Throwing away new bolts

[hosspuller]

Spent a career in food packing facilities. Techs would always take extra fasteners for a job and leave them on the line. The watchwords were "product contamination" a bolt or nut in the product could cause a recall. I was always on the look-out for loose hardware. Emptying my pockets into a box made my retirement collection.

 

[kshansen]

Spent a career in food packing facilities. Techs would always take extra fasteners for a job and leave them on the line. The watchwords were "product contamination" a bolt or nut in the product could cause a recall. I was always on the look-out for loose hardware. Emptying my pockets into a box made my retirement collection.

Yea, some people get all upset when they take a bite out of a Hostess Cupcake and get a 5/16 nut instead of a mouth full of chocolate filling!

 

[Truck Shop]

Well go to work for a AG/fertilizer company. The only bolts you will have around are new because you will be hot wrenching everything. And brass fittings you better
have lots of undercoat paint for those.

Truck Shop

 

[Old Doug]

In a perfect world every one would clean up after a job was done and put extras back in their place but in most shops theres only one guy that cares or wants to help save money and after hes there for some time he stops careing. I save alot of stuff but some times i fill good about not draging something home when i haul off a load of scrap.

 

[Birken Vogt]

In a perfect world every one would clean up after a job was done and put extras back in their place but in most shops theres only one guy that cares or wants to help save money and after hes there for some time he stops careing. I save alot of stuff but some times i fill good about not draging something home when i haul off a load of scrap.

Also if you have a bolt tray with all the sizes labelled, one particular space always ends up overflowing while the others go begging because you always end up with one particular size left over after a certain job you do a lot of. If you have just a big bucket then when you really need something, all you can ever find is that one particular size also.

 

[92U 3406]

Also if you have a bolt tray with all the sizes labelled, one particular space always ends up overflowing while the others go begging because you always end up with one particular size left over after a certain job you do a lot of. If you have just a big bucket then when you really need something, all you can ever find is that one particular size also.

Or idiots just throw whatever size in whatever tray because they don't know how to read.

 

[Birken Vogt]

Or they can't be bothered to spend 30 seconds to figure out what tray it goes in.

Like keeping your tools put away in the middle of a job, it saves time looking for them later.

 

[dirty4fun]

We never had many bolts on the farm when I grew up, and got into the habit of picking up any hardware I saw laying around. I still glean the parking lot when I walk through, just yesterday I picked up a couple washers. They may stay in my pocket for a few days before going into the bin. I hate to see waste of any kind.

 

[thepumpguysc]

I do the same thing D4F.. another thing that gets me is in the locker room.. some of the guys will empty their pockets w/ change & throw it on the FLOOR.!!!
I wait till Friday & pick it all up!! & throw it in my locker.. I have a change box in there.. & have to empty it ALEAST twice a year because its full.. lol
& its the SAME GUYS that BUM change for the snack machine every week.. lol I LOAN them 1 dollar of their own money & they pay me back the next day..LOL & they're the same guys that bich cuz their broke..Its retarded.!!!

 

[Tinkerer]

We never had many bolts on the farm when I grew up, and got into the habit of picking up any hardware I saw laying around. I still glean the parking lot when I walk through, just yesterday I picked up a couple washers. I hate to see waste of any kind.

Me to. We hardly had any nuts and bolts either. I haven't found any washers lately.
But, I have had a lifelong habit of looking down for stuff since I was a kid. It paid off big time when we stopped at a motel in Macon ,Georgia a couple of years ago. I saw what I thought was the corner of a dollar bill under some mulch by a curb. It was a $100.00 bill. I love Macon, GA !!

 

[JS300]

My last job was at a big manufacturing plant and it really didn't make sense to have the guys clean bolts and put them back in the bolt bin, it just took too much time and we had too much to do. Everybody had a bin in their toolbox and just hoarded all the spare hardware there. Of course the parts dept was upstairs above the shop so this saved a lot of trips upstairs to get a 1/4" 20 nut.
The job I'm at now has allot of waste. We just throw almost everything away. The nuts and bolts waste isn't too bad it's the glove waste that gets me. We had some folks that would use a pair of leather gloves till they got the least little bit of grease on them and then throw em away. I had some guys building a barbwire fence for me and noticed they didn't have gloves, so I put a bag in the shop and started putting all the used gloves I found laying around or in the trash in it. It was funny because with out being told everybody else did the same thing. In 2 weeks I gathered enough gloves to give the fence builders a 6 month supply. Those guys still ask if I can get gloves when I see them. I think companys bring allot of this on theirselves now days. Too many rules and deadlines. I've been told "good job you spent an hour picking up $10 worth of bolts" I guess the boss figured he went in the hole money wise.

