I am a designer for a engineering firm. I think you can say that fuel is really crewing on most of our pockets. I drive 52 miles one way to work in a 1996 GMC extended cab pickup. If gas gets much hire I am buying a horse and will have to get up at 2 am to get to work. I was listening to the radio this morning and OPAC is saying fuel will go to $200 a barrell which is just stupid. I am tired of being pushed around by other countries. Just heard gas just went up again around here. I can't survive for much longer.
Josh

 

Thank God I'm retired I don't know how people afford to drive back and forth to work any more let alone what you do, I was a maintenance engineer in the food manufacturing industry where we made yeast and it seemed the worse the economy got the better our business was, they like so many other conglomerates closed my plant for greener pastures abroad, I don't envy any commuter now a days.
Bob

 

retired from verizon after 36 yrs..don't have to drive to work and feel lucky for that:tu. fixed income ***** , but get by. it was my choice and would do it again in a heart beat. way prices on consumer goods is going up , who knows. don't see the end of this. darn , look at home values and forclosers. enough of this. trifives rock

 

The economy is horrible and business is just bad.Seems like everyone in business around here says the same thing. My wife and I both own our own businesses and we are both way off. In an effort to keep the businesses afloat Neither of us has taken a salary this year. And if things dont improve we wont be able to take one for the balance of the year. It's not much fun working for free but we both have to much of our own money invested in our businesses to do much about it but wait it out and see if it turns around. If fuel costs get much higher, I may have to choose between heating my home or commuting to work. I am now considering switching my plant hours and going to a 4 day work week with longer hours to save the 20% gas consumption.

Don

 

I'm an engineering manager for a large computer company (the largest technology company in the world ). I am a mechanical engineer by profession, but have worked for the same electronics company for 31 years as of next month. I have done a lot of work in integrated circuit fabrication, integrated circuit packaging, advanced packaging R&D, materials engineering, and interconnect development. I currently manage a group of engineers who do product engineering for a broad line of server products.

The economy has had ZERO effect on me or what I do so far, and our business is doing very well overall. I still get my salary, and I got a nice bonus and exercised some stock options late last year. Our stock is doing well too.

Gas prices are way up, but mostly because of the weak dollar. I personally don't believe this is sustainable long term, so I just pay the $100+ to fill up my truck and consider it the "cost of living". It's just like anything else.

I have noticed that our restauraunts are still packed, Walmart's parking lot is still packed, the highways are still packed, so it doesn't seem like many people are hurting in this area. The residential construction industry is hurting, but commercial construction is still booming, as far as I can tell.

I plan to retire early in 18-24 months, if they don't offer me a buyout before then.

 

I'm a mechanical designer for a National Laboratory's Engineering group and our budgets have been frozen by the federal budget so a lot of our work is stalled and/or proceding slowly. I commute about 70 mi round trip which runs me about $75-80 per week. I also have a mechanical design consulting business which has all but dried up for now, and my wife has a jewelry business which is off by at least a 1/3. Boy at this rate my '55 will never get started. Back when I was a kid my '55 would get 19-21 mpg (with the 265), and now I wish my minivan would get that. The chevy would really be much more stylish humm maybe that's my argument with the wife to dump some money into my baby.

 

That's what I don't understand is that people are still packing the airplanes too. But the airlines just won't charge enough to cover gas. Go figure that one out?! They always threaten us with paycuts and such. In fact, Continental pilots and flight attendants' (my wife is one) wages are lower than they were in 1997! So we are working for less than we did 9 years ago, yet inflation has gone up 2-3% a year since.

Like Chevynut, my dad is an engineer too. He retired early a year ago and since he's the only one who knew how his company is run, they had to call him recently and offer him 50% more than what they were paying him before he retired to come back as a consultant to get things back on track! The economy has not hurt them at all.

I hope everyone fares OK. My wife asked last night what I'd do if I ever had to unload the 57. I told her there was no such scenario!!

