A Beautiful Way To Start Any Day

Here is a great start to a great morning! Just over a month to go before the beginning of fall.

The outline of the low cloud deck to the east

The power of the sun burns through the deck

The reward of the morning

Spotted Shipment

This is a massive D9R Cat. It is a massive piece of equipment when you need to do some heavy work. It was spotted along with two others today as it passed through Dallas today.  If you would like to see the military version of this monster you can see it on Wikipedia . Yes, the military has an armored version.  Since I was a kid, I have always liked Heavy Industry Equipment. The bigger, the better! Trains, Planes, big CATs and the heavy Mining dump trucks with tires as big as a house.

CATs D9R

There were three on three flatbeds with the big blades and rakes loaded in front and in back.

 

Google Notification on European Union Requirements

Trying to get the scoop on what is required to post on blog and website to comply with the European Unions new rules. 

Hope. There is always hope!

This cartoon is from the creator, Kathryn W. who will begin teaching where she learned to draw as a cartoonist. Congratulations to Kathryn on the new job,

Hang On To Your Hat

Each July, and when saying that I mean the entire month, instead of taking physical inventory of property, I take personal inventory. This involves mental inventory, financial inventory, religious inventory, professional inventory, marketing strategies inventory, health inventory. This year a new inventory was added to the annual check-up. Days left inventory. The reason why that was added is because now, there seems to be a more sense of urgency to accomplish a couple of things than ever before. But, to keep better tabs on my progress, having them in the annual personal inventory matters very much. Having said  that, it was the main reason why there were only two post for the entire month of July.

Out of this years inventory came a more refined focus of photography. It does take a creative mind to shoot urban photography, but not in the creative sense  that there are Oohs and Aah from the graphic arts context, but a more subtle,"that's nice, I like that" kind of response. Actually, a more accurate meaning of perspective  in the first place is what I mean. A true point of view without all the white noise. A focus more on the heart of the image than on the image itself. When you go to a museum you look at a painting for several minutes, even several hours, for some. The focus isn't always on the subject matter but rather the matter of the subject.

For example: I have a copy of a Claude Monet painting that I look at almost daily and sometimes several times the morning before I go out on a shoot. The Monet is Regates A Argenteuil. Since I am a sailboat freak anyway, especially the type that just ran the Chicago Yacht Club's 107th Race to Mackinac 2015. For those that might be unfamiliar, it is not only the longest freshwater race in the world at 289.4 nautical miles,but the oldest fresh water race. And for those that don't have sea legs, well, that is a mere 333 miles of open water from 300 W Belmont  for 300 plus boats to have-at-it from Chicago to the Straights of Mackinac.

In the Monet, the sails, the choppy water, the Frenchman setting high on a stool above his lady in the little skiff, the sky of uncertainty, the roof tops along the shoreline make you think.  Monet painted the image in 1867.  Boating had become fashionable c.1830. To me, the thinking point is of the high fashion of the day. In a little skiff on rough choppy waters with threatening sky and boats at full sail so close to shoreline, it tells me that high fashion fads really don't mean much in life when life is tallied up, but at the moment, it may seem that they mean everything. And I keep that in mind as I go out the door. In short, when not one, not two, not even three, but four people tried to ruin a successful career that was rising shy of it peak, and in the mist, a great tragedy strikes, you learn how to be the most humble person on the planet. When I look at that painting and then go out into this mad world of today, and its even moreso today than forty years ago, my humbleness frames the images that I shoot. It molds me as to what is important in life and what foolish beliefs I had been indoctrinated  into believing that in a career climb team work was for the good of the company and all the idiot ideals that went with that foolish and deceptive falsehood, especially that famous office saying,"take one for the team".

So, July being that PIM that it is, I really don't get much done beyond the inventory itself. It works out usually because the heat here in Texas during July and August is the worst time of the year. And, especially if you like to be in- side of the suns angle of 10 to 2. Here, its about 10 until it sets!

Notice that I left the comment open for you to think about this one.

