Sweet Home Alabama
Posted on | May 23, 2007 | 1 Comment
An old, and favorite saying among Alabamians is “Thank God for Mississippi”. Look at just about any published list, and I do mean any published list and you will find Mississippi is number fifty and Alabama is number forty-nine. There are lists for education, health, income, mortality and such. Glance at the bottom of the list to find us!
I haven’t bothered to look at any of those lists in the last couple of years. I’ve really lost interest in where Alabama ranks among others. I really love my home state and my home town and I become more appreciative of it as time moves on.
I said I haven’t bothered to look at a list lately but I did happen to see a list the other day in a magazine. It was a ranking of the combined city and state taxes the average citizen pays in the fifty states. I think Alabama was number thirty-three. Thank God for New York – ouch!
I will have to say that a lot has changed in Mississippi in the last couple of years. I have noticed that their