 

economy

One thing i have noticed is that there are very few freight trucks pass by our place anymore. About the only semis we see anymore are chicken house feed trucks and log haulers.We have seen lotd of pickups pulling trailers loaded with car bodys and other scrap to sell to the chinese. Our buisness is slow but im not worried because we dont owe a dime and the kids are all grown. Also with scrap so high we could sell it all for junk and have abuot $100,000.Dont worry we have no plans to crush. We were thinking of having a auction in about three or four years. We will keep a few our 55 wagon a 55 Gmc and a66 chev pk. and then sell the place and retire where the climate is better for our arthritus Ark is very wet and humid. Randall

 

I started out in life as a machinist. Then most of the jobs went overseas. So I went back to school to learn welding. Found a good job with a pension, got married and worked there for ten years. The company was sold to a corperation who moved it overseas. So I became a truck driver. I figured they can't move this overseas. Then my wife went into her I need to find myself stage and left. Being a legal secratery she had 13 lawers at her call for free. So she took everything i'd worked for since I was 16. So at 40 I was starting all over again with nothing. I'm now 51 And I'm just starting to look for a house again. The cost of heating oil really ate into my savings this winter and driving around to look at houses is starting to hurt my gas money. I'm really afraid that I won't be able to heat a home if I do buy one. What used to cost me 150 a month in the winter is now up to 590 A month. Food is going up too. As you can tell by my story i'm not a quiter, and i'll keep on keepin on. But this is the first time in my life where the future does not look good, and I wonder how are the young people going to make it?
Rick

 

So she took everything i'd worked for since I was 16. So at 40 I was starting all over again with nothing. I'm now 51 And I'm just starting to look for a house again.

Rick, in retrospect I got lucky . I got rid of my first ex when I was 32, and even though she got almost everything, we didn't have that much aside from the house which she got. I had just graduated from college, and she also needed "her space" after 11 years of marriage and 3 kids. I built myself a new house on 2.3 acres at 35 and basically started over. Then I made the dumbazz mistake of getting married again at 42 and had to pay again 6 years later. Luckily that was at a bad point in the economy and I ended up okay.

After that I built my shop, started working on my car, and have been happy ever since. Life is very good now.

 

I work as a manufacturing engineer for a small defense contractor. Since our country is at war, business is pretty good for us right now. (Please, I'm not trying to start a political/moral debate here, just stating the facts)

I live pretty close to where I work, my commute is typically less than 15 minutes. Although I hate the high gas prices as much as anyone, they aren't affecting me as much as those who have to drive a greater distance. Of course, the rising costs of everything are putting the squeeze on everyone.

I was complaining about how bleak things look right now, and my 94 year old grandfather just started to laugh. He told me something interesting - one thing he has learned on his lengthy stay here on earth is that life is a lot like a pendulum. It swings back and forth, from easy times to hard and back, from happiness to sadness and back, etc. He basically told me that there was no such thing as eternal darkness and things, no matter how bad they seem, will always eventually get better.

So, despite these times, I try to keep my spirits up and looking for the bright side.

 

737Pilot, I will be flying your line in June to FL. Who knows, you may be at the wheel . Being in the insurance industry as an employee, I never see a slow down. The worse the economy gets, the busier I get. I just have to be on my toes watching for fraud. When the economy is going along well, people will pay for their small claims rather than having them on the record. But when things tighten up they defer to us.

 

737Pilot, I will be flying your line in June to FL. Who knows, you may be at the wheel . Being in the insurance industry as an employee, I never see a slow down. The worse the economy gets, the busier I get. I just have to be on my toes watching for fraud. When the economy is going along well, people will pay for their small claims rather than having them on the record. But when things tighten up they defer to us.

You never know! I've had my uncle in the back before and that was by pure chance!

