# Craftsman Brand Sold



## rjmoses

Sears is selling its Craftsman brand to Stanley/Black&Decker:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-sears-sells-craftsman-stanley-20170105-story.html

Two more years and Sears is history. Just goes to show how big businesses are bad businesses. They get so locked into their "business model" and tied to their infrastructure that they simply can't or won't change.

Ralph


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## BWfarms

Sears will still receive royalties for awhile. It was just dumb of Sears to try to help sinking Kmart. I was hoping my cousin could give me more insight on the deal as far as will the lifetime guarantee be honored. Privacy reasons would forbid him to tell me plus I knew just as much as he does lol.


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## somedevildawg

Yea, purty sad to see that....Sears still has mighty real estate holdings but that's about it. What was once a great model is caught in the whirlpool and will surely sink in short order. Craftsman had some great innovations, lately they've relied on gadgetry....another one of their blunders. Sears, at one time had the market cornered....the Sears catalog was a staple of many households, it was the source for clothing/tools/appliances/fishing/hunting/lawn and garden items. One thing I used to really like was "good" "better" "best". Just depended on how much change you had....nowadays we need to add "poor" to that list, but they have to make it look exactly like the "best".....I was always a big fan of the women's lingerie section when I was a young child trying to figure out just how women were different than men 

I'll miss craftsman, but I've been missing them for 20 + years.....


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## JD3430

Comes as no surprise to me, and it's kind of sad.

We bought lots of stuff from Sears when I was a kid. The catalogue was pretty cool. Remember Montgomery Ward, too?

We have a "Sears Hardware" in my neighborhood and its pathetic. Shelves are half empty. Craftsman tools aisle has many missing sizes of wrenches & sockets. Store has poor lighting and seems to be run mainly by an elderly couple. I feel bad for them.

I think Harbor Freight put a big hurtin on them, too. I dont buy anything much from them, but lots of people do.


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## CowboyRam

Sears downfall was when they merged with Kmart.


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## endrow

CowboyRam said:


> Sears downfall was when they merged with Kmart.


 yes never could figure that one out but I'm sure you're right. Both of the Sears stores I would have used closed when they merged with Kmart at the to nearby Kmarts Stayed open. The Sears stores that closed were real nice places and the Sears stores had real knowledgeable employees. The Kmart stores that took their place were real shaby inside and out. Neither of our Kmart's ever had Craftsman tools. They sent those two to local Ace Hardware Stores.


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## luke strawwalker

JD3430 said:


> Comes as no surprise to me, and it's kind of sad.
> 
> We bought lots of stuff from Sears when I was a kid. The catalogue was pretty cool. Remember Montgomery Ward, too?
> 
> We have a "Sears Hardware" in my neighborhood and its pathetic. Shelves are half empty. Craftsman tools aisle has many missing sizes of wrenches & sockets. Store has poor lighting and seems to be run mainly by an elderly couple. I feel bad for them.
> 
> I think Harbor Freight put a big hurtin on them, too. I dont buy anything much from them, but lots of people do.


When I was driving the school bus, one of my fellow drivers was a semi-retired guy in his late 60's early 70's... His wife had a lot of health problems and the meds cost a lot, which is why he was driving the bus and working at the Sears Hardware part time in Rosenberg 15 miles north of us. (something about insurance or retirement wouldn't allow him to have a full time job without messing him up, so he worked 2 part time jobs).

Anyway, he told me plenty about the stupidity of Sears Hardware... When the store first opened, it was great. That didn't last long, though, as it RAPIDLY went to h3ll in a handbasket. I quit shopping there after about a year, because every time I went in there it was a COMPLETELY wasted trip-- they NEVER had what you needed or were out of stock, or things were SO completely unorganized they'd do just as well dumping it all in a pile on the floor for you to kick around looking for what you needed... (about like ALL of TSC and Lowe's plumbing dept. actually).

