Quality of Tacoma in Mexico verses Texas built.

Production jobs will only come back to the US as some are now ONLY because you reduce the ridiculous amount of government regulations imposed.

 

We used to have to use a Russian Antonov Airplane for shipping, and the Russian Crew would run to Walmart and buy as much stuff as they could because they would take it back home and sell everything for a fortune.

 

Or is it the ridiculous demands coming from unions who ask for benefits and wages that only self serve the unions through payments made from members? Make no mistake, they are there to profit.

 

Which is a huge aircraft!
Wen I lived there I took a charter plane to Istanbul Turkey for a weeks vacation.
It was the largest Russian passenger jet made. The plane was 90% Russian women.
Coming back they were loaded with jeans, leather jackets, all types of clothing. Big huge plaid nylon bags too, like the size of a really large suitcase that they also put in front of their seats with their legs draped over it for the trip back to Moscow. I didn't think the plane was going to clear the big hill in front of us when taking off! It was surreal!

 

If you flew Aeroflot, you have HUGE balls!

 

.......not in the real world have I ever heard that from Toyota owners ( trucks or cars) .......on this forum however......

 

We shipped Jet Engines when behind schedule and that was the only thing large enough to transport.

 

Unions chased a lot of production overseas starting back in the early '80's.
For instance it was cheaper to mine the ore here and send it by ship to Japan at the time and have them process it into steel and ship back to the US.
But the biggest factor for a lot of the heavy production industry decline of sorts was that technology got much better which meant far less employees needed.
And cheap labor abroad.....nobody can really compete against that.
Also when I was living and working in Moscow in the '90's their top, senior space flight engineers were making $150.00 a month! Really cheap, hi-tech, highly educated Russians....why the US signed a space act with the Russians, hence the NASA/Mir program.....hoping to keep a lot of that skill set employed since the concern was that other countries like Iran would do the brain drain for ICBM and nuke technology......which ended up happening anyway....via employing Russians.

 

Interesting, was this Pratt and Whitney?

 

Nope, GE-90s, massive freaking engines!

 

Actually flew worse.
Use to fly from Moscow on internal who knows what Russian domestic airlines with names like 'Safe Air' with the letters peeling off, fuel leaking out of the tanks in the wings and steel belts sticking out the side of the wheels....8 hours down to Baikonour, Kazhkstan to their rocket launch site. Promise my cajones were shrunk up inside me like being in cold water....made me religious too......the planes had open overhead luggage bins like on a old bus, the white plastic was major yellowed from being so old. Some of the seats were flopped over broken. When we would land all the Russians would start clapping....like we MADE IT! I was like holy crap what about the flight back! Just a little stressful....looking back....hilarious.

 

Those are the really big ones.

 

Ah, ok. Had a lot of family in P&W. Father-in-law designed PT6 twin pack, engine in Huey helicopter, and a lot of small jets. Lots of turbo-props, which essentially is a jet engine attached to a rotor. Mom worked in test cells, sister with test pilots, and brother in machine shop. I moved away before being enlisted. Smaller engines in the factory they worked, mostly for private jets. Lots of fond memories visiting the factory, including the bird test!

 

Have a friend in US Air Force who's a mechanic and has told me some stories about flying on some chicken shit airlines. He's actually done repairs on some flights on shady airlines before taking off as a passenger. No shit!

 

Bird Tests and Blade Outs are fun for sure! We even had a massive Wind Generator to simulate cross winds and tail winds

 

Nailed it... The jobs aren't gone because of governments or unions... they're gone because Americans are expensive to pay, and at the same time Americans don't like paying more for consumer goods. Companies want profits, so they outsource the labor. If we – as a society – voted with our wallets for USA manufacturing, [production] jobs might start to come back.

Obviously, that isn't going to happen (for lots of reasons), and so those jobs will stay mostly gone. Automation and new fabrication technologies will bring some small and large scale manufacturing back, but not the manufacturing jobs of yore.

 

If you've never seen an engine blow up from over-revving, you haven't seen anything. Test cells was entertaining for sure. My sister had tales of engine losses too, and having to land on the test engine, which was always an iffy.

 

Words of wisdom!

 

This is a bit boring but you get the idea.

 

Amazing. Nothing quite that size at their factory, but still exciting to watch. They kept the engine at full redline for 7 days - 24 hours to test its performance. Small window into the test cell that would allow you to watch it. Then over-rev it until it blew apart. Remember seeing pieces of metal lodge itself into the concrete, unreal force from the explosion.