For Americans here who’ve never been to Europe, trucks in Europe are much smaller than US trucks, are required to have governors to limit their speed, and are restricted to the right lane. The result is far fewer traffic deaths involving trucks.
In addition, Europeans almost never drive pickups and their automobiles are much smaller. Their rates of deaths and serious injury are far less than America. So for you pro life people, perhaps some road restrictions would keep more people alive. Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Monday, August 7, 2023, 5:07 PM, Jon Perryman <jperr...@pacbell.net> wrote: > On Monday, August 7, 2023 at 01:12:10 PM PDT, Bob Bridges > <robhbrid...@gmail.com> wrote: > building long-haul tractors in the US is apparently a bit of a challenge > compared to what they do in Europe. Every country has different challenges of mentality. I'm guessing this refers to Germany where Mercedes produces big rig Trucks. This mentality spreads across all industries in Germany including computers. When I lived in Germany, I experienced many of these challenges but a better example is an English friend who repaired equipment made in Germany. His job was to go where Germans refused. For instance, he was sent to repair a 9 spindle lathe in Spain because the customer did not wait for the correct part. When the lathe failed, the customer did not have the correct bolt so they hammered a steel rod to get the lathe temporarily running. Germans wouldn't fix it because it's the customers responsibility to wait for the correct parts. On Monday, August 7, 2023 at 01:12:10 PM PDT, Bob Bridges <robhbrid...@gmail.com> wrote: I remember when Y2K was coming up - I was an employee of an American truck manufacturer at the time - I thought to myself that although I am a horrible procrastinator, the CEOs of large corporations surely are more disciplined than that. THEY wouldn't put off the necessary changes until the last minute! That was a bit of a shock to my opinions when I encountered reality. Speaking of gas tanks, building long-haul tractors in the US is apparently a bit of a challenge compared to what they do in Europe. Perhaps it's because of the size of our country, or maybe it's something else. But when they sell tractors in Europe, I gather the options offered are little more varied than the options you can buy in American-made cars. With tractors it's very different here. The parts book for a US tractor starts with a base model and then lets you swap out the base engine for any of twenty others; transmissions, exhaust stacks, seats, wheels, almost anything can be selected. Then there are the special orders that a factory engineer has to price: I remember one customer wanted the battery rack to be moved forward 8 inches to make room for something else, I forget what, and they had to figure out how much extra to charge for it. When European truck manufacturers started buying up American companies so as to get into the market, they had a bit of a shock encountering these complications. But they couldn't simply say "no more of that"; American customers demand it. And to bring it back to MVS, building the application that printed off the parts book for such options was perhaps the most complicated app my coworkers had ever encountered. (I say "my coworkers" not because my intellect was fully up to the challenge but because I owned the marketing apps; I never had much to do with the parts book.) --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. -advice to a tempter, from "The Screwtape Letters" by C S Lewis */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Bill Johnson Sent: Monday, August 7, 2023 15:11 Worked at Revco drug stores a few decades ago. We used to sell shave cream below cost in order to sell customers large margin items related to shaving. Blades, razors, & after shave. We had a system designed specifically for this purpose called market basket analysis. Revco made some bad decisions, went bankrupt, emerged under a guy called grave dancer, (Sam Zell) who cut to the bone, and sold Revco to CVS. Making billions. Companies make bad decisions all the time. The key is to try and make more good decisions than bad. One thing I’ve found having worked at 15 different companies is that most managers and executives are no smarter than the low level employees. ....I’d like more than a 12 gallon gas tank on my hybrid car to increase its range from 500 miles to 660 but I doubt Toyota is willing to make the Avalon with 2 gas tank size options. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