Anyway, my buddy was telling me how their store manager was raising cane wanting them to sell the ORDER OF SNOWBLOWERS that corporate had shipped them. Yes, you read that correctly-- SNOWBLOWERS... when we're 60 miles off the beach in SOUTH TEXAS... Yes, we DO get snow, every 5-10 years... for us a BIG snow is about 1-2 INCHES... which sticks for perhaps 24-48 hours before melting off completely, IF it lasts that long! Yet some idiots at corporate decided that they should stock ALL of their stores with snowblowers... In the end they had to practically give them away to guys who bought them just for the engines and threw the rest of the blower into the scrap heap... Then of course they decided that they wanted to schedule all their help to work every day for, at times, as little as two hours (to keep them part time). They wanted EVERYBODY to work EVERY DAY (more or less, still 5 days a week but the schedule was COMPLETELY up to the manager to determine. Of course that didn't work with my buddy, who'd gotten the job on the assurance that he'd be off in time to drive his evening bus route and would work a minimum of 4 hours a day, and have flexibility in scheduling if his wife was sick or had an appointment... Of course that went out the window, and they started penalizing everybody who wasn't willing to drop everything to come work for two hours whenever they were scheduled by cutting their hours if they refused to come in when scheduled. He had a 25 mile drive one way to get there, and he couldn't afford to drive in for a 2 hour shift even if he WANTED to... so they cut his hours down to like 4 hours a week after a few times of him not coming in for those short shifts, even though he explained it to the management why he couldn't, and so he quit... He was one of the few in there that knew ANYTHING about the tool and hardware business... instead they replaced them with dumb, bored kids straight out of high school working their first job who could care less and were just drawing a paycheck until they could find a better job (just like TSC and Walmart, and most of the farm equipment dealerships around here...)

Of course the Sears Hardware went broke YEARS ago... it's some "no-name church" or other now... Sears also bought out the Western Auto brand about the time they got K-Mart IIRC, and managed to finish flushing that down the toilet. We have had a large Western Auto Associate Store here in town for probably 60-70 years, but K-Mart/Sears managed to nearly destroy them in a matter of a few years... They had carried Vermont American tools and stuff before the buyout, but afterwards they were FORCED by corporate to carry Sears Craftsman tools... which sounds good, but that's what nearly broke the store... the owners lamented to me that everybody would go to the big Sears stores in Houston to get stuff on sale, since they could get it way cheaper than they could afford to sell it here in town, BUT, then when a tool broke they came in wanting a new one under the Craftsman "you break it we replace it" warranty... so they ended up having to stock a lot of crap and take junk in trade and handle it twice and do the "broken tool paperwork" to get replacement stock free from Craftsman, but weren't making ANY money off it for their trouble. When Western Auto brand went under a few years later, the independently owned "associate stores" had to change their names... ours became "Western Hardware" and I'm not sure what they're selling now-- I don't really trade there much anymore.

I practically grew up in K-Mart-- when I was a kid, my mom was what we call now a "shopaholic" or compulsive shopper... We'd spend HOURS in K-mart several times a week when I was a kid... this was LONG before we got our first Walmart, one of the first ones in this area of the country, which didn't come in until the early-mid 80's IIRC... and then it was one of those dinky little Walmarts that we kinda laugh at today... Then of course they built a SUPER Walmart across town and closed the old dinky store, and shortly thereafter they had to build a SUPER K-mart out by the freeway, and for awhile it was good... if you couldn't get what you wanted at one store, you probably could at the other. My sister even worked as a checker at Super-K when she was in high school in the mid-90's. But, even then, they were starting to go downhill. I used to buy a lot of clothes at K-mart, but then they quit carrying the big-boy sizes... pretty soon unless you were a 5-2 Mexican dude that weighed about 105 pounds dripping wet, there was NOTHING in K-mart that would fit you or be your style... pretty much every other department in the store followed suit in short order. About a year or two before they closed, we quit even bothering to go in there-- the store was ALWAYS hot, dirty, stunk, toilets regularly didn't work, and stocked bare bones as could be... I heard from a friend that shortly before they closed, they basically were using only about half their floor space and the rest was roped off... They went broke and since they'd just built that huge store only about 5 years before on prime real estate by the freeway, they wanted a FORTUNE for it and the land and ended up sitting vacant for about 15 years... the concrete parking lot is breaking up and unlevel and the store practically rotted down before they FINALLY sold it off and subdivided the store up into smaller businesses and a driver's license office. Half of it is STILL vacant, however...

The closest K-mart now that I know of is in Corpus Christi-- the one in Lufkin closed IIRC... I know we went into the Lufkin K-mart about 5-6 years ago when we were going up to a family reunion, and it was just a bad JOKE! The place was not only hot and dirty, practically un-air-conditioned because they had the thermostat set at like 90, but everything was basically just on pallets set out in the aisles, or in those wire basket bulk bins... and NOTHING but second-rate junk... stuff looked like it was in a Con-Ex box that fell off the ship into the sea and was fished back out... It was like a bad close-out warehouse from the 70's or something... full of junk and NOTHING that you needed. They deserved to go broke.

