Sad read.
I work for a rollforming company also. I've been in this for 30 years and I see the same thing. Gets worse as the years go by.The place I work you have to run rollforming machines and we have hell finding new people. The young gens want to sit at a computer and make 100k a year. I used to think the US would never become socialist but now with the younger people not wanting to do anything I feel they would/will hand over freedom for government cheese. Sad is for sure!
I was proud of my nephew (I have six nephews, lol this the middle one) going to and finishing lineman school. He is 19 and just got his first gig with a power company out in Abilene.I see the same thing, but in the electrical trades. I visit many industrial facilities a year. All the boots-on-the-ground maintenance and engineering technicians are ancient. With no, or very few, young guys on their staff. No one wants to do these hard jobs any more. When these guys retire, there isn't anyone else than can support a factory. There is a ton of tribal knowledge that gets lost when one of these guys retire.
The place I work you have to run rollforming machines and we have hell finding new people. The young gens want to sit at a computer and make 100k a year. I used to think the US would never become socialist but now with the younger people not wanting to do anything I feel they would/will hand over freedom for government cheese. Sad is for sure!
Meh I see the other side of it, (I'm in my mid 30's for reference but do a lot of skilled manual machining all the way up through designing and programming 6 axis robots) I work in power plant generator manufacturing and a lot of those skilled trades can be done with robotics. It will definitely hurt the small mom and pop operations but so much can transfer to new modern machinery. Even sheet metal forming art that is dieing can be 3d formed from a cad file.
I have seen a terrible decline in machine/electrical/industrial repair and maintenance though. So many old guys are ready to retire and too burnt out to teach the younger guys, the guys in the middle of the career don't care because the union protects them, and the younger guys that actually do want to learn get burnt out because they get little to no guidance or apprenticeship.
All of our machines are Dahlstrom's and they are all from 50's/60's. They are like tanks the only part that we replace are the shafts and bearings that the tooling is on. The main bodies we never wear out. We make our own tooling as well.My dad ran a sheet metal business for over 40 years. We had about 13 roll forming and stamping machines which we kept a full time machinist on staff. Many were prewar era and parts just weren’t available so it was a must. Closed shop in ‘02 when we got bought out by a company out of Europe. They closed down shortly thereafter. No idea what we’d do now.
I work at one of the largest paper mills in the country and 1 of the shops i send out most of the fab work too has no quoted tens of thousands in work, claiming he cant get help. I went on the job boards to look and he has an ad posted for a certified welder with machining experience only paying $15/hr. Unless they just out of prison or in the country illegally no one will work for that. You can make $20hr in costco and be in A/C all day, so no one who can run a lathe, mill, cnc, tig/mig weld and do sheet metal work is going to do so for low pay. These people dont exist, hence a "labor shortage." The whole industry out of touch!
The honcho in charge needs to clue this guy in to reality.