Price fixing among tire manufacturers

Edwin gets it! That's that conservation of mass thing I was talking
about. As Archie Bunker said after you heard him flush the 'terlet':
"Edith - you a can't *buy* beer - you can only *rent* it!".

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

Not full of crap at all.
I was in the computer business then.

There was a very large player in the "Business Basic" computer market
way back when that was making well over 100% markup on the computers
they sold at list price - which was about 90% of their sales. They
sold a few above list. When the memory chips they were using were
replaced in the market with chips of double the memory density for
virtually the same cost, they just put the new chips in and jumpered
them to half capacity and sold them for the same price. When the
customer decided they needed a memory upgrade, the "tech" went out and
snipped or moved a jumper, enabling the "free" memory and charged a
rediculous fee for the upgrade.

Same thing happened when the 1MB hard rive (I think it was) was
replaced with a 2 MB - at any rate the capacity was doubled. They put
the double capacity hard drive in as a normal drive with the small
capacity, and the expensive upgrade just re-jumpered the drive.

For those who know the business, the company was MAI (Management
Assistance Inc) or Basic/Four.

Then there were the "transporatables"
Like the Osborne, and later the Compaq Luggable.

They were pricy units.
The company I worked for imported a case system that allowed us to
manufacture a "lunch box" PC using standard PC parts for a
SIGNIFICANTLY lower cost. Until others got on the bandwagon and forced
the price down, we were selling them by the pallet load for just under
the cost of the established manufacturers, with a THREE YEAR WARRANTY
and making a killing. We could have sold them for a LOT less, but why,
when a small price advantage was all it took to buy xtensive market
share in our market area???
One of our resellers sold HUNDREDS into the local accounting and tax
preparation market. Those computers made him $1000000 in less than 3
years

 

Actually it has been my experience that Tirerack does a really good job of
addressing these concerns. They had a really good deal on the odd sized
tires I needed for a Saturn Vue. Tire Rack has a number of certified
installers in my area. I picked one. Tirerack shipped the tires directly to
the installers. When they arrived, I was called and made an appointment. The
tires were installed just as if the installer sold me the tires directly.
Neither the Tirerack, nor a local dealer warrant a tire. The warranty is
provided by the tire manufacturer. It is my unprovable opinion that Tirerack
is as likely to fight for your warranty racks as most local dealers. And if
you are really worried, Tirerack sells there on raod hazard coverage that
should cover any concerns you may have. AND even if you don't actually buy
the tires fromt he Tirerack (or other online seller) you can often use their
prices as leverage with a local dealer to get a lower price. I've bought
tires from Tirerack several times with good results. However, most of the
time I can find similar (or even lower prices) for high volume tires at
local dealers. But when it comes to odd size or high performance tires,
Tirerack often can beat the local prices by significant amounts.

What about the Pirelli P4 Four Seasons? I feel certain you have a Pirelli
dealer in your area.. Do you have a Sam's CLub in your area? My local Sam's
Club will order Perillei tires.

It is my opinion that buying cheap tires is a fast way to ruin a car. But
sometimes even expensive tires don't work out well. I bought a set of
expensive Michelin Cross Terrains for the Expedition I used to own - within
20,000 miles they were noisy. The tires looked perfect, and the tread wear
was great, even after 50k miles, however, I really wanted to replace them
(even though they had lots of tread). However, before I replaced them, I
traded off the trick (for other reasons).

Ed

 

The cost of transportation is, all things considered, negligible. The
ships that carry the raw materials China has developed such a ravenous
appetite for would be coming here tires or no tires.

The shipping container industry is going crazy because of this. The
containers come over full of goods, the boats go back with bulk raw
materials that do not require containers. The cost so ship the empty
containers back is almost the same as the cost for China to produce a
new container, so the containers are sold off CHEAP over here, or
destroyed and returned as scrap metal to china.
Yes, and being a "centralized" economy, the vast reserves of american
and canadian dollars do not go into raising the living standards of
the workers so much as into government coffers. The government
controls (not nearly as much as they would like to) the earnings and
spending of the Chinese masses.

