AT Tires R Pod 171

Ironically, a fully restored Pinto will command $8K to $15K these days. About 3-4 times of what they cost new.

Dang, jon, you gotta read those warning labels.  

Who ever said engineers, or anyone else, is infallible?

Didn't I just point out that you can usually tell an engineering dominated company because the products will tend to be complex and relatively expensive with lots of obscure features. Not particularly good things.

Nor did I say that lawyers and accountants don't add value. Quite the opposite.

What I said was that lawyers and accountants arent where the core value resides in a company that builds products. They aren't what makes that company great. They are there to preserve value created by others. So absolutely they have value to add but they shouldnt run the place, any more than an engineer or manufacturing manager should run a law firm. If that's not obvious I don't know what else to say.

The very best manufacturing companies understand that their core value is in design, manufacturing, or customer service, and are excellent there, but are also very very good at the other two. And they also have proper checks and balances on the legal and finance sides. And importantly the corporate leaders demonstrate due respect for all the above.

Sadly, FR seems to be almost entirely sales dominated, with seemingly little thought left over for design excellence, quality, reliability, or, based on some of their claims, perhaps for legal considerations either. Not sure where they are on the accounting and finance end of things, but I'll bet they're pretty good there or ol' Warren wouldn't have invested.

No argument that lawyers and accountants (both of whom are there to clean up messes or to keep them from occurring) often get blamed for others mistakes.

But here's the thing. Unless the business is a law or accounting firm the value it adds for the customer isn't created by the lawyers or accountants, so they shouldn't have to much decision making power.

In a company that makes stuff the value is created by the engineers who design the stuff, the manufacturing people who make it, and/or the sales and marketing folks who figure out what the customers need and how to explain it to them.

The role of the lawyers and accountants is to not squander that value by avoiding stupid mistakes. That's all good and very necessary.

What I've seen happen though, is that after a company gets older, larger, and more profitable those "value preservation" folks tend to often become too powerful and as a result the company can lose sight of what made it great to begin with.

Some companies start out being run by engineering, some by manufacturing, and some by sales. You can generally tell which is which.

If it's engineering then they will have the coolest gadgets with lots of obscure features. The product will probably work well if you know what your doing but it won't be cheap. And you'll have a hard time figuring out what all the features are because they won't do a great job advertising them.

If it's manufacturing then there will only be a few options if any, the product will always be kinda behind the curve, but quality will be good and it will be cost competitive in it's market.

If it's sales then the product will never stay the same for long, it will have all the latest features, but either the quality won't be the best or it will be expensive, or both. You'll for sure know what the features are though because they will all be named and hyped up in ads.

Guess which type of company FR is? That suspension ad is a perfect example. Beast mode? And we all know about rpod "quality", right?

One of those ways tends to be how companies become successful. But then eventually they get big and want to hang onto all those hard earned dollars.

At that point they might get taken over by the accountants or the lawyers. Those are the folks who come to the planning meetings and say "no" to the engineering, manufacturing, and/or sales folks.

If that happens the company will stop making the cool gadgets, the best value products, or the latest new thing, whichever one made it successful in the first place. Instead it will focus on making as many beans as possible on each widget or on avoiding lawsuits, or both. At that point the end is usually near...

And please before any lawyers or accountants here take offense, I'm not saying they're not needed, just that they shouldn't run the place.

So actually I'm kinda glad to see that silly ad, shows that at FR sales still runs the show and the lawyers and accountants haven't taken over yet...

Not that I'd ever buy an another FR product though. I've gone for stodgy quality this time round with my old Chinook. Man that thing is built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Just trying to cut a hole in it to put in a window a/c is taking hours and a sawsall. In my rpod I coulda done it in a couple of minutes with some tin snips.