Craftsman 1st Sockets, now Wrenches in China!

Yip; a month or so ago noticed the first Chinese sockets, & yesterday saw wrench sets. I'm sending a letter to Hoffman Estates HQ's tomorrow about my deepest displeasure.

Gotta keep them chinese employed somehow.

I don't suppose they will pay much attention to your letter. Sears is drowning in red ink and may soon go the way of Montgomery Ward. I imagine the executives there are more concerned right now with their golden parachutes than with customer satisfaction.
Sears loses 1.29 per share in 1Q13

As long as customers buy shabby goods stores will keep selling them.Clothing made by people that earn 37.00 a month are sold by big name stores.

As long as customers buy shabby goods stores will keep selling them.Clothing made by people that earn 37.00 a month are sold by big name stores.I bought a small oxy acetyline torch with the Victor name on it.The acetyline regulator stopped working.I returned it.The replacement came in a shipping box that listed country of origin.Only US made parts were the spark lighter and hoses.Nothing on the parts that indicates made in china.

Sears had a 1st quarter loss of $279 Billion, and they can't print money like the gubmint, what do you think will happen?

What do you expect with Sears. They warranty a product, like tools, And guys expect a new tool when they break their wrench using it as a pry-bar. Cannot believe that Sears has stayed in business this long with a warranty like that. Crapsman is made in Taiwan I think. (or China now)
Is Snap-on still made here? Proto? Mac? S-K?

Should be $279 Million, not billion, even sears has its limits, LOL

(quoted from post at 02:35:28 05/29/13) As long as customers buy shabby goods stores will keep selling them.Clothing made by people that earn 37.00 a month are sold by big name stores.

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I don't know about you, but I can't afford to clothe my family in articles made by union laborers making $18-25.00 an hour. Many times it's a struggle to be able to swing the $10.00 TSC made in China jeans. I darn sure can't afford $45.00 jeans made in the USA.

Also, consider that if we weren't buying the clothing made by people earning $37.00 a month, they'd have no jobs. When American workers/business can compete, we'll buy our clothing from them.

Americans SAY they want top quality items like tools that are made in the USA but they BUY cheap stuff made in Asia by what amounts to slave labor because its
CHEAP.The market supplies what the consumer wants/buys.Companies like Sears and Walmart have to stock what people actually buy to stay in business.

thats part of the problem there's always enough buyers of the cheap stuff, and if there the typical office type that may use a socket set once every 4 months for 10 minutes it probably is all they need,but those of us who use tools daily and all day daily or work on large machinery, need the good well built stuff which costs much more,another problem ive noticed as i have it is a lot of stores are changing the line of tools they carry, for example i have a sk, as well as a proto 3/8th drive ratchet. both are broken internally , but the stores i bought them from no longer carry that brand, so the warranty is useless

ericlb...Contact SK Tools at 800-822-5575 for warranty of your tools. Good luck.

EXACTY! WHy spend 5 to 10 times the price on
something when you can't afford it? As long as those
cheap tools still turn the bolts, it's just as good
as one costing 10 times the money - and I've broken
more Snap-OFF tools then any other.

The "Craftsman" name will be spun off and purchased by somebody else when Sears goes belly up. Just don't expect any of their tools to be American-made anymore as everybody wants the lifetime warranty and abuses them at the same time.
Lately, the tool sets were American-made and the individual tools were Chinese, but I believe that the American factory that made the Craftsman tools shut down just last week.

Well Bret, I imagine when the new clothing mfg. plant opens here in America and pays .23 cents an hour you will be the first in line for your new job.

Eventually, nearly everything will be manufactured in China and other SE Asia regions.

Get ready for Chinese made automobiles, trucks and tractors. They are coming.

Dean

Been Chinese for quite sometime.

I've seen "Crapsman" tools at, Ace Hardware, K-Mart, and Menards.

I believe you can warranty your Proto tools at Grainger...

