Economic recovery looking worse.

[groumoutis]

First of all I work in a steel mill. With that said for the last year and a half we were running balls to the wall and all was good. For the last 3 months the need for steel has dropped to as bad as it was in 2009 and 2009 was stupid bad for the steel industry. The scary part of the equation is that it got slow months before the rest of the country knew what was happening in 2009. Now that it is back I am scared big time. Since raw steel is the starting point and nobody is ordering steel that means the customers will slow production as well. Once the companies that were buying the steel run out which they are low on inventory the rest of the country will be feeling the pain too. I get paid per ton that leaves the mill so my wallet is starving. I really hope either our customers place a lot of orders and we get back to running or I can find another job to keep all my toys. If not I may have to sell the GN.

 

[NyBlankets]

Is it US Steel or Nucor? There is still lots of building going on here in Florida of roads, overpasses, commercial and residential real estate. Its been extremely busy here, build it and they will come mentality. The dollar has been very strong and certainly hurt exports in the past 3 months. Whats your mill do exactly, do you work at a mini mill? 2009 was pretty bad, I think the whole system is over leveraged and the big wind down is coming. Bernanke is keeping rates too low for too long and its causing malinvestment (again).

 

[groumoutis]

I work at Steel Dynamics Inc. in Pittsboro, Indiana and we are a engineered bar mill. We make rebar, rounds, round cornered squares and occasionally we make 2x2 angles. I have been a millwright there since getting out of the Navy in 2005. Here in Crawfordsville we have a Nucor flat roll mill and they have yet to fully recover from 09. 2011 was a record year for our mill and we were on pace to break those records this year until 3 months ago. The good thing is our company doesn't lay people off because of the way we are paid. The bad thing is my base pay is not enough for me to keep the toys. I have lost 25% of my normal pay for the last 3 months. Next weeks check will be 50% off. I can't complain too much since I still have a job.

 

[novaderrik]

i predicted the crash of the new housing market in the fall of '04 when the demand for the trusses we built fell by about 60% over night and we went from a 48 hour week where we had to bust our asses to keep up down to 32 hour weeks where we had to slow the pace way down just to keep busy...
i worked at one of the biggest truss manufacturing plants in the country at the time and most of the trusses we built went into the housing developments that were going up all over central MN- and in the Twin Cities specifically- and i just knew that the bottom was going to fall out of that market when i noticed that they were building a lot of houses and then they'd just sit empty for years at a time with a "for sale" sign in the yard. this was the time period when people were cashing in their 401k's and buying all sorts of toys and they didn't have the ability to maintain the payments on the $300k McMansions that everyone just had to buy at the time...

 

[JT'sV6]

It's an election year. Everyone is waiting to see what the new year is going to bring. Stay the course, by next spring things will be booming again.

Your company is union correct?

 

[groumoutis]

No we are not a union mill and we never will be either. It isn't good for the company or us employees.

 

[S10xGN]

Well, we all know what needs to be done this November!

 

[Red C5]

The metals industry always sees the slow down or boom coming. I hope in your case it's just election year jitters but I know a few major industries that have taken a severe dive in the last few months.