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VirutalElectrician

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Mpls, MN
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Sparky - Trying to be retired
I like extension cords. I have more than I will ever use in the lives of a cat. And yet, I still window shop.

I was completely astonished to see that Home Depot had 6,413 10/3 100' cords in their warehouse. Well, actually Southwire's probably, since these are probably dropped shipped like most things.

But still, I wonder how long it would take to move all those. And that's just one model of one of their brands.

That's just a little more than 121 miles of cord for just one SKU. With a retail value of just over $1mil. For one SKU.
Just how many millions of square feet of warehouse does southwire own?

And how many miles of wire do they make in a year?

Just puts it into perspective just how big Southwire is.
 

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This is why we need to improve math education. Making good decisions requires being comfortable with -- and not surprised by -- large numbers.

An eye-opener for me was a coal train. Coal is as cheap as dirt. Before it's mined, it IS dirt. But an 8000-ton trainload of coal is often more than a million dollars' worth. And that's only the half of it. A typical powerplant burns a trainload of coal every day.

And if a trainload of coal is a million dollars' worth, what about a trainload of other commodities -- cars, carpets, extension cords, whatever?
 
When you compare the retail value to their annual profit margin, you can see their profit is peanuts.

Reminds me of back in 1992 I was talking with sone friends who were complaining about Bill Gates' worth (15 billion at the time), and how expensive it was to buy a Microsoft program ($150)

They thought it should be a criminal offense to make that much money.

It just so happened that I had recently watched a news segment about that.

He had sold 30 billion programs, and had net worth of 15 billion. That's only 50 cents each

In other words, if he was to refund only $1 for each program he had sold in the past, he would be 15 billion dollars in the hole
 
I think southwire had an overrun of those or something. They had a pretty low price on them (southwire price to distributor) when you buy by the pallet.
 
I was at a customer site one time watching them wire up a machine. Pretty big machine. The electrician had skids of extension cords that he was using to hook up the solenoids and motors and whatnot. He was cutting the ends off of the extension cords and using the cord as SO cord. He said that the company could buy the cords with the ends on them a lot cheaper than just bulk SO cord so that's what they bought. Must have been thousands of them.

Another customer I worked with used to buy cord and ends to hookup limit switches with M12 connectors on them. I asked him why he didn't just buy the cords pre-made. He said they were trying to save money by making them up themselves. I suggest that he look at what it cost to buy the cables made up. They stop making them themselves real fast when they found out that the pre-made cords were about half the price of the parts that it took to make the cord themselves and they didn't have to make it or test it themselves.
 
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