Very cool video worth watching

[hemi43]

Shop tour of aftermarket stampings for our old trucks.

https://youtu.be/vzxAMR-K-EI?si=qXdg3qSOhWupXS-x

[chewychevy67]

That was very interesting.

[truckster]

That's really cool. Thanks for sharing it.

[CG]

I wonder why we cant do that here? Looks like most of their "molds" came direct from GM
Are our labor costs just too much? Do they make the steel in Taiwan? Don't we make steel anymore? Its confusing to me.

But I do appreciate that they are being made and probably much better than the initial start of these types of aftermarket parts.

[best view]

That was awesome

[hemi43]

Originally Posted by CG

I wonder why we cant do that here? Looks like most of their "molds" came direct from GM
Are our labor costs just too much? Do they make the steel in Taiwan? Don't we make steel anymore? Its confusing to me.

But I do appreciate that they are being made and probably much better than the initial start of these types of aftermarket parts.

Labor costs is just a small part of it. Biggest issue is Government red tape and things like OSHA and the EPA. Another problem is finding skilled people to do it here in North America.
Building those dies and maintaining them was my trade for almost 30 years, and once we were done with a current model of car/truck, it was a sea of Asians in our plant pre-inspecting our tooling before we readied them for shipment overseas.