I was just looking over bethgons and saw that Huberts cars are made in USA. I don’t know if 100% of it is done here, they do use Atlas trucks for instance. But if the actual work is done here is it worth paying the extra cash for these to support American made over Chinese made Atlas and Athearn? I hadn’t thought about that before.
I’ve seen the older LBF and EC cars but didn’t seem to run extreamly well. The new Huberts now have better trucks and I think the whole bad coupler area has been fixed as well as using better couplers.
They claim to be weighted to NMRA specs as well.
If the difference were 20% or less, I would buy American (the job you save may be your own!) I retired at 55 ten years ago. Due to 1. Boredom, 2. Health insurance going sky high (was self employed - no group insurance) 3. Stock market (and my IRA) heading south. Went to work at Home Derpot, mainly for the health insurance benifits, and the fact I couldn’t apply for many jobs because I’m not bi-lingual!!! When I started in HO in the late '50’s, everything but brass was made here. Now, almost everything is made in China, including a vast percentage of products where I work & almost everywhere else! The bad news - our jobs are vanishing! The good news, neither China or the US could afford to loose the trade of goods!!![censored][censored][censored]
If you have the option, I agree that buying American is good. Job losses to other countries scares me (and it’s not just blue-collar jobs that are being exported; we’re exporting a lot of white-collar jobs too), but if we stop manufacturing anything here, then we lose the ability to manufacture here because the people who know how are somewhere else.
There are benefits to free trade, but if we take it to the extreme, the only jobs left here will be in sales and service. And what happens when people figure out that people in foreign countries can sell just as well as we do, and do so for a lower hourly wage? Fast-food joints are already outsourcing their drive-through windows to call centers in Colorado; nothing stops them from moving to a call center in India.
And besides that, not everybody WANTS a sales or service job.
It doesnt matter one bit to me if it is made in Korea, Japan, China or America. The money I spend leaves my hand and into someone elses. It is of no concern to me.
Most of the low volume production for model railroading (for the US market) is still here in the U.S. The overhead of dealing with a manufacturing plant in China is a cost killer.
But when you move into volume plastic production, the cost equations change. Getting the dies cut for volume production is thousands of $$, even when done in China. Assembly of RTR in China is obviously cheaper, but again, the overhead of dealing with an overseas factory and transport of the finished product has to be factored in.
That said, there is still plenty being produced in the U.S. Kadee, MicroTrains (at least that’s what the box on my HOn3 cars say), and Bowser all produce plastic (and metal) in the U.S. Of course, plenty of folks complain that those products aren’t as cheap as Athearn Blue Box (which is still produced in the U.S. too?). Virtually all the wood kits - cars and structures - are produced in the U.S. or Canada. Most of the cast details (metal and plastic) are still produced locally, too.
About the only thing that has consistently been produced overseas (since the 1950s!) is locomotives and mass volume plastic cars. My speculation would be that the far higher labor content in assembling a locomotive as compared to other items is the reason for most locomotive production moving.
The big change in the past decade has been the so-called major producers. Kato and Bachmann are not owned in the U.S. When the original founders of companies such as Atlas, Mantua, Varney, Athearn, Roundhouse, and so on retired or moved on, their successors had a much more corporate mentality and willingness to outsource to keep pace with the likes of AHM (and IHC), Kato, Bachmann, and Model Power who had been importing for a long time. The outsourcing allowed Atlas to expand into locomotives and rolling stock - historically they had been track and electrical only. One of the benefits of outsourcing has been an explosion in the variety o
Interesting parallel with the LHS vs. Internet debate.
If you support your LHS, you will have a Local source of train supplies. If not, you will be ordering from some big distributer in another state. Likewise, if we support America-made products, we will have these companies in our own country, paying local taxes and employing local people. If not, well our dollars go overseas and boost the economies over there.
Funny how we complain that few things are made in America anymore, but the second that low cost Chinese made products become unavailable, we cry that the sky is falling and we can’t afford anything anymore.
You can’t have it both ways.
Although it will be interesting to see how much longer the "Made in China’ label will last. Economies on both sides are changing and the expense of Chinese goods has been creeping up for a while. I think it’s only a matter of time before cheap production finds another region of the world, and the Chinese will face the same import issues we currently have.
At any rate, until someone here (in the US) comes up with a cheaper production method for quality MRR goods, then they will always come from somewhere else.
there is a lot of what I would call fraud going on. there are companies that have products made in China and other countries then the items are shipped to these companies in the US where they are labeled with a made in USA sticker and from there shipped to distributors around the country.
Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion with regard to model railroad products? Any particular model railroad manufacturers whom you suspect of this practice?
With regards to model railroad products I don’t know. I think it was 20/20 that had a show about it, one of the items produce outside US and labeled made in USA was a guidance system for missiles.
I agree with fwright, actually, on the “major producers” thing. A similar thing happened with childrens’ toys - the producers went out, and the importers stayed. It’s almost more a question of “who makes stuff like that” than “who makes it cheapest”. I also think there is an element of shortsight on the owners’ part when they hand over production. At this moment, Athearn and Roundhouse are no longer the great bargain they once were, compared to the higher-grade kits. Tyco went from being a technological leader to an ephemeral footnote only a few years after they began shipping out production. When you do so, you almost always lose or damage that organic link between idea, product, and quality that the best manufacturers have.
The standard HO diesel drive today owes a lot to Athearn, but what will tomorrow bring?
With all that said, if I have a choice between goods of equivalent quality, with one domestic and one imported, and the domestic one perhaps 30% more, I’ll gladly pay the extra. I’m an engineer, and although I have nothing at all against the Chinese, it makes me happy to see those proud letters, and to know that a proud tradition goes on, no matter what the current trend may be. I expect the Chinese feel the same way about their own goods, and I figure they have a right to.
At first take, I agree with you about fraudulently claiming the “Made in USA” label. But defining what “Made in the USA” means is not so easy. It’s sort of like trying to define “scratch-built”. Except for Bowser’s re-engineered Pittman motors, I don’t think there are any motors in our locomotives made in the USA. Or do you except NWSL motors assembled mostly with extra parts they bought from Sagami before Sagami left the business? Is a 50% rule good enough? Can the 50% include assembly labor, packaging, and distribution? For these reasons, I end up siding with another poster. It is what it is, and I don’t worry too much about where a product claims to be made.
From a national security point of view, I do worry about self-sufficiency being lost for critical items. But again - what is critical in time of emergency, and what can we manage without? What kind of emergency? Our defense experts long ago concluded that any future major war will be fought on a “come as you are” basis, that we would exhaust our military resources long before we could rebuild a war material manufacturing economy to replace what is expended, like we did in past wars. Which is why logistics planning is so critical in today’s security arena.
Not necessarily. I order from another state but it isn’t a “big distributer” - rather it is a smaller guy with a brick and morter store a couple states away. He just offered a much better discount than any of the LHS’s in my area.
Ever heard of E&C or LBF? Well Hubert is just the latest incarnation of the troubled line.
An add-on to my previous comment. I work at Home Depot. Most of Black & Decker/DeWalt (same company) products are labeled “Assembled in the USA” and in smaller print “from US and other parts”. They bring in a Chineese/Mexican/whatever product, add 2 made in USA screws, and use the “Assembled in the USA” line AND save on import duties because they are not importing complete tools!![:(!][}:)][censored]
China is just a place with cheaper labour. You can’t beat them there. Even things like tooling can be done in China, to standards as good as anywhere in North America or Europe, for under 20% of what it would usually cost.
That adds up, not to mention an almost complete lack of regulations make it very cheap to do business there. India is breathing down their necks now, as they too have a large low cost labour pool.
People like to complain about everything made in China now, but when it comes to spending their money, the Cheap Chinese Product wins every time. Walmart knows that, and exploits it. People don’t want to spend $800 on a TV that lasts 10 years, they want to spend $200 for a product that may not last much longer than the warranty.
If everything was domestically made, the hobby shops would go out of business. People are already complaining about the high price of -this- hobby…
Unfortunately, we’re a global economy. Good paying jobs are those that require high skill and/or education. Low skill jobs go overseas to low skill, CHEAP labor. In order to maintain our position in the world we have to stay on the leading edge. That requires staying out front on technology, r&d, education, etc. Instead of mourning the jobs going overseas we should look to developing better jobs here that the rest of the world can’t do YET.
One common trick manufacturers / importers do, is put Made in America (Canada) on the package to which the Made in China product is inserted. This is well within legal rights, as indeed, the package IS Made in America … You can put whatever you want in the package.
I work at a large printing company with plants in both the US and Canada. At one point, is was much cheaper for the US plant to have the job done at the Canadian plant. We did many large orders for books. The entire insides of the book were printed in Canada and the cover only was printed in the US due to the fact the cover indicated it was Printed in USA !!!