Sears is just as bad. You'd think that Sears, in a major city like Houston, would still be something nice... NOPE... just another discount junkeria filled with crap nobody else wants... the last time I was in a Sears at Sharpstown (which used to be a FANCY shopping mall back in the 70's) the only thing white in the entire friggin store was me and the mannequins... LOL The clothing and merchandise they had would make the average walmart shopper blush it was so gaudy, weird, or junky... the store didn't look like it had been swept in a year, and the floors hadn't been buffed or polished in probably 5 years by the look of it... it smelled... just awful. They used to have a decent appliance and TV/electronics department-- My first VCR I bought in '85 was from a small Sears catalog store over in Wharton back then... top of the line stuff! The stuff they had in their "flagship" store in Houston last time I was in there, made Walmart stuff look GOOD... I mean it was all no-name JUNK, and priced high as could be!

Sorry for folks losing their jobs and stuff, but if ANY company run as p!ss poorly as Sears, K-Mart, etc, they DESERVE to go broke!!! Montgomery Ward used to be a big-name top-of-the-line store too, and managed to bankrupt themselves... And if Walmart isn't careful they're going to go the same way as K-Mart... they've REALLY gone to pot around here (regionally, not just locally) over the past several years... SOMEONE will replace them if they don't get their act together...


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## luke strawwalker

CowboyRam said:


> Sears downfall was when they merged with Kmart.


And bought Western Auto at about the same time (or got it in the same merger?? can't recall exactly) but they managed to run Western Auto completely out of business within a couple years or so...

Can't understand the thought process... their business was in trouble, so they buy K-mart (which had gone COMPLETELY to the dogs at that point) and Western Auto (which was practically on life support itself) for, what?? So they can have a bigger FAIL??

That's all that I can see that they got out of it... whoever was running those companies didn't have any friggin CLUE what they were doing. Wonder how they missed out on buying out Radio Shack before they went under??

It's like a sinking ship taking on more cargo so hopefully they can buy a bigger bilge pump??

Makes NO sense to me whatsoever...

Later! OL J R


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## luke strawwalker

One other thing while I'm thinking about it...

To top off the COMPLETE GALACTIC STUPIDITY of the corporate hacks running the Sears- Super Kame-apart debacle...

I don't know HOW MANY MILLIONS they blew in advertising for K-mart in the Houston and surrounding areas TV and radio stations over the last few years... Remember back when they had Laverne and Shirley advertising for K-mart a few years ago?? They were running those commercials like gangbusters down here, and the CLOSEST K-mart store was nearly 200 miles away north in LUFKIN, and a little over 200 miles away to the SW in Corpus Christi, NEITHER of which is actually served by the metro Houston TV channels (well, I guess if you point your antenna right in Lufkin and don't have too many 100 foot pine trees in the way, you COULD pick up Houston...)

Blow money like water advertising in a market where you don't even have a store...

BRILLIANT!!!

Later! OL J R


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## rjmoses

Don't forget Sears also bought Allstate insurance.

What insurance has to do with merchandising is a mystery to me! And they screwed that up as well. I had insurance for about a year, got hit in the rear end and Allstate cancelled my policy.

I would never, and still won't ever, do business with Allstate ever again! Never! Period. (Want to know how I really feel about Allstate?)

Ralph


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## JD3430

Oh man OL J R,

You really had me laughing about "dump it all in a pile in the middle of the floor and kick through it till you find what youre looking for". 
I freakin inhaled coffee into my lungs and hacked it out all over my bib overalls. Lol


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## Vol

rjmoses said:


> Don't forget Sears also bought Allstate insurance.
> 
> What insurance has to do with merchandising is a mystery to me! And they screwed that up as well. I had insurance for about a year, got hit in the rear end and Allstate cancelled my policy.
> 
> I would never, and still won't ever, do business with Allstate ever again! Never! Period. (Want to know how I really feel about Allstate?)
> 
> Ralph


Allstate has had that "cancelling" reputation for many many years.

Regards, Mike


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## TJH

Sears downfall came when back in the day they did not take Wal-Mart seriously.