 

Funny Thing About Businesss

While I am not a big fan of gossip television shows, I do enjoy the spots were they talk about the massive houses of the stars that are up for sale, sold and re-sold and re-sold. You see the point. Real Estate changes hands daily but there are certain landmarks that age with a history of it own. I read the stories in the New York Times, LA Times, Miami Herald  and others about the sales and the storied past that goes with the article.

Recently,  the story of El Fureidis, 631 Para Grande Lane, Montecito,California appeared.

Even this A-380 can move a house or a steel coil Funny Thing About Business

It is one of those homes with a long storied past and an architects dream floor plan. It is the fabled home known as the Old Scarface Mansion. The house was listed for a mere $35 million but was marked down to $17.9. Roughly, a half price sale.

That article got me to thinking. Again. The real estate market can be a fickle business. The instability in the market and especially to the attachments and/or affections of its owners, move houses and also let them sit on the market, sometimes for years. While I was doing all that thinking, the eureka point finally materialized this morning as I was pouring my first cup of coffee. The real estate market is just like the steel business. If these two businesses are not twins, they most certainly are brothers and sisters to each other.

Over the years, I can recall one coil of steel sitting in a super large warehouse down off Jefferson in the old warehouse section of near Downtown Detroit. The coil sat in one bay, right on the corner of a cross isle were trucks would pull inside to load under an overhead crane. Nothing so unusual about that at first glance except, that the coil had been produced at the River Rouge Plant of Ford Motor Company's steel plant, which at the time was the 9th largest steel mill in the world. Another thing about those coils were that they were massive for steel coils, with 60 OD and weighing in 48,000 pounds. I have seen some that hit the 50,000 pound mark. The point being is that in the coil world, a coil that size is like having a 7-foot 6-inch center on a basketball team of 5-foot 8-inch players. It stood out like a sore thumb.

As I would walk through the warehouse, I would look at the tag. The names on the tag was always different. The coil had not moved an inch on the floor of the warehouse but the tag information told a whole different story. Going into the office and pulling up the information on the tag would bring up the coil sale price. That was where the story came about.

Sale 1

The coil came into the warehouse at a price of $18.00 per cwt (hundred weight). It sat for several months. Tag change. The coil now was sold to a steel company in Chicago for $13.00 cwt but the coil remained in the warehouse with a new tag showing the new owner.

Sale 2

Several more months went by and there was another tag change. The coil had been sold to a steel broker in Cleveland, Ohio at $15.00 per cwt. Once again, the steel coil never moved out of the warehouse.  At this point you are thinking that someone should be charging rent on that thing. Well someone did. The warehouse collected the rent fee. The typical rent went like this: $1.00 in;$1.00 on; $1.00 out. That translates to one dollar per cwt when the coil came into the warehouse. One dollar per cwt added on each month of storage and one dollar per cwt when the coil shipped out of the warehouse. Does not sound like much but there are no expenses. The storage bay can be under roof for more than a quarter mile, It's hot in the summer It's cold in the winter. The lights are provided by the day and at night it is a place where  horror movies sometimes got filmed.

Sale 3

The coil had another tag change. This time, nearly two years later, the coil was sold back to the original owner by the broker in Cleveland. The price was entered as $ 17.00 cwt. The original owner had repurchased the original coil, that he had sold to a Chicago warehouse at 13.00 cwt, for $17.00 per cwt. In essence loosing $5.00 cwt the first sale and spending $13.00 to repurchase. That is, if the original owner really did have $18.00 per cwt in the coil when the coil came into the warehouse the first time. Chances are he purchased the coil either from River Rouge or from a broker at $7 to $8.00 per cwt. Things like that happen in the steel business.

It's time to also mention that financial market conditions, supply and demand in the steel business, production at the mills, imports, exports, the automotive industry, the metal furniture business, the appliance industry all played a part in the sale of steel coils sitting in a warehouse owned by steel distribution centers, steel warehouses, steel brokers, individual fabricators, contractors and who knows who else excluding the scrap dealer.

