'until now we are into the second week of April, 1999.'
'7. Picking Up Your Order At Walton Feed: For a while this was a solution to long shipping delays. About the
middle of June the number of people requesting a local pickup dramatically increased. To prevent a bottleneck, we
started filling slots, only permitting about 10,000 lb. a day to be picked up locally. These slots have quickly filled up
until now we are into the second week of April, 1999.'
...
11. What we are doing about the backlog. We started taking orders for Y2K in March of 1997. The pace has
slowly increased from that time. Each new month has brought a new increase in orders. The food storage industry
here in the U.S. has never been as busy as it is now. Talking with many people in the industry, everyone is swamped
over this Y2K thing, adding production lines and work shifts. This includes the companies that pack the traditional
food storage items such as ourselves, the freeze-dry companies, and the MRE companies. Here at Walton Feed we
have more than doubled our personnel, more than doubled our floor space, and have added new packing lines. Our
output has increased several times but it hasn't been enough take care of the increased demand for the orders that are
coming in. I'm often told, "Well, hire more people, build even more buildings." We have been at least a little cautious
about how much expanding we do as we know that in 15 months from now this boom cycle in the food storage
business will turn into a real bust. We are going to survive Y2K and are being as wise as we can with our long term
planning. We are presently driving our facility as fast as it can go. Hiring more people wouldn't make it run any faster.
We are also in the process of building a new, large building and add two more canning lines and another bucket line.
But it will take some time to turn this into reality. When this happens we figure we will have doubled production yet
again.
...
waltonfeed.com |
