A Step Back in Time

The last week or so I have had the privilege of doing some inventory counting at one of our companies cylinder plants. I have to say that this was an experience that I will not soon forget. Walking into this plant was like walking to a factory you would picture from 40 years ago. Most of the people working there were either young guys working for the summer, or people that appear to have spent most of their lives at this plant. They are covered in sweat and dirt and are all working very hard.

Aside from the building being beat up and unfixed in 50+ years, the oddest thing I found at the plat was that almost every employee smoked. At this day in age I was very surprised. I feel like it was the 50’s or 60’s and they hadn’t yet heard that smoking was bad for you. Then again, most of them probably didn’t care because they were destroying their body in the work they are doing anyway. It is more likely that they will die from the smoke coming from the forge, or bits of steel filling their lungs than cigarette smoke anyway.

The plant has apparently got really bad in the past few years. While pushing cylinders through the process, they just started stacking up the ones that failed for some reason or another. Instead of scrapping them or reworking them, they just found an empty piece of real estate to stack them up. Our count of inventory that has just been sitting around outside for 3+ years totaled over 29,000 cylinders! Ridiculous.

Aside from the feeling of the plant taking me into yesteryear, I learned some very interesting history about our company. I knew some of our plants had been around for a number of years, but I thought that our company name was introduced at the end of last year. I was way off! Our name was formed in the early 1900’s when 2 companies that were building rail cars and other metal items combined. It was at that time that the plant I visited moved to Harrisburg. The routes of our company actually trace all the way back to 1742 when I guy bought some land and built a forge to produce wagon wheels. How sweet is that!? The company I worked for has been forging steel for over 260 years. They produced bomb casings during the world wars, and even made cannon balls for the Revolutionary War. SWEET!

Here are some pictures of the cylinder counting. And for a bit of history, the GM of the plant found this old newspaper from the 2nd WW. The top headline is "... to celebrate 200 years of progress." Check out that sub-headline. Very non-politically correct.