If they were to decide they had a point to make to the west, they
could, with present reserves, stop selling ANYTHING to the west for
long enough to bring the west to their knees, while continuing to pay
all idled chinese workers the same as they are being paid today, and
still have money left over.( Hint - it wouldn't take long)

 

The fine print on the coupon page says "cannot be combined with any other
offer" on both the $50 off coupon and the 5% off tires. I think that
depending
on who you talk to at the Firestone dealer, you might get both combined,
espically if you have a price match (and Costco is running a $60 off coupon
for the following week) Firestone is pretty flexible on discounts - the
company website for example says they will price match on any 'similar'
tire - the tire doesen't have to be identical. I'm not sure how the company
is structured internally but it seems like the store managers seem to have
a lot of control over pricing. Frankly if I owned a tire dealership I
would tell all of the counter employees that if an extra 5% off would
clue a deal for a customer, then by all means do it. Even if my margin was
only 5% and that would sell them at cost - the volume is quite often
pretty important in getting the attention of the suppliers further up the
chain, not to mention it helps starve your competitors.

However, on the same coupon circular, is yet another special - 10% off
on any -service- purchase. So, you could argue that the coupon for the $50
off applied to the -tire- purchase, and the 10% off applied to the -work
to install the tire- ie: valve stems, balancing, etc.... I might try
that...

Ted

 

I ran across this trick on my father's 80286 clone AT system back
in the late 80's. He had a 20MB disk in
his computer and me being young and interested in DOS, one day
I copied his data files to floppies and ran fdisk to go through the
motions of installing DOS, just to see how it was done. I was very
surprised to see fdisk reporting the disk as having 40MB. When I
pulled the cover and looked up the info for the disk, it was indeed
a 40MB disk drive. The dealership that had sold him the computer
had fdisked the disk up as a 20MB disk.

Ted

 

The small fraction of the less then one percent of the earths total water
that you just listed is so tiny as to be INSIGNIFICANT!

Yet you could not resist chiming in???

 

Consumed??? Wrong!!!

con·sume : to destroy or expend by use; use up.

It is water "before" being used, and it is still water after being used, at
most, it has been moved, but certainly not consumed...

Besides, in many areas of the world including in the USA, humans can and do
DRINK rain water.

http://www.auerhaus.org/systems/rainwater.htm

 

Tire Rack's price for the Pirelli's you mentioned is $73.92 including
shipping.

The local Les Schwab will order these, but I probably would not go to them
for them. The dealer in the area that actually carries any stock of Pirelli
at
all is Americas Tire/ Discount Tire. They aren't that close to me or my
work,
although they are a long established dealership and I did in fact buy a set
of
tires from them about 17 years ago.

As for pricing - the Pirelli P4 Four Season tire I need is available from
them,
and they stock it, their website lists it as $90. That is comparable to the
other
80K mileage tires as for price range. Discount Tires road hazard warranty
is
actually a fairly good one compared to many dealers - 3 year free
replacement,
or tire mileage wearout, whichever comes first.

Now, you can go to discounttiredirect.com and find the same tire for $77
plus
$3 per tire for vale stem. Of course, if I try price matching to either of
the websites at the dealership, the dealer can simply say that the free
lifetime
balancing & free valvestems are only available on tires purchased from the
dealer.
Which would put it back at the $90 per tire price.

Actually you can't really buy a more expensive tire for my minivan than
about $100 per tire. Nobody makes the more expensive "performance"
tire in the size that's required.

Ted

 

You neatly skipped the first definition:
"To take in as food; eat or drink up."

After "consumption" by a mammal, water is excreted, but is combined with
salts, sugars, acids, and proteins. It is then no longer fit for human
consumption. You can't drink urine, at least not for long, without
destroying your kidneys.

The separation of the water from the other components in urine requires
a large input of energy, for either filtration by reverse osmosis, or
distillation.

When used for irrigation, most of it is transported away by evaporation;
the remainder typically becomes contaminated by agricultural chemicals.

So, after the initial "use" of "fresh" water, it isn't fresh anymore.

Water does not return to the acquifer as fast as it is being pumped out.
Acquifer levels in the USA and elsewhere ARE dropping; they WILL go dry
if current withdrawal rates continue.

Of course they do. And thanks to rapid and widespread
industrialization, they are also drinking carbonic, sulphuric, and
nitric acid, along with copper, radionucleides, pesticides, arsenic,
lead, and coliform bacteria.

Sorry, this is one guy's blog on building a home and capturing
rainwater; he is wrong in his first statement that rainwater is
"naturally clean".