Well Denny and Brett, I see both your points but explain this to me , Round House Bibs/Jeans in Shawnee , OK who makes everything from bibs to jeans to denim hats etc , has and is American owned and operated and has been since the 1890,s. To keep prices competitive and quallity up , they have no retail outlets and therefore sell over the net. I bought 2 pair of their high quallity denim bibs last year for $ 55 delivered to my door. Exact same price as TSC wanted for their China junk with old familiar names and actually theirs would be more because I had to pay no sls tax on mine. My dilema is this , why is it that people who own computers will STILL go to TSC etc and buy the China junk and pay more and in turn do their part to drive a company like Round House out of bussiness? Americans are lazy , inconsiderate , spoiled and apparently have way too much disposable income. Their actions ,and sometimes lack of , pretty much tell the story. They are also just putty in the hands of a good marketing campaign. Every one of the old well known brand names in bib overalls are made in China and most sold at TSC and people fall for it. This is just one product in a million but it makes the point.I am an American also, but I believe we are our own worst enemies and we need to reallize the "good ole days" are gone (overseas)It's their turn and they are going for it and so called American companies are riding the wave with them.
Round house has proven that we can be more than competitive in manufacturing. It is all the middle men and retailers that drive the price out of sight. A million people could read this and 900,000 would still go to TSC and get their denim , and then complain in the coffee shop about their wrenches being made in China now.

Some good news. More and more US firms are starting to return manufacturing to the US. Case in point is GE, which returned its appliance business back to Louisville, KT. Due to rising wages in China, much increased travel costs for coordination, higher shipping costs, and China stealing technology etc. Furniture manufacturing is also starting to come back to Carolina. It will start to accelerate because China has a demographic problem, to many old people and shortage of new workers due to the one child decree of Mao. So maybe the tied is finally turning.

The name "Craftsman" is no longer owned by Sears. They sold it off several years ago. That is why you See Craftsman stuff in hardware stores

i saw sears wrenches a couple years ago with a lil 'hecho en china / fabrique en chine' on them..

I am hopeful too that there will be a resurgence of what you mention, so hard to predict but if there was just a way to make it fair to factory workers, wages, with incentive for employees to help it prosper, but also making the price points of products fair, seems when things get lop sided, it just does not work.

I've worked low pay jobs as of recently, given I can't land a job that matches my background, and I've done it on/off since '04, one thing is for sure, those wages don't do anything more than barely sustain your existence. It does not work you can't do crap with a $10/hour job after taxes, well you can dislike or hate it, it just makes you look good, leave every morning for a go nowhere job, which could be physically demanding or otherwise, looking forward its just a few steps beyond being incarcerated, your mind is occupied with debt, problems, things you may need, I am talking clothes, food, vehicle, housing the essentials. One thing goes wrong, you are so far upside down, then what, cardboard box on the sidewalk, steal, deal drugs, change to a life of crime, maybe sign off as many have done, ( I do not condone that for any reason !) Just not easy when your shoes are ragged, decent ones are a huge chunk of a paycheck that is otherwise needed for sustenance, you can't eat shoe leather. Low wages breed a plethora of other problems as does high cost goods, we put a man on the moon, but we cannot solve this problem.... me thinks someone wants it like this, financial oppression.

I don't see a darned thing wrong with a salary that is better than 30K, say 40K to 50K for a variety of blue collar work, given the prices of things, thats not much either but $10/hour or overseas wages, they can have it, that may have been OK with overtime in 1990, but now... something has to balance out, talented, skilled, honorable people should be compensated, those that show up and give an honest days work, I'm not talking some idle shop steward here. This just opens a can of worms here anyway, but around this area, you used to be able to find a lot of decent blue collar jobs right out of high school, now the only decent one around is the semi conductor research and chip fab plants, 7-7, 4 days every other week, lose all of Wed. to transition, have to wear a clean suit with all that entails, same politics, worker bees, but at least they pay $20, hours suck, not hard labor but not high pace fast track either.

