So said Don McNeeley, president and COO, Chicago Tube & Iron Co., and professor at Northwestern University, speaking Feb. 27 at The FABRICATOR’s Leadership Summit in Palm Harbor, Fla.
After conversations with various fabricators since then, most tend to agree with him. Business is OK, not great, but big things may be on the horizon. One attendee said she was working through a massive pile of request-for-quotes and was wondering how she was going to get through them all. That’s not a bad problem to have. The recession purged many local markets, and fabricators that performed poorly (or were just unlucky) fell by the wayside. Now OEMs and top tier suppliers are calling on top-performing fabricators to deliver the goods.
Meanwhile, before this week’s troubles thanks to the mess in Cyprus, the stock market pushed into uncharted territory.
“The markets are nuts.”