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## swmnhay

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-sears-stanley-black-decker-20170105-story.html


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## r82230

somedevildawg said:


> ....the Sears catalog was a staple of many households,


If you are old enough, you might remember not just the Christmas catalog but secondary use of the catalog, where it ended up as a staple in many outhouses also for some reason. 

Larry


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## Grateful11

Strange thing is Kmart Sears wasn't actually a merger. Kmart bought Sears 18 months after Kmart came out of bankruptcy for $11 billion. My late FIL owned a small block of Kmart stock and when they filed for bankruptcy that stock was wiped out clean. Amazing that a company can come up with $11 bil. 18 months after emerging from bankruptcy.

"*Kmart* is a chain of big box department stores headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The chain purchased Sears for $11 billion in 2005, forming a new corporation under the name Sears Holdings Corporation."

Personally I don't see how Kmart stays in business in our area, the stores are mess, you can't find anyone to help you and they haven't kept up their maintenance worth a hoot. But I'd still rather go to Kmart than stinking WalMart.


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## rjmoses

r82230 said:


> If you are old enough, you might remember not just the Christmas catalog but secondary use of the catalog, where it ended up as a staple in many outhouses also for some reason.
> 
> Larry


Just don't use the glossy pages, save the women's underwear section for last, and avoid the staples.

Ralph


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## paoutdoorsman

Mike & Ralph, you sure about that? I heard you're in good hands with Allstate. :lol: :lol: :lol:


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## endrow

Everything changes so quickly nearby where I live there's a shopping mall some people work about a half of a lifetime getting good stores in there so when you go to the mall you have a good variety of shopping. Guy who works security at the mall tells me the young people in the area come to the mall and Shop all day cuz it's a nice place to shop. They try it on they look at it and they get the model number or the ID number or whatever it is and then they go home and order it on amazon.com... how long can this last


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## paoutdoorsman

Just received the below email... Apparently I'm still a member of the Craftsman Club.

Dear Dana,

I'm writing to let you know some exciting news about Craftsman that will enable us to put even more hardworking tools in the hands of makers everywhere. On January 5, Sears Holdings announced that it will sell the Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker.

Craftsman is and has been an important part of the Sears family for ninety years. And that's not going to change. The research and development team at Sears and Craftsman will continue to develop new innovations that will be available exclusively at Sears and Kmart stores and online. However, as part of this transaction, Stanley Black & Decker will gain the rights to develop, manufacture and sell Craftsman-branded products outside of Sears and Kmart, which will make Craftsman products more broadly available in the USA and internationally.

Craftsman remains committed to maintaining the very best aspects of the Craftsman brand. You'll still find the most high quality tools available at the best value, along with our exclusive lifetime warranty on Craftsman hand tools, which has been a hallmark of the brand for generations.

Sears will continue to have the most extensive range of Craftsman tools and lawn and garden products, along with the same trusted service you rely on. In addition to being sold primarily at Sears and Kmart, Craftsman will soon be available at other retailers nationwide.

Your membership in Craftsman Club will not change and we will continue to provide you with exclusive offers, tips and information to help you with all your projects.

Thank you for your membership and loyalty to Craftsman. We look forward to supporting makers everywhere and providing you with the tools you need for many more years to come.

Sincerely,
Tom Park
President Kenmore, Craftsman, DieHard


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## somedevildawg

Forgot all about diehard.....they absolutely ruled the auto battery business


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## rjmoses

Bought a pair of Diehards for my F250 about two years ago. At least one is dying on me right now. No more Diehards for me.

Going to Interstate.

Ralph


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## luke strawwalker

rjmoses said:


> Don't forget Sears also bought Allstate insurance.
> 
> What insurance has to do with merchandising is a mystery to me! And they screwed that up as well. I had insurance for about a year, got hit in the rear end and Allstate cancelled my policy.
> 
> I would never, and still won't ever, do business with Allstate ever again! Never! Period. (Want to know how I really feel about Allstate?)
> 
> Ralph


Yeah... I hear ya and agree completely...

Maybe somebody else is "in good hands" with Allstate, but all I ever got from them was THE FINGER!

