Thursday, April 24, 2008

Downturn??? Recession???

I’ve been sitting in the Redding, CA airport all morning having seen 2 of 3 planes grounded because of mechanical problems. The third one went out completely full. I wasn’t on it. I’m now waiting for one at 2:22 pm that will take me to SF, then another to Denver and finally my last leg to St. Louis. Hopefully, I’ll get home by early tomorrow morning, but if I miss one of the tight connections, home by Friday afternoon. Such is the life of a road warrior.

In catching up on emails at the airport (thank goodness for mobile air card broadband), I was struck by the number of emails that I’ve gotten from Team Agracel on projects they are working on. We’ve got expansions being talked about or in the works for food manufacturers (3); auto parts (2); fulfillment; doors; furniture; and several others.

In my 20+ years in the business, I can’t remember when I’ve seen as many companies looking at adding onto their existing facilities. You would think that with all of the negative talk in the media that they’d be contracting rather than expanding. It’s probably a good thing that they are watching their order books and backlogs rather than the talking heads on TV.

I’m becoming more convinced with each passing day that this downturn (I refuse to use the R-word yet!) will be shallow and swift. Every indication from our business is that manufacturers are bumping up against capacity constraints because of demand for their products. The problems on Wall Street aren’t having much of an impact on Main Street.

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