I've worked a miserable factory job, union too, hardened criminals, had to fight my way out of numerous situations because they decided they did not like a clean cut young kid in there, someone told em I'd be coming in as a foreman, they said they'd have me quit in 3 days, I outlasted all of them, fought several, I did become yard foreman and had to physically fight for it, they sabotaged hitches on trucks, one pulled a large wood dowel on me, another literally turned the break room lunch table over and came right at me, an army veteran gone bad, he got his, told someone another place we both worked he never been hit so hard by anyone, I said I did not know you and I feared for my life,we actually became friends later on, I won em all over after fighting em off, was just like a prison, the supervisor was a timid tall and lanky puppet who ran when Joe turned that table over at the 7PM lunch break. Work a night shift in a place like this for a year, these kind of jobs are no fun, that was all for $6.35 an hour before taxes. Might be evident to see why people don't want these jobs, I am still glad to drive by that place and its an empty concrete slab, all of it gone.

Here nor there, you just hope some of this could be worked out and we americans get back into some of the great manufacturing, we once had, carrying pride in what we do at our jobs and at home.

Excellent post Billy.

That's the same way it is here too.

Thanks

I also dabble in model trains Lionel Has been making ALL their trains in China MTH(Mikes Train House in North Carolina) Has not. A lot of us started buying MTH instead of Lionel.Now Lionel announced last year they are moving their production back to the United States,trying to regain their market share! Small problem,The Chinese Company refuses to give back the molds and are manufacturing and selling trains that look like Lionel trains Via Ebay etc.I guess you could say to bad for Lionel but that doesn't make it right!! Moral of the story NEVER GIVE AWAY YOUR TRADE SECRETS TO YOUR ENEMY!! MAYBE OUR WHITEHOUSE SHOULD THINK ABOUT THAT!!!!

I know a bit more about about hard times than most of you.My last hourly pay job was around 1969.My dad and I built my own shop for 1000.00 in my yard.I figured if I was going to be poor it should be my fault.I had to beg for a few days off to get my hay in.In the early 70s I bought a Belsaw Sharp All on time payments..That brought income when the TV repair and and sales was slow.In the early 60s I worked for a hatchery mornings and a dairy farm afternoons.I remember buying a pair of US made work shoes and a pair of dungarees for 7 bucks on a Montgomery Ward sale.Postage was a buck or so. The store I bought fertilizer from for 40 years closed this winter.I bought shingles,lumber and grain ,groceries.The small towns have lost their general stores in the last 10 years.My son dropped off a box of doughnuts I quit buying years ago.They were 39 cents,now 2.99.I would need 800 bucks per week to have the same buying power I had in 1970.Our worthless dollar in dragging us down.

I wear overalls.I like a bib pocket with a flap that snaps down.Above that is a zippered pocket that I keep my pocket watch and reading glasses.Roundhouse dosent make that type.The open top type fills with shavings and sawdust and hay chaff.As far as I can tell only Liberty and Dickies makes make the closed top bib pockets.Always wore an engineers cap, cant buy them anymore.The baseball caps with their heavy visors and lousy plastic size adjusters are always slipping down over your eyes.You hair sticks out of the hole in the back.Makes you look like Woody Woodpecker.Welders caps are close to engineers caps but the flowers keep me from buying them.

The Chinese are good at that. They hold onto anything they can get their hands on. GM had an assembly plant that the office people showed up one morning to find soldiers at the gate to turn them away. They build Chery cars that look an awful lot like a Chevy.

They don't hold up their end of the trade agreements we have, by not respecting "intellectual property", yet the idiots in DC want to expand trade?

Hey "36"! Type in www.millerhats.com or call 800-789-0839. That's where I get engineer hats in heavy denim. Not one size fits all either, you measure your head and they make it to fit. I love them, they don't have that "cheap" look to them either. Give them a try. They are just like the old ones were back when.
Theyare also made in USA

Seems like that"s the way everything is going.

Last time I was in the local Sears store they had both U.S. and Chinese made wrenches and socket sets. The Chinese tools were called Evolv or something like that. Maybe they were just phasing out U.S. production.

