Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Lug nuts

As I have gotten older I have looked at things I have taken for granted and marveled at them and the way they are built. Yesterday I wrote a piece on building cars but I think it was lost last night as my computer decided to reboot itself because kogyzs




He who must be obeyed just traipsed across the keyboard.



because the computer decided it was time to update something or another and just diid it on its own.



Anyway, then I broke the system of building cars down even further and looked at one simple lug nut and all that goes into getting it to the assembly line for Joe Autoworker to install. It is mind boggling and God only knows how many people were involved in getting that lug nut to the assembly line.



While, of course, the car makers buy them by the millions, and they are produced in mass quantity we can look at one and the number of people that are involved, either directly or indirectly and it is mind boggling.



I guess you have to start at an iron mine and then go onto the steel mill and then to the guys that move the steel to wherever the nuts are made and then put in trucks and hauled to the factory which takes fuel which has to be wrestled out of the ground to power the vehicles and maybe even the power plants that supply the electricity the nutmaker uses to make the damned thing. It just goes on and on and on until it very well may involve a million or more people on several continents just to make one little dinky lug nut.



While most of the people involved likely have no clue as to the fact that they are indirectly involved in the manufacture of a lug nut they are indirectly involved. It is amazing.



From the mine to the mill to the maker to the factory where Joe Autoworker slaps on the right rear tire of the latest model pickup and spins the nut on is pretty mind boggling when you think of all that is entailed.



What is even more amazing is how inexpensive the nut is for the automaker to buy. Likely they are just a few cents and out of that few cents there are a lot of people that get a piece it.



The fact that the system even works is astonishing.



Anyway, that's my thhought for the day.




my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

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