 

[hosspuller]

JS300 ... It's the time and effort. A considerate tech adds a few seconds to the job by returning unused hardware. But to assign a $10 per hour bolt salvage job to a $55 per hour tech is not economic.

PS ... I too, had enough slightly used gloves on the farm for years.

 

[JS300]

I'm with you hosspuller. I made a lot of people mad a few months ago by asking if we could split the maintenance shop into an adult shop and a kids shop. It's amazing what some folks consider acceptable, but that is another subject.

 

[JDOFMEMI]

It shows a lot of how a person was raised whether they care enough to save the good parts for later use, or just throw them away and buy new again next time.

Those of us raised with very little had to learn from an early age to make do with what we have, while those sporting a silver spoon never seem to care.

 

[Birken Vogt]

It shows a lot of how a person was raised whether they care enough to save the good parts for later use, or just throw them away and buy new again next time.

Those of us raised with very little had to learn from an early age to make do with what we have, while those sporting a silver spoon never seem to care.

I agree, I was raised to waste nothing but sometimes that can come back to bite me...no sense wasting half an hour scouring to save 50 cents worth of fasteners, you have to be able to make a quick judgement of whether the time is better spent on salvage or moving on to something that's billable hours.

But as noted above with the price of fasteners and fittings these days I tend to think that more often than not, it is economical to try to salvage stuff.

 

[Bumpsteer]

My last job was at a big manufacturing plant and it really didn't make sense to have the guys clean bolts and put them back in the bolt bin, it just took too much time and we had too much to do. Everybody had a bin in their toolbox and just hoarded all the spare hardware there. Of course the parts dept was upstairs above the shop so this saved a lot of trips upstairs to get a 1/4" 20 nut.
The job I'm at now has allot of waste. We just throw almost everything away. The nuts and bolts waste isn't too bad it's the glove waste that gets me. We had some folks that would use a pair of leather gloves till they got the least little bit of grease on them and then throw em away. I had some guys building a barbwire fence for me and noticed they didn't have gloves, so I put a bag in the shop and started putting all the used gloves I found laying around or in the trash in it. It was funny because with out being told everybody else did the same thing. In 2 weeks I gathered enough gloves to give the fence builders a 6 month supply. Those guys still ask if I can get gloves when I see them. I think companys bring allot of this on theirselves now days. Too many rules and deadlines. I've been told "good job you spent an hour picking up $10 worth of bolts" I guess the boss figured he went in the hole money wise.

One GM plant I used to do work for had "point of use racks" they were stocked with gloves, safety glasses, etc. The costs got so high because of waste they put the stuff in vending machines. Employees had to use their id badge to get supplies, go over your limit, to bad, no new gloves for you!

Ed

 

[Old Doug]

Today a guy came in from the other shop looking for a 3/8 npt to 3/8 air line. I looked in the place were i keep fitings with no luck. He was leaveing and i was heading back to the beanch were i was working and their it was the fitting in a pile of stuff that i hadnt had time to sort out. The shop is a hours round trip for parts.Maybe Im crazy but i had a good filling finding that fitting.

 

[Birken Vogt]

I keep loose bolts in unused spaces in my wrench drawers, and when I have both the wrench drawer and the bolt bin out at the same time I sort the one into the other. Well today I was doing that sorting, and I realized how much time it would take to sit down and order all this stuff that I am basically getting for free, just the time to look at it and quickly categorize it. So there is that aspect to it also.

 

[thepumpguysc]

Along those same lines Doug.. I had a buddy come out to the country & install my new AC unit..
It was all done but he needed a 90* COPPER elbow to make the final connection.. 3/8 to 1/2".. Now where the heck are you gonna find one of those things WAY OUT in the country??
In my brass/copper fitting drawer, that's where.. Saved him a 3hr round trip.. & I was KOOL in minutes..& looked like a hero..
I run into him from time to time & he STILL talks about that..

 

[kshansen]

A bit OT but then that's the way I am at times.
Talking about sorting and tools got me to think about something I would do at times.

You know how sometimes on a job despite you efforts to not have a pile of tools scattered around on the project it start to look like a yard sale with tools all over the place?

When I notice that going on I would tell myself that I have to "buy" a tool to use it. By this I force myself to put at least two tools back for every new one I take out of the tool box. Sounds a little dumb but it did work and after a short time most tools would be back in the box and at little or no cost in time to pick up when job was done. Actually probably saved some time as I would know where to find that 3/4 inch off-set wrench instead of trying to find it in the pile of tools on the bench.

Same thing worked for nuts and bolts. If I needed a couple 3/8-16 nuts and there were a couple of 1/2-13 nuts sitting on the bench, grab them and toss in the bin when I went for the nuts I needed.