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Corbin Manufacturing & Supply, Inc.
PO Box 2659
White City, OR 97503 USA
Phone 9am-5pm Mon-Thurs: 541-826-5211
Fax 24-hrs: 541-826-8669
E-mail: sales@corbins.com
Orders are filled in the sequence they are entered (final details specified and order confirmed). Those items which are not in stock are entered into the production system while the die-makers work through the pending orders to get to a particular item. Each person waiting for products to be hand made and tested by our die-makers is assured that his place in the queue will only be improved, never made worse, by our constant review and re-scheduling of work. We group orders periodically based on this:
- The oldest paid order in our list gets top priority. We run the bank card or ask for payment just prior to making the components that are not standard catalog shapes or sizes. Custom or overtime items are always prepaid before we make them. If payment is not made before we have time to build them, then their position on the list is replaced by the next order in line, until the payment is received, at which point the order becomes the "oldest paid" and is built and shipped.
- When we start a standard design order, we search the list and find all similar items which could be efficiently made at the same time, using the same tooling and manpower. Whenever possible, we save time by making the matching items on later orders while we are set up to do the oldest order. Sometimes this is just is one die, one punch, or some combination of the items that would be efficient to make while we have the material loaded, the machinery set up, and the personnel already doing an identical but earlier job.
- We have never known how to predict when a given order in the queue of pending jobs will be finished. We may have anywhere from 300 to 600 pending jobs at any given moment. Each day, some orders are finished and shipped from the top of the queue, and new ones are entered at the bottom of the queue, so the number and type constantly changes. Also, some people change their orders, and this changes the sequencing in some cases. Some orders are for a single punch or die. Others may be ten pages of tooling. There is no way to predict what will come in from hour to hour, or how long it will take to work through the older jobs to get to the last order placed.
- Everyone wants to know about how long their order will take. The items ordered, or some of them at least, may be "on the shelf" already. Or they might be just about to be completed for the oldest order, plus all those that match it (grouping similar work saves a lot of time). If you order that particular die set, you are in luck! It may ship in a few days.
- If you order something we don't have "on the shelf" at the moment, or a size, shape and caliber without older jobs with which we can group yours, it could be 24 months or longer before we finish the older work and are able to complete your last die (often we will have some items, components, other calibers you order at the same time, etc., so some of your order may be ready long before the rest).
- If you can't wait, don't order. It may be in stock, or about to be built, and if so, everyone is happy and we can ship very soon. But if not, there is only one way to promise a specific delivery date: rush overtime.
Conditions of sale:
- Delivery cannot be guaranteed by any certain date nor within any specific time period: make no contracts or deals with third parties based on a timely delivery of your order. Nearly everyone believes their order is a matter of greatest urgency, including all the people who ordered before today and have been waiting days, weeks or months. If you were one of these people, you would not want us to put anyone who ordered later ahead of your work. Don't ask us to put your order ahead of them. Everything is processed in sequence based on the time the order was paid and recorded here, and not changed significantly in the meanwhile (changes can mean starting over, as of the date of the change). However, if you wish to have overtime work, and if we have diemakers available in the next 45 days (sometimes all overtime is sold out) then this gives you an option for fast delivery, sometimes within 10 days but typically within 45 days. Overtime work costs 2x the price for unspecified delivery time.
- Custom items are those which we do not usually stock. They are items which require individual construction to your specifications. We are glad to make custom items. Just be aware that by definition they are not on the shelf except by the rarest of circumstances. Therefore, you probably should plan on the longest delivery time, because if you do, you will be pleasantly surprised if we are able to deliver sooner. That is so much nicer than being angry because you thought it could be delivered immediately and it takes months to work through all the previous pending jobs and get to yours. Please remember that custom work or overtime work must be prepaid.
- Changes in pending orders may slow delivery time. If you placed an order for a die set, and every few days you call to make little changes in the design, we have to start from scratch, not only just changing the order as it is stored in our computer, but all the trails of paperwork that flow from that to the various die-makers and machinists who might be working on parts of it the whole time it is pending. The greatest part of the time involved in making a die set is the planning and setup time, not the actual production work, in most cases. The more changes that are made to a design, the greater the chance of mistakes due to some portion of the paperwork not being retrieved and updated: try to decide what you want for a bullet design prior to placing the order! (Adding other dies or features doesn't slow down the delivery of the items already orders: only changing specifications that would make it necessary to modify the plans for the tools being made or already partly finished would delay production.)
