RE: The Mongrel Scouts

[Scott Satterlund <scotts@domain.elided>]

Iron ore to finished product was not the main reason for IH going downhill, 
but that has been talked about too much anyway.
It is easy in today's world to ask why a company would make its own sub 
parts. But, the simple answer is that when they started doing it themselves 
many years ago, there simply were not sub part suppliers that could build 
the volumes that were needed. A company I used to work for did exactly the 
same thing. When they started up in the early 50's they couldn't find 
adequate suppliers in the Pacific Northwest, so they bought the machines 
and built the facilities to make everything from screws to circuit boards. 
All this stuff was sold off but the early 80's because it had reached the 
point that outsourcing was less expensive than making it in house.
I would imagine that IHC probably didn't make their own bolts in the later 
years. Howard would probably know what the scoop was on this kind of stuff. 
I remember that a lot of IHC bolts were sold at Gramps IHC dealership. I 
think they were a pretty good product.

-Scott Satterlund
 Tigard, Oregon

Subject: Re: The Mongrel Scouts

>In any case, IH was the company with the raw iron ore- and I think that
>contributed muchly to it's demise, in fact.

Yeah, I was just thinking about that the other day as I was cleaning up 
some
bolts on my 800.  The bolts had IH embossed on the heads. I was thinking,
gee, how could anybody make money by having their own bolts.