Had a teenage girl slam into the back of my 96 pickup while I was at a red light waiting to turn left (it had turned green but no turn lane and I had to wait for oncoming traffic to clear before I turned). She slammed into the back of my truck and folded the rear bumper underneath, and took the whole front clip out of her truck. Stupid kid yakking on the [email protected] phone... 100% her fault. Everybody was ok (I had whiplash) but Allstate jerked me around for a YEAR before they finally paid off... tried to lowball me on damage to the truck, got three estimates from THEIR AFFILIATED SHOPS saying it was $3300-3500 in damage; they tried to hold me to one of their stupid adjusters (a young twenty-something black girl that didn't know one end of a vehicle from the other but could use the laptop) who said it was $2500. Then they didn't want to pay me directly for the damages (no sense in sinking a lot of repair money into an old farm truck-- I put the money in the bank to draw interest for a down payment on my next truck). Texas law REQUIRES that the insurance company pay you DIRECTLY, IF you own the vehicle outright (I DID) and there are no lienholders (there weren't). They STILL tried to jack me around on that for months... Then they tried the old "mail him a $600 check every week and wait for him to cash it" routine, which I wasn't falling for either... if you cash it, they can argue that you tacitly agreed to what they paid you by cashing the check.

Of course I went to the chiropractor for my neck and he put me on a treatment regimen for several months; 3 times a week for the first month and then bi-weekly after that. The same bunch of idiots that didn't want to pay me directly for my truck, wanted to pay ME for the doctor bills-- he was billing them directly and wasn't getting paid either, but he deals with that all the time and had a full-time office manager who deals with the companies anyway... I told them flat out when they started the "we'll pay you, YOU pay the doctor" and I was like "hell no, you don't owe *ME* for the doctor bills, you owe the DOCTOR!"

My wife, who was in customer service as a manager for Macy's at the time finally started working her way up the tree over the course of a few weeks and was on the phone one day with the vice president for claims for the southwest region... I was having a bad day and about 9 kinds of pissed off and after listening to her getting the same run-around for the FIFTIETH time I shouted across the house, "Tell them I'm SICK of it, I'm done... their own shops say they owe me $3500 bucks on truck and the doctor's been mailing them bills for months... They can either PAY WHAT THEY OWE, or I'm calling the biggest slick-willy lawyer I can find and I'm gonna sue them for every last thin dime I can POSSIBLY get out of them-- Either I have a check in my hand for the FULL AMOUNT by next week (it was like Thursday IIRC) or I'm done-- no more-- we'll see them in court!"

I got my check paid in full the next week.

I would NEVER do business with Allstate if they were the last friggin' insurance company on the face of this Earth-- I'd go without first!

Insurance companies are about the same level as alligator p!ss anyway IMHO... it's all legalized theivery... You owe them, you better pay every last penny and be there ON TIME or they'll drop kick you to the curb-- they owe YOU, watch out and cover your butt hole-- cause they'll leave you twisting in the wind for a year or more...

Later! OL J R


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## luke strawwalker

JD3430 said:


> Oh man OL J R,
> 
> You really had me laughing about "dump it all in a pile in the middle of the floor and kick through it till you find what youre looking for".
> I freakin inhaled coffee into my lungs and hacked it out all over my bib overalls. Lol


Oh Lord believe me I'm tempted at times...

Last time I tried to get a belt for the lawnmower at TSC-- go through the book chained to the shelf, find the number you need, go start hunting through the pegs, find the right peg, and pull a belt off-- DOUBLE CHECK THE NUMBER, and guess what?? It's the wrong one! Pull the other 2-3 belts off the SAME PEG (with the correct number on the little card on the end of the peg) and guess what, they're NOT THE RIGHT ONES EITHER, and COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NUMBERS FROM ALL THE OTHERS YOU PULLED OFF! Start roaming up and down the aisle looking at the numbers on ALL the belts cardboard sleeve looking for the right one... It'd be different if they were close, but I've pulled belts about a foot long off the same peg as one about four feet long... I'm like "they'd do better to just dump them all in a pile on the floor and let you kick it around looking for what you need"...