OVERTIME RUSH
Corbin's work hours are from 7am to 6pm, Monday through Thursday. (The office is open from 9am to 5pm). We may have available overtime hours that are not sold out, during any given weekend. If we do, and you need your items made in 45 days or less, we can ask one or more die-makers to give up their weekend, in exchange for overtime pay, and make your dies on the first available weekend after you let us know. We cannot force anyone to work overtime: typically, someone will agree to do so, but it is not in any way guaranteed to be available. If it is, you can have any dies on your order expedited to OVERTIME RUSH basis. Here are the conditions for OVERTIME RUSH:
- Tell us which items are to be expedited before Thursday of the week you want us to start planning for OT work. There is NO OPPORTUNITY to expedite any items after Thursday of a given week, since we are closed and the die-makers may not be reachable. Your order can be placed initially this way, or upgraded to OVERTIME RUSH at any point during the pending period (assuming time is available on a given weekend).
- The price of OVERTIME RUSH jobs is twice the standard schedule price. This is because we must pay 1.5 times regular wages plus the extra taxes, benefits, insurance, workers comp, and the overhead for running the plant for the additional days when it is normally closed. We do not make "twice as much": we make the same as if you pay regular rate. Our die-makers, who give up their weekends for you, are compensated more for doing so. And the various tax agencies get their share, too.
- Only those items which must be made on overtime are charged at this rate. If you ordered a press and dies, and we have the press in stock, only the dies are charged at OVERTIME RUSH rate.
- Only items which are made individually, such as dies and punches or custom tools, can be built on overtime. Presses, most standard tools and components or supplies are usually in stock. If they are NOT in stock, then there is no practical way to make just one for a specific order. Presses for example can only be built affordably if the work is done in groups: a large run of rams is built at one time, a huge quantity of links machined, finished, and fitted with roller bearings, a massive group of frames, heads, levers, toggles, and so forth must be built in order to have economy of scale. The cost of building one hand press, individually, as compared to building a run of 100 of them in a series of component and processing stages, would be astronomical. Therefore, if we are out of stock for a hand press, it isn't practical to make just one on overtime. Dies and power presses are always built individually or in small lots regardless, so it isn't a problem to make one for you using weekend labor, which doesn't slow down any "regular time" jobs that came in first. The Hydro-Press, for instance, is usually built in 1-2 weeks, two at a time, so it doesn't make sense to order overtime for this item: overtime wouldn't be any faster than regular time. But a set of dies? Yes, overtime work makes sense in that case.
- We CANNOT guarantee that we will have time to do any given order on OVERTIME RUSH basis, because this is a popular option and sometimes the available time on any given weekend is SOLD OUT. We will be able to tell you right away if this is the case. If the time is available and we accept the order on this basis, we will TRY to finish on the first available weekend, but we cannot guarantee this. We can guarantee any accepted OVERTIME RUSH jobs to be delivered within 45 days. Typically it will be within 10-14 days, sometimes by the next Monday. But do not demand or expect this: it may or may not be physically possible. There are only so many hours in a weekend.
- OVERTIME RUSH jobs are charged before the work is started. The reason is that our die-makers do not wish to give up their weekends with their families and then find that someone changed their mind, decided it was too expensive, or for some other reason decided not to pay for their work. We don't normally charge in advance except (1) for custom items, and (2) for overtime rush jobs. If we don't have pre-payment or a valid bank card on which to charge the work, then we cannot schedule the job as OVERTIME RUSH. If you tell us to do the work on Overtime Rush basis, and your bank card is declined, overtime can't be scheduled until we can reach you again and secure payment. If we build an item on regular time and the client "disappears" without paying for it, we just sell it at regular price to the next person on the list. But if we build an item on overtime, we've put twice the labor and overhead cost into making it, and maybe the next person on the list doesn't wish to pay overtime for it! A company would be out of business soon if they had to sell products for half what they cost to make. That's why overtime work is always prepaid.
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