State auction in Alabama

Was traveling home forom a trip to HF the other day and noticed three big flaat bed trailers loaded with allkinds of mahcine tools parked outside a warehouse here in town. On them was all kinds of machinery. Press brakes, mills of the horizontal and BP type , lots of lathes and surface grinders, drill presses, and 5 Grob and DoAll bandsaws and various other items. I just had to stop and take a look as something like this is a rare sight in this area. I then found out that the warehouse there is used by the State of Alabama to store equipment as such that is deemed salvage, and from there it goes to the aution yard or salvage yard. On looking arund at the various pieces on the trailers, I opened up a draw on a lathe cabinet only to find it full of lathe accessories...............follow rest, tool posts of the Dorian brand, inserts, tool holders, even micrometers etc was in those draws. The fellow stated they had been on those trailers for about 3 weeks at that point, and were destined to go to the auction yard. Pityfull thing about it, all the draws were full of water besides the tools being in them. The grinders had a ton of wheels with them as well, most of them new, and they too were all submerged in oil slicks and water. Heads tilted on the knee type mills had water just laying inside them. One would think that if a concern like the state was so interested in getting some money out of these machines that reasonable care would have been used in their storage when they were moved outside. Most of the items I was told were fully serviceable but new equipment was purchased to take their place so that they had essentially been stored inthe warehouse for a few years until it was decided to send them to auction or salvage. They go through all that storage process just to place them outside in bad weather and get ruined. They are now setting outside in the states auction yard for the next sale in about 2 months, still exposed to weather, and rough handling.

Just can't figure out the establishments way of thinking. Odds are they removed perfectly good machines, due to age, and the requirement to spend money that is allocated to departments budgets or loose the unspent amount off the next year allocation of funds, only to replace these machines with China made junk. Its typical of government waste. They do it all the time in the military. They get x amount of a budget, and if its not all spent, that amount is reduced from the next years allotment they get. So folks spend money just to spend it, and in the end perfectly good merchandies is scraped or trashed or taken home, but our taxes always seem to keep going up to cover all these unnecessary expenses.

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Reply to
Roy
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Given that the auction will realize some small fraction of a dollar per pound, why should anyone take any care?

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

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I can testify that it is not just the state government. I have seen the same thing happening with U.S. Government auctions -- and nearly cried over the waste.

In the meanwhile, stuff which has less value is stored indoors.

It doesn't make any sense to me.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

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