Needless to say, I don't buy belts at TSC anymore... heck I don't buy a lot of ANYTHING at TSC anymore... used to buy a LOT of parts and sprayer pipe and hose fittings and nozzles and chains/sprockets/pins/bolts/hardware, but ALL of those things are SO screwed up it ain't even funny-- I got sick and tired of going in to replace ONE busted hose barb elbow or something and having to get 3-4 different fittings to make everything match up, because they'd NEVER have the part you needed... say a 3/4 male NPT to 3/4 hose barb 90 degree fitting... They MIGHT have a 3/4 female NPT to 3/4 hose barb STRAIGHT fitting, or maybe even a 90 degree fitting, so you end up having to get a 3/4 to 1/2 inch pipe bushing and then a 1/2 male to 3/4 hose barb 90 degree fitting, or a 3/4 pipe nipple, a 3/4 90 degree female/female elbow, and a 3/4 male NPT to 3/4 hose barb STRAIGHT fitting, etc. etc. etc. And, of course, you reach into the bin and pull out at least 2-3 fittings that are COMPLETELY a different size or type anyway before you get the one you want, IF they have it at all...

Had to fix the water well the other day (busted pipe going into the ground) and ended up in Lowes getting parts... Lordy Lowes is simply AWFUL... stand there looking at rows upon rows of fittings in their little parts boxes, laid out in NO logical order that I can ascertain, and FINALLY find the box I need, and what's in it?? First FOUR fittings I pulled out of the box are something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT... I tossed them into the little "cage" on the side of the shelving unit leg that says "return fittings" that the workers are SUPPOSED to put back in the appropriate boxes... (course it was 3/4 full and I could easily have pulled out a SHOPPING CART FULL of fittings that were in the wrong boxes... The whole time I was like "it'd be easier if they'd just dump all this sh!t on the floor so you could kick it around til you found what you were looking for..."

Don't even get me started on the bolt bins at TSC...

Later! OL J R 

PS. Sorry you aspirated coffee-- hope it was black. Not good for you. Better put metholatum on your upper lip before you go to bed tonight! (Grandma's old trick LOL)


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## luke strawwalker

paoutdoorsman said:


> Mike & Ralph, you sure about that? I heard you're in good hands with Allstate. :lol: :lol: :lol:


I COULD post a finger pic in reply to that but I'd get in trouble...

Yall use your imagination... LOL

YOU may be in good hands, but all I got was THE FINGER!!!

Screw Allstate, their mother, and the horse they rode in on...

Later! OL J R


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## luke strawwalker

endrow said:


> Everything changes so quickly nearby where I live there's a shopping mall some people work about a half of a lifetime getting good stores in there so when you go to the mall you have a good variety of shopping. Guy who works security at the mall tells me the young people in the area come to the mall and Shop all day cuz it's a nice place to shop. They try it on they look at it and they get the model number or the ID number or whatever it is and then they go home and order it on amazon.com... how long can this last


Yeah, that's the major gripe that stores like Best Buy and such have... people come in, shop, pick up the cameras or electronics or widgets and see what features they like and don't like, how it feels, what they want or want to spend, etc, jot the brand and model number down, then go home and order it off Amazon or New Egg or whatever and get it for a discount price through the internet stores...

Course, everybody likes getting a deal, BUT, I *can* sorta see the quandary the stores are in... it costs money to have a brick-n-mortar store and keep the lights and AC on (or heater this time of year) and pay employees and security and all of that, PLUS the cost of inventory, presentation, etc etc. etc. that goes with running a business. So, of COURSE they're not as cheap as online sources like Amazon or New Egg or whatever you choose that basically just has a mega-warehouse somewhere, probably mostly computerized, and probably fetching half the stuff directly out of Con-Ex boxes right off the ship or loading dock, printing a mailing label on it, and shipping it out via whatever crappy delivery service they choose to use, and collecting the money (usually via paypal, credit card, or whatever electronically). No "customer service reps", no store floor space, demonstrator models that end up unsellable because people screw them up, drop them, or whatever... it's a lot cheaper business model!

I know the hobby industry is dealing with a LOT of that sort of thing... the local "brick-n-mortar" hobby shops have virtually disappeared-- it costs a lot of money to maintain a store, pay the rent and/or taxes, payroll, lights, AC/heat, water, staff, stock, etc... and then most folks come in, look around and fiddle with stuff, then go home and order it online cheaper shipped direct to your door.

Oh well-- times change... adapt or die.

Later! OL J R


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## luke strawwalker

rjmoses said:


> Bought a pair of Diehards for my F250 about two years ago. At least one is dying on me right now. No more Diehards for me.
> 
> Going to Interstate.
> 
> Ralph


Finding a GOOD battery, like most things, is VERY hard anymore... Guess that's because of the "throw away society" we live in now...

