out new ones and choose them myself.
I feel a little bad when some nice old lady calls and wants to know how much it is for me to drive across town and weld the hinge on her fence and I say theres not much I can do for her, and its tempting to hold up everything going on and cut out some steel doughnuts out of scrap plate for some guy for some pocket cash, but this is just the way that it is.
Two friends of mine who also run their own shops are in basically the same position. One guy only has like 5-6 customers, the other does mostly production work for 1 company with a little bit of odds and ends on the side. Theres only two machine shops in my area, one does almost all prototype work for a few companies he knows, the other does automotive stuff and the business doesnt look like its doing very well unfortunately...
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Today's Featured Article - Gatherin of the Orange - by Rick Nikolich. In July of 1998 I was talking to fellow Allis Chalmers collector Mike Schilling about the annual "Gathering of The Orange" AC show coming up in August of 1999. He got this wild idea that we should get a convoy of AC tractors and drive them from Charlotte, Michigan 105 miles to LaGrange, Indiana.
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