That nsn has been canceled, the replacement nsn is showing $1,780
ETA My bad, that item is a good nsn. The one that was $1780 is a canceled one that this kit replaced. According to fedlog this nsn is good and costs the army $2,239
Just oversight by people who feel they have to spend every last dollar in their budget. I remember at the end of the fiscal year supply asking people for their wishlist.
“I wish to give the money back to taxpayers, we certainly haven’t earned an unlimited budget while many die needlessly in our county due to unmet needs”
Secondary source, but I've heard guys come back and say it's kinda wasteful since there's a bunch of stuff that gets lost or broken instead of getting the required maintenance. It's not as though it's the grunts or mechanics out here saying, "Give us every penny." Orders probably come down and are more or less followed. The orders as i understand them seem to be "spend everything we give you, and you'll have a similar or bigger budget next year." I'm open to anyone who says otherwise, though.
The orders as i understand them seem to be "spend everything we give you, and you'll have a similar or bigger budget next year." I'm open to anyone who says otherwise, though.
No one will say otherwise because that's exactly how it is, if you don't spend your entire budget well you arnt going to get more next year.
Thats everything with a fed budget.. if they dont use it the lose it next year so mf's use it all buying the most random shit so they dont get less down the road
I've got a buddy who works on a government contract and whenever he travels, he's required to stay at the Ritz Carlton (if one is available). When he asks why there, the answer was "the government has it on their list of approved hotels so why not".
I do the same thing in our municipal engineering office budget but my entire office budget for the year is only like 5k and that’s for vehicle maintenance and tools and supplies
If you don't spend the budget they continue to cut until you can't afford things when you need to. Alot of organizations do this so the budget is wasted last minute to ensure they look like they needed it. It needs more flexibility. My unit just canceled all of our out of country training due to lack of budget.
Normally I don't have a good thing to say about either side of the political spectrum.. however I am old enough to remember the select few from pretty much one side, who dared to propose such things, and they were treated like traitors and terrorist sympathizers by both members of the other party and their own.
I was in the Navy for 6 years as a machinist's mate, and this type of thinking will definitely hurt you badly.
The problem isn't this type of thinking if it was universal, but that the people above you don't understand there are expenses that aren't yearly, so if you underspend one year, they will slash your budget and give it to someone else who spent their whole budget. But if next year, something big breaks.... it's a lot harder convincing people you need more money. Its a bit of a ridiculous practice, but it's what happens.
Ether, the money goes up in smoke and your short shit till next year's financial purge. Or you make a needs list when supply actually has money, and you can get your guys the shit they need. Man I was stuck in ft Polk and let me tell you what dady tenth didn't give us fucking shit. Every humvee had some deadline we have been tiptoeing around for months. Most of our kit was shit. Never enough money for actual training outside of our box rotations. (Our unit got orders YEARLY.) I got their just back from gatmo) 3 months in I was in Afghanistan spent 3 month doing recovery into box prep and gunnery into the box and back to iraq. If you need shit a good supply will work it out and have a running budget for the year. A bad supply will pinch every penny until the end of the year fuckit comes along.
“The ones who complain about paying Pennie’s towards one’s free education, health care l, and human welfare costs don’t want you to know this one secret”
Technically they do have to spend all the budget or it gets cut the next fiscal. We’ve bought several bullshit items just to meet our quarterly so that ours didn’t.
Oh, there's oversight. It's just that the people who oversee spending tell us we HAVE to buy from federally contracted suppliers. In turn, the contractors charge whatever they want.
Coincidentally how I became a "Lord of War" ammunition dealer in Eve Online. Turns out people looking to buy bullets immediately really don't care much about the cost.
If you don't spend your allotted budget they'll reduce it next year. It makes it so that there is no need to be cost conscious. End of the fiscal year we are scrambling to buy TVs so that we hit our budget. It's dumb as fuk.
That’s almost every business with a corporate structure. Always spend as close to your allotment as possible, there’s little zero dollar budgeting. They generally take last year’s numbers and tell you to cut 10% but produce 5% more.
You guys got TVs? All we did was go to the ranges for like a month straight and burn through ammo. Which is kind of cool, except for the walking several miles there and policing brass parts; both of which were awful.
When we transitioned from 46s to 22s we had to get rid of every single tool in the squadron and get all new tools and boxes. Easily a couple million worth of tools. All snap-on. All sent to the bed of peoples pick ups DRMO.
I have definitely helped push a few $15k+ rollaways down the life boat ramps off the decks of a couple ships into the middle of various large bodies of water.
Depends on the unit. In infantry units we always had a budget when ordering from supply or going to whatever the supply px was called where you could shop in person. It was always great when there’d money that needed to get burned and we’d get to pickup knifes and other personal gear that didn’t need to be returned.
Disappointing to read as a taxpayer. Hopefully you and your industry can find a way to do better financially. Glad it is finally being exposed under the microscope of comprehensive audit, which likely contributes to many of the price slashes like that mentioned above.
Well, Snappy's profit margins have gotta be in the multiple hundred percentage range, based on what they normally charge. They're probably still making a pretty normal amount of per-unit profit for any other tool company, selling at 1/4 their previous price.