The final sale

The shipping tag was finally placed on the coil some 5-years post arrival. It shipped to a steel ware house/service center near Richmond,Indiana where it was used in a small stamping plant that hammered out pieces for a metal casket company. The coil was a good buy at the time for both the seller and the end user.

So, in the long haul or in the short haul, steel coils sit as the unglamorous sisters of the real estate market. The are much the same, while being their own beast. The steel salesman, the warehouse owner, broker all have brothers in the real estate market. In the family of business every thing is much the same.

It was not so strange to find  steel industry people in a Federal Golf League; a bunch of steel salesmen, warehouse owners, steel processors playing golf weekly with partners that were FBI, IRS, US Customs, Postal Inspectors, US Attorneys,US Marshall's. My partner, Barney, was IRS, God Rest His Soul. As it turned out, Barney was the best golf coach I ever had. He even knew my neighbor, an attorney husband and wife that both worked for the IRS.

Funny thing about business.

20 July 2015 edit to change type points and take out a sentence to combine with another for clarity.

The Intermodal Way

Realizing that some have yet to figure out what inter modal is, much less how it works, the idea of economics is greater than meets the eye. There is another side to inter modal that some main stream journalist have yet to figure out, too. Sure, articles have appeared about the tank car problem shipping oil via the rail. The accident-grabbing articles of print and visual media on the subject are beginning to pile up in the search engines. Yet, not a single one that I can find have made mention of the flammable and dangerous gas materials that ship over ground transport and end up on  the rail.  In other words, no one has paid any attention to the fact that danger as great or greater than the tank car problem moves over the rails every hour of ever day with hazardous material placards on the end and sides of the trucks anchored down on inter modal rail cars.

The danger is real. The risk is not as bad as one might think but there is risk and danger none-the-less. The US Department of Transportation Haz-Mat List and Codes are easy enough to look up on the web site. In fact there is a HazMat Code List.pdf file on the site also.

The First Cherry 

For the sake of argument, let's say that a trucking company's rates are $1.50 per mile. The rail road sends its cars down the rail for $1.00 per mile. If the trucks can go the distance on what we once called Piggy-Back shipments, then the trucking firm profits $0.50 per mile or they have reduced their cost by the same amount. It makes no difference except in accounting methods. There is also something else to consider. By using inter modal or flatbed piggy backing trailers, you have meet your competitions  rate-per-mile for most of the distance. So the advantage can work for the majors as well as the smaller businesses. It also enables companies like Target and Walmart to bring their goods to their stores at a lower price. In short. Inter modal shipments-which can include piggy-backing- are here to stay on the landscape of commerce.

Today, I found five major trucking firms, including freight forwarding Moguls like FedEx and UPS along with Roadway, J.B. Hunt, KLLM and two frozen food plants with  reefers on the same inter modal train makeup. It must be remembered that shipping containers can ship via rail and truck both and inter modal trains are stacking  containers two high per car. That is the beauty of inter modal cars and it also reduces cost even more.

The Second Cherry

On several of the FedEx Pigs, the HazMat Code Placards flashed red for flammable and also for Danger on materials with gas.  Learning to look for these placards when you are sitting at a crossing instead of listening to your favorite tune and zoning out as the train rolls by could save your life. In being aware of your surroundings also includes things like this, especially in the world that we live in today.

The Third Cherry 

The last cherry to roll up was something like a stroke of luck of being in the right place at the right time  Had I been on the back side of the train, with the No Trespassing signs posted, I would not have been able to get the shots that I got. Instead, by the luck of fate I was on the public street side of the tracks and had an interesting perspective of light and angles. Here are a couple of shots to support this article.

Pigs from both FedEx and UPS with the red placard on the end of the FedEx trailer. This is the prize finding a UPS and a FedEx end-on-end on the same train make up with the HazMat placard as a bonus.

The shipping contaner for JB Hunt can take another container of the same length on top unless it is marked for no stackers.