Course, they're not any cheaper... that's for sure! When we were still row-cropping in the early 2000's, I'd just go get a cheap $35 AutoZone battery for the cotton pickers or combine-- they lasted a couple years and were shot, but THEY WERE ONLY $35 BUCKS!

Now you can't even TOUCH a battery for less than $90, IF you can find one that cheap, and yet they don't hold up ANY BETTER than the $35 AutoZone batteries back then did...

Interstate USED to be a good brand, but I've heard a lot of stories from folks saying they're not anywhere near as good as they used to be... Seems to be the general trend from things I've heard-- NOBODY seems to make a battery that's as good as they were in years past...

Later! OL J R


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## JD3430

luke strawwalker said:


> Finding a GOOD battery, like most things, is VERY hard anymore... Guess that's because of the "throw away society" we live in now...
> 
> Course, they're not any cheaper... that's for sure! When we were still row-cropping in the early 2000's, I'd just go get a cheap $35 AutoZone battery for the cotton pickers or combine-- they lasted a couple years and were shot, but THEY WERE ONLY $35 BUCKS!
> 
> Now you can't even TOUCH a battery for less than $90, IF you can find one that cheap, and yet they don't hold up ANY BETTER than the $35 AutoZone batteries back then did...
> 
> Interstate USED to be a good brand, but I've heard a lot of stories from folks saying they're not anywhere near as good as they used to be... Seems to be the general trend from things I've heard-- NOBODY seems to make a battery that's as good as they were in years past...
> 
> Later! OL J R


I think it has something to do with everything being made in China nowadays.


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## luke strawwalker

JD3430 said:


> I think it has something to do with everything being made in China nowadays.


Reminds me of something I saw in Ken Burns "The Civil War" on time... "We've had our Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Golden Age... This, is the Age of "SHODDY"..."

Truer words were never spoken...

Later! OL J R


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## IHCman

rjmoses said:


> Just don't use the glossy pages, save the women's underwear section for last, and avoid the staples.
> 
> Ralph


Ya gotta crumple those glossy pages a few times to soften em up to make em work. lol


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## r82230

For those who live close to a railroad (or previous railroad), you might also notice a few Sears or Craftsman homes. The one that I normally recognize in my travels I call the witches hat house. The original door is arched on top (a lot have be remodeled with a square door now). There was a lot of styles available and were usually shipped by train, then you haul them to your building site.

The original 'pre-fab' homes (starting some time in the early 1900's I think). This attached site shows some of the 1935 catalog homes.

http://www.antiquehome.org/House-Plans/1935-Sears/Ridgeland.htm

Sears was huge in America, now looks like soon to be a pile of dust and a few memories.

Larry


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## paoutdoorsman

A friend of mine bought and restored a local 2 story home 10-12 years ago. It was a Sears Roebuck house which I found very interesting.


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## JD3430

paoutdoorsman said:


> A friend of mine bought and restored a local 2 story home 10-12 years ago. It was a Sears Roebuck house which I found very interesting.


We have a few of them nearby in the borough of West Chester. My wife's stepmothers dad age 94 still lives in one in Princeton, NJ. He flew a TBF Avenger in WW-II.


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## somedevildawg

Never knew they were marketing houses....that is interesting, were they modular houses, somewhat forward thinkin? Sears used to do that....think forward


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## paoutdoorsman

Not modular. Just a complete kit with everything you needed, ready for building.


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## somedevildawg

r82230 said:


> For those who live close to a railroad (or previous railroad), you might also notice a few Sears or Craftsman homes. The one that I normally recognize in my travels I call the witches hat house. The original door is arched on top (a lot have be remodeled with a square door now). There was a lot of styles available and were usually shipped by train, then you haul them to your building site.
> 
> The original 'pre-fab' homes (starting some time in the early 1900's I think). This attached site shows some of the 1935 catalog homes.
> 
> http://www.antiquehome.org/House-Plans/1935-Sears/Ridgeland.htm
> 
> Sears was huge in America, now looks like soon to be a pile of dust and a few memories.
> 
> Larry


Thats cool, never knew that....I'm surprised we didn't have one, seems everything else came from Sears in the house.


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## azmike

Back in 1976 when Kathleen and I moved to Kodiak Island, AK we relied on the Sears catalog for most everything. Appliances, kids clothes, tools--Sears had a small catalog store in town, very busy from fishermen to natives -- Everyone bought Sears stuff! It was weeks to get your orders delivered.

They filled a nitch that worked very well!


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