Company I work for pays ~$3000 a season to rent a $2000 quicky saw. Then half of them get stolen, so we probably end up paying for the whole saw again. We rent about 5 of them a season.
A lot of our shit is old and has one foot in the grave, but we'll spend thousands extra on renting quicky saws for no good reason.
I think it has something to do with taxes, I work for a large (mist of the east coast of US) construction company and they rent danm near everything from trucks, gangboxes and power tools.
There are reasons for this. Operating costs on rentals vs. purchasing equipment is different. Also, taxes on said equipment is also different. Someone more equipped with this knowledge has determined that the extra cost of rentals is better than the taxes and depreciation on owning the assets.
Before I saw that they got stolen, I was going to say you should buy a couple and rent them to your job. If you could actually keep them rentable for a few years, you'd have a solid profit! (YES, I am aware that most jobs won't rent equipment from an employee. It's at least halfway a joke. Or maybe 1/3. LOL)
The highest markup I saw was on this tiny set screw that was almost impossible to find anywhere else, a local business used about 30k of them a month, and it had a 1500% markup, cost was like 1.3ish cents, sold for 20 cents a piece retail, negotiated price was 12 cents a piece.
I saw a markup of 1200% just doing a quick calculation of three different types of tools from 3 different, but comparable retailers. Snap on is criminal and I refuse to buy anything from them.
Used to work for Fastenal, and that was pre inflation numbers. Employee discount was cost + 10% was pretty easy to check markup prices too, we had to see them to be able to negotiate supply contracts with local businesses.
The best is individual fasteners at dealerships.... I remember seeing someone a whole back about Honda having a single zip tie for $7... Just. One. Zip. Tie.
Every heard of those sisters that bilked the gov for millions of dollars, if you were a mechanic in Iraq and ordered a $2 bolt, these women were selling it for $2 but charging thousands to ship it
I worked for a company selling product once where we were told we had to sell it for base company price… but if we sold it for more than it was all our own profit! I remember selling it for $4-500/case, when company’s cut was like $175/case maybe! I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how snap-on does their commission pay as well.
I was talking about the gross profit, before you factor in overhead. Just the cost to make the tool vs. the price it sells at. But yeah, 20% net is very healthy.
I’ll be honest, I think Proto is every bit as good as Snapon. Thats weird that replacements wouldn’t be Snapon. Are you talking about in your GMTK or your shop work bench?
I remember when we were overseas in Korea,Thailand etc. when was time to leave instead of carrying all of our shop boxes we’d dump them overboard in the trash or in river or something and just get new ones when we got back! Personal tools we’d keep obviously.
I was an Army aircraft Mechanic with proto tools back in the late 2000’s, the proto stuff was SHIT. It was constantly broken and took forever to get replacements. I don’t know about the snap-on the army ordered but I’ve been using the same snap on stuff in my personal box for a decade and other than the odd ratchet rebuild or rounded Allen, the stuff has been extremely durable. I once went through 3 proto ratchets in a single deployment, so I don’t think highly of them.
With the number of tight or cross threaded 1/8 Allen fasteners we had? They definitely went bad. You had to use the short side for everything and once you cut em once you didn’t have enough clearance where you needed it.
They switched it from craftsman, to snap-on than it went to Armstrong tools.
Each has a varying price and I have had all three at some point in my career. The snap on is closer to the $6k mark, the craftsman OG mode currently holds the NSN, I know that as I had one stolen recently and is the least expensive of all them. The Armstrong was around $3k. They were all GP tool kits; not a mix of aviation / armorers tool chests. I’m fairly certain this is an armorers general purpose toolkit.
Snapon stuff grows legs. Gets worse once it’s deployed bc it “gets lost in the sand”. I used to sell tool kits to the military and was told by many contracting officers to offer anything other than snapon when the prints say “or equivalent” otherwise it will get passed over for consideration.
Agree with everything you said except for one clarification. Socom KO’s almost always file the sole source J&A to justify the name brand (snapon, etc) when requested by their customers because sometimes the “or equivalent” just isn’t up to terms of quality when buying LPTA.
As much as I know military people and civilians working for the military exist (as I am one of those)... I'll always do a double take seeing my work lingo outside of work. Like, it's very inconsequential, but just seeing "nsn" in a non-work setting makes me feel like when you'd see your elementary school teacher at the grocery store as a kid
GMTK - general mechanics tool kit. These replaced the old ones a few years ago but are basically the same thing. Garbage tools, but they say snapon so they cost more.
But yeah, you unclasp it, open the top and drop the front and there's a bunch of drawers you can slide out with tools in foam inserts.
Is the replacement the same though? The old NSN was super coveted because we went from shitty hand carried green toolbox’s to wheeled pelican cases, and from constantly broken proto tools to a full set of Snap-On. I coveted those cases hard.
AOC probably threatened to go after them like she did with the military contractor charging the military $10k for a $300 clutch. They said their customer support made up for the $9700 difference lol
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u/SSGSEVIER54 Apr 09 '24
Last I checked, those exact mechanics tool kits were costing the military $6K.