 

I am a motor mechanic and have worked in Australia and England for BMW and Mercedes but now have gone into a little farming in Spain.
We are growing Corn, Almonds, Nectarines, peaches, grapes and olives.
Don't know much for the prices of the harvest this year as yet but for the corn it looks like you guys over in the states are going to be keeping alot of your corn for bio fuel instead of exporting it which only can be good for our prices.
Our fuel prices are always rediculous so thats why i drive a 1.8 BMW for a daily driver, gutless but nescessary

 

I work for Fedex and have seen somewhat of a slow down...Gas is killing me!My wife cant work due to us having 3 yr old triplets(daycare would eat threw her paycheck)..So in three yrs my gas went from 20 dollars a week to 65 dollars a week....Thats 260 Dollars a month now compared to 80...It hurts and we are sinking slowly in debt but I only have to stay afloat for 2 more yrs till the kids go to school and she can go back to work:tu...I just hope we make it without really getting in deep in the hole

 

Laid Off

Hi, I'm from Oshawa Ontario Canada and believe it or not the U.S. economy has effected us greatly here in Canada. The American Axle strike has us laid off as we build full size Chevy and GMC trucks and 90% of them go to the U.S.A. yous have been buying them up by the hundreds of thousands for the last 29 years that I have worked their, thank yous and god bless each and everyone who did its greatly appreciated you've kept thousands of us working steady, unfortunately with your economy slowing down so is our truck sales in a big way, this is the first time I've been laid off since 1983 as they cut a shift off in Jan.08 and now they anounced another shift will come off this september because of lagging sales. I know yous are also without work and loosing your homes and vehicles and I feel for yous as I've visited and spent my yearly summer and winter holidays in the U.S. and I've met many of very nice people on my trips, and yous are great patroitic people that I have had the pleasure to know from the sandy beaches of Florida to the Nascar track in Loudon NH to New York City ground zero, I can only hope and pray that the economy will get better for all of us as we all feel the effects of a slow economy, thanks for hearing me out, this website is a great place. p.s. gas is $1.22 a litre here in Ontario that works out to about $5.49 a gallon! OUCH Jimmy.

 

I know my employer is having a hard time of it. Two of our large accounts have closed, as did two smaller one's. We have five diesel trucks, that are way past time for maintenance checks. Fuel is killing us. And our stock of parts is less than bare bones. We service and install commercial lighting in two states. And while I'm getting my forty hours. The other three guys below me don't. We used to do a fifty hour week, up untill last year.

At home were doing OK, as she is pretty frugal with a buck. My gas just to drive to work is about sixty bucks, every two weeks. I did till a larger garden this year. The wife likes to can. So that will help in the long run. And we also have been buying ahead, at the grocery store, just in case of a layoff.

 

Hey John, I know quite a few people planting gardens. Kind of reminds me of the old WW2 victory gardens.
Rick

 

I am a teacher and only have a 16 mile round trip to my school, but my wife is a nurse and has about an 80 mile round trip to the hospital. The economy here is slowing and it is showing big time. The school district where I work is telling us they will be cutting about a 175 teacher units this coming year and the district next to ours has anounced they will be cutting 400 teaching positions. They are a much larger district but that is a very large cut when it comes to classroom teachers. All these cut backs are due to the low amount of taxes that have been collected in our great state of Alabama.

 

Ethanol is causing food prices to skyrocket (three hundred pounds of corn makes one gallon) , and if they would let us drill our own oil, we could see some relief, just in the value of our dollar. I read that for every percent that our dollar slips in value, gasoline goes up four bucks a barrel.

 

I work on oil rigs and since oil prices are up,the drilling companies can afford to upgrade or re-build more rigs.I've been working 7/12's since hurricane Katrina hit.I seldom have a day off and actually got a $150.00 a week raise last week.I am an electrical supervisor.
I live 15 miles from work and drive a Nissan pick-up-4 cylinder/5-speed.About $40.00 a week in gas.
My wife and I have everything paid for and also have started to save more money.The only money I pay-out is for 2 boys in college.
So, the economy hasn't hurt me yet,other than prices rising with fuel prices.
I feel bad for those that are being hurt by this so-called recession,especially by those losing their homes and jobs!I feel nothing for the financial institutions that are going under-they knew what they were doing when they made all those bad loans,including credit cards.
Just 2 days ago,2 men in big trucks stole 400 gallons of diesel from a local gas station about 5 miles from me.Shows how desperate people are getting!
I have bought a lot of car and truck parts,but don't have time to use them.Everything just sits in the shop and gets rusty-er.
I have been spending a lot of time tilling my garden-do this every year.My 15 year old Craftsman garden tillers' engine finally quit Sunday.It was using a quart of oil every tank of gas and fouling plugs.No compression left.Refused to start.so,I put another engine on it last night.Good to go again!
I hope everyone is making out O.K.in this bad time.
Mike.