Better sources of information:

Quantitative microbial risk assessment with respect to Campylobacter
spp. in toilets flushed with harvested rainwater
Water and Environment Journal 21 (4), 275?280.
doi:10.1111/j.1747-6593.2007.00088.x

Trace element contamination of rain water in the semi-arid region of
Kano, Nigeria
Author(s): J.T. Ayodele, M.B. Abubakar
Environmental Management and Health
ISSN: 0956-6163
Year: 1998 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Page: 176 - 181
DOI: 10.1108/09566169810229006
Publisher: MCB UP Ltd

Organochlorine pesticides in rainwater, Oahu, Hawaii, 1971?1972
Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology
ISSN 0007-4861 (Print) 1432-0800 (Online)
Issue Volume 8, Number 4 / October, 1972
DOI 10.1007/BF01839519
Pages 238-241

--Gene

 

Early versions of MS-DOS 2.x and 3.x could only address IIRC 24MB of
hard drive, and yet hard drives had already passed that point - so
rather than pay extra for a real 20MB drive, they installed a 40MB for
less and only formatted it to the 20MB the computer could address.
When I got our old XT up to MS-Dos 6.22 I reformatted and had the
whole 40MB.

--<< Bruce >>--

 

You neatly skipped the first definition:
"To take in as food; eat or drink up."


NO I DID NOT!

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
con·sume /k?n'sum/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled
Pronunciation[kuhn-soom] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
verb, -sumed, -sum·ing.
-verb (used with object)
1. to destroy or expend by use; use up.


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Consume



However water is used, on this planet, it is almost NEVER consumed.

After "consumption" by a mammal, water is excreted, but is combined with
salts, sugars, acids, and proteins. It is then no longer fit for human
consumption. You can't drink urine, at least not for long, without
destroying your kidneys.

The separation of the water from the other components in urine requires
a large input of energy, for either filtration by reverse osmosis, or
distillation.

OR, simple natural evaporation and then again RAIN.


When used for irrigation, most of it is transported away by evaporation;
the remainder typically becomes contaminated by agricultural chemicals.

So, after the initial "use" of "fresh" water, it isn't fresh anymore.

It damn sure is after it returns from a state of vapor back into
(technically) distilled hence FRESH water...

So you don't start making stories up about simple definitions.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
dis·til·la·tion /?d?stl'e???n/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled
Pronunciation[dis-tl-ey-shuhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
-noun 1. the volatilization or evaporation and subsequent condensation of a
liquid,




Water does not return to the acquifer as fast as it is being pumped out.
Acquifer levels in the USA and elsewhere ARE dropping; they WILL go dry
if current withdrawal rates continue.

NEVER addressed or argued that point, and it still is irrelevant to your
silly position that all the "fresh" water on the planet is being consumed...
Hogwash!

Of course they do. And thanks to rapid and widespread
industrialization, they are also drinking carbonic, sulphuric, and
nitric acid, along with copper, radionucleides, pesticides, arsenic,
lead, and coliform bacteria.

Sorry, this is one guy's blog on building a home and capturing
rainwater; he is wrong in his first statement that rainwater is
"naturally clean".


Sorry you are wrong, he IS drinking it!


Better sources of information:

Where is the link???

Quantitative microbial risk assessment with respect to Campylobacter
spp. in toilets flushed with harvested rainwater
Water and Environment Journal 21 (4), 275?280.
doi:10.1111/j.1747-6593.2007.00088.x

Trace element contamination of rain water in the semi-arid region of
Kano, Nigeria
Author(s): J.T. Ayodele, M.B. Abubakar
Environmental Management and Health
ISSN: 0956-6163
Year: 1998 Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Page: 176 - 181
DOI: 10.1108/09566169810229006
Publisher: MCB UP Ltd

Organochlorine pesticides in rainwater, Oahu, Hawaii, 1971?1972
Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology
ISSN 0007-4861 (Print) 1432-0800 (Online)
Issue Volume 8, Number 4 / October, 1972
DOI 10.1007/BF01839519
Pages 238-241


--Gene

 

DOS 2.0 released March 1983 supported hard disks

DOS 3.0, released August 1984, supported 32MB partitions

Compaq DOS 3.31 supported larger than 32MB partitions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS

The 80286 was released Feb 1982 Originally mostly going to IBM, clones
using this CPU were widely available by 1984 (the '386 was released in '86)

Nice try. ;-) Unsupported by the timeline. In any case, my father's system
shipped with DOS 4.01 on it. Remember, as I said, I fdisked and reformatted
with the DOS that was on the hard disk, I didn't say anything about buying
new DOS.

I did actually buy a copy of DOS 3.3 a few years later, for an XT that I
built from
parts. This was in 1988-1989. I bought a new XT motherboard for it rather
than a new 286 board for it because at the time, the XT board was cheaper,
and ran all of the software I had that the 286 system would run. I bought
the DOS 3.3 rather than pirate 4.01 from my fathers system because
command.com
was smaller, and I didn't know anyone with a copy of DOS 3.3

Amazing to think that all happened 20 years ago. Today, the only thing I
have
left from that setup is the table that I used to hold that computer gear,
all of the
gear itself has long since gone to the great computer junkyard in the sky.

