A salesman for a bolt company came by work yesterday . I was ready for the "we can get any size bolt out of our warehouse in china " speech. But he said all of their products are made in Birmingham Alabama and all are lot traceable. For those of you who don't know I took a position at the power co-op I work at running the warehouse. Ten years ago almost everything was made in the USA in the warehouse but lately we have been getting chineese made hardware. Something unnerved me when I did linework about being up in an energized powerline and having a line under up to 2000 lbs of strain against it being held by a chineese made bolt. I hope they can be competitive against chineese crap when they put in their bid to out statewide material purchasing warehouse. At least the majority of out line material is USA made . We shun a certain brand of transformers and substation equipment because its made in mexico . We buy our distribution transformers from a company it Tennessee and our poles and crossarms are from Mississippi and Alabama. Substation transformers are from Wisconsin. Oh ya and out FR clothing is US made too. Now all we need is some American textile mills making cotton undies and sheets.