 

This thread is interesting and it is reopened, without the politics.

I know we are all feeling the pain of gas prices, jobs etc, and I know we all support each other.

Thanks

Otis

 

Thanks Otis for re-opening this thread, I was reading the inputs with interest. It seems that the situation is different in various parts of the country, and in various industries. Guys, please try to keep the politics out or at least really, really low-key so we can keep the thread open.

 

It's getting a little tight, but livable.

I'm retired, earlier than I'd have hoped but in the long run it was best. Glad I made smart decisions early on

My wife however works for Baxter Health Care in Largo, FL as an Accountant. They make hemodialysis and plasmapheresis (blood separator) machines in this plant. When she started there 10 years ago they employed 2100 people, today they are down to 470. In her Finance and Accounting section they had 17 people when she started and now they are down to 5. My wife said that they're looking at dropping another 50 employees mostly from the production lines around the end of the 3rd Qtr.

Alot of what they made has been out-sourced to Singapore and Malaysia.

I feel sorry for the ones who are having to scratch out a living now-a-days. I just hope this economy can turn around. We have lost so much our manufacturing base and switched to a service based economy only to find that those jobs didn't have any real security.

Now this ain't a political statement...I'd rather pay more for an American product than a foreign made product and not because of as I said any political reason, but because the Made in USA is superior. Look at the restoration parts we buy. If it's made in the US it seems to fit better and is sturdier than "Chinese Bubble-gum."

Y'all do know that all them pieces that are made in China are actually our old Budweiser Cans don't ya?

 

I'm a mechanical engineer working for a company that manufactures oil exploration products. I've been in this biz 29 years and these times are the most prosperous in our industry since I started. We are incredibly busy. We are producing more product in a month than we were in a year compared to 10 years ago.

But the oil prices and oil business in general are extremely cyclical. I've seen 3 or 4 major downturns as well as minor ones and we'll have more. When oil prices drop, many in the oil industry will lose their jobs, something I have to be prepared for. And when you'r producing product at 10 times the past rate, it doesn't take long to accumulate excess inventory.

The big question is when does all this happen. It certainly doesn't look like it's soon. But that perception has been the same way in the past. At the end of the 1979-1981 boom, things went from full throttle to nothing in a matter of weeks. That time there were some similar situations in the economy, particularly inflation, and it took a while to work our way through that.

 

This is a very interesting thread.
Personally I own a small business which does ornamental metalworks. The price of steel and fuel really kills us because a lot of jobs we do were bid a year or more ago. Some we can renegotiate and some we have to eat the loss.
We are busy now but the last year and half have been pretty slow, however not like the recession in the 80's when we went from 18 to 4 employees.

I started this in 84 and it always seems to be 3 good years followed by 2 bad years and so on so I'm pretty much used to the ups and downs.
Last year we had two lanscape contractors, two pool contractors, and 3 home builders go out of business owing me money which i'll never collect.

 

I'm a machinist at a company where we make auto rebuilding equipment (seat & valve grinders, flywheel grinders, magnetic particle inspection machines, head & block surfacers, etc.) as well as a variety of industrial grinders. I've been there 17 years and two weeks ago they let 3 of our 19 production people go. They also put us on four day workweeks. It's been slow for about a year.
Luckily, I only live about five blocks from work, so gas hasn't been an issue for me.
The day before we got the bad news of reduction in hours, a friend works about four blocks down the road from us and asked me if I wanted a job. He said they're swamped. They've been busy for quite some time. They make hoists, etc. So, it's different industries that seem to be struggling.
I'm glad my house and all is paid for. Another 10 years and I can retire and collect my military pension at 60 from my 21 years of service.
In the meantime, I have a little more time to work on the Delivery.