And the worst of all - I also own a chevy station wagon that was
manufactured
5 years -before- any of that computer gear, and still runs, still is
compatible
with the streets and highways and fuel, and still would have resale value if
I
were to put it on the market.

There is a lesson somewhere there I think ;-)

Ted

 

My Name Is Nobody wrote:

I think the discussion on the word consumed is semantics. I have no
trouble using the word 'consumed' to describe someone pumping water out
of the ground and drinking it or whatever. But for someone to take
further liberties and say that simply because the word 'consumed' is
used to describe that, that it further means that it is forever no
longer available is dishonest. These are the same people arguing
global warming with their faked science and justifying Al Gore using 20
times more energy than the average household with the carbon credits
economy. It's called dishonesty and fraud.

That too will evaporate and return as rain.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

Yet, after one consumes the water in beer, people don't think of the
resulting stream something to be consumed again, although it has been
used to water many a tree and bush.

Yes, it is still water, but it is no longer potable water, but rather it
is wastewater. In theory, it is still usable, but in practice, it is
rarely recycled before landing in an ocean or evaporating. For all
practicable purposes, freshwater is limited resource than can only be
increased through conservation (essentially allowing the rainwater to
accumulate in the water table, marshes, etc.) or through expensive
processing of either wastewater or seawater.

More importantly, usable fresh water is natural resource that is
becoming scarce in many areas because people are using so much of it for
silly things, like using 5 gallons of fresh water to flush down 8 oz of
urine (as opposed to a 1.6 flush toilet or better yet, following the if
it is yellow, let it mellow, it's brown flush it down rule and following
with a 1.6 gallon flush rather than a 5 gallon flush)> The water table
has fallen in many areas of the US and other areas of the world because
humans use up so much water. In addition, human divert a lot of water
with damns and waterways, drain marshes like the Florida Everglades and
do other things with use up the freshwater.

Jeff

 

George Bush? George W. Bush has accepted that global warming is real for
years. However, I don't think that buying offsets (which is different
than carbon credits) makes up for putting all the CO2 in the atmosphere.

One of the reasons why Gore has such high energy bills is that he has a
staff working in his home. However, that still doesn't explain why his
home uses so much more power than Bush's home in Texas (Bush's home is
much more energy efficient).

Yet it won't return to the same spot it was used. Most rain falls in the
ocean. It is not a question of how much water is on earth, but rather
how much fresh water is available to humans where the humans are.

Jeff

 

Actually, the computer, with all the lead in it, has gone either to a
junkyard or possibly a recycling center. The only country that exports
its electronic waste is the US. This electronic waste may be the source
of lead in the paint on toys made in China from recycling the
contaminated plastic on the computer boards.

Your old 8088 computer (the XT) can access the internet (using Lynx - a
text based web browser) and be used as a server. There are, however,
much better options, like the 80186-based handheld and
one-laptop-per-child computer I have.

The old XT can also go to a museum.

Jeff

 

I disagree.

You can drink your own urine or the urine of someone else. It is
contaminated on the way our of the body in the urethra, but while in the
bladder, ureters and kidneys, it is sterile, unless there is an infection.

If you drink your urine, the stuff in the urine will further
metabolized, excreted again by the kidneys or pooped. Your kidneys won't
be harmed.

Personally, I figure my body expends a lot of energy to filter my blood
and make my urine. I don't want it back.

If God wanted us to drink our urine, there would be a straw from the
bladder to the mouth (actually, Bill Clinton did describe such a straw,
but it wasn't used for drinking urine).

The current withdrawal rates won't continue in these areas. There won't
be anything left to withdraw.

Jeff

 

Then there was the MFM vs RLL situation. A 30MB MFM drive could often
be used withan RLL drive controller and get 30MB. a 30MB RLL could
ALWAYS be installed as a 20MB on an MFM controller. Then there werer
sector size settings that could be changed too that affected useable
capacity.

 

The correct word is "DEPLETED"
The Aquifers ARE being depleted faster than they are recharged. The
fresh water ends up diluting the salt water untill it evaporates
(slower from salt than fresh water bodies) and falls again as rain
(which with changing weather patterns means the water might NEVER
return to where it was originally extracted from the aquifer, and the
aquifer may NEVER be recharged.

It IS a SERIOUS issue. No Chicken Little involved.