WRONG!! Sears never sold Craftsman.

Thanks for the tip.havent been able to buy an engineers cap in a long time.

(quoted from post at 06:12:18 05/29/13) Well Bret, I imagine when the new clothing mfg. plant opens here in America and pays .23 cents an hour you will be the first in line for your new job.

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Not at all. What I'm pointing out is that American unions, and a lot of non-union business too, have priced their labor out of the area most Americans can afford to pay. I'd love to be able to buy everything made in the USA, but it's simply not possible. Add in the purposeful devaluation of our dollar, our debt, overhead for all the companies, taxes.....it's a wonder anyone does business making anything here. We're on an unsustainable path and there are few people that even see it.

(quoted from post at 09:57:07 05/29/13) Well Denny and Brett, I see both your points but explain this to me , Round House Bibs/Jeans in Shawnee , OK who makes everything from bibs to jeans to denim hats etc , has and is American owned and operated and has been since the 1890,s. To keep prices competitive and quallity up , they have no retail outlets and therefore sell over the net. I bought 2 pair of their high quallity denim bibs last year for $ 55 delivered to my door. Exact same price as TSC wanted for their China junk with old familiar names and actually theirs would be more because I had to pay no sls tax on mine. My dilema is this , why is it that people who own computers will STILL go to TSC etc and buy the China junk and pay more and in turn do their part to drive a company like Round House out of bussiness? Americans are lazy , inconsiderate , spoiled and apparently have way too much disposable income. Their actions ,and sometimes lack of , pretty much tell the story. They are also just putty in the hands of a good marketing campaign. Every one of the old well known brand names in bib overalls are made in China and most sold at TSC and people fall for it. This is just one product in a million but it makes the point.I am an American also, but I believe we are our own worst enemies and we need to reallize the "good ole days" are gone (overseas)It's their turn and they are going for it and so called American companies are riding the wave with them.
Round house has proven that we can be more than competitive in manufacturing. It is all the middle men and retailers that drive the price out of sight. A million people could read this and 900,000 would still go to TSC and get their denim , and then complain in the coffee shop about their wrenches being made in China now.

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I don't believe I've ever even owned a pair of bibs in my life, but I understand what you're saying. I refuse to pay $55.00 for pants of any kind, I don't care where they are made. If Round House can produce some good quality trousers in the under $20.00 range, I'll buy. Otherwise I'll be sticking with what I can find at local stores and and yard sales.

I did buy to pair of USA made (so they were advertised) double front jeans from Gemplers some years back for about $40.00 each. They didn't last 4 times as long as the cheapies and that's what it comes down to.

I do a lot of internet shopping, relatively speaking. The state is after us for taxes, all of us doing that, and I imagine it will be impossible to avoid paying sales taxes soon.

(quoted from post at 13:33:37 05/29/13) I wear overalls.I like a bib pocket with a flap that snaps down.Above that is a zippered pocket that I keep my pocket watch and reading glasses.Roundhouse dosent make that type.The open top type fills with shavings and sawdust and hay chaff.As far as I can tell only Liberty and Dickies makes make the closed top bib pockets.Always wore an engineers cap, cant buy them anymore.The baseball caps with their heavy visors and lousy plastic size adjusters are always slipping down over your eyes.You hair sticks out of the hole in the back.Makes you look like Woody Woodpecker.Welders caps are close to engineers caps but the flowers keep me from buying them.

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36, I don't care for ball caps either. Like B-maniac I recommend Miller Hats. There are still a few places you can get odd items at decent prices.

You hit the causes of all this in your other post. I'm currently reading a mess of back issues of Country Gentlemen and Farm Journal from the early 1950's. They were moaning about the labor prices and taxes back then too. And back then price supports were a much bigger subject than now. I did notice one letter from a reader that sounds awfully familiar. He mentioned the new definition of the "4 Freedoms"- Freedom from responsibility, freedom from having to work for your keep, freedom from having to support your family and freedom to be entitled to whatever you want as long as you vote the right way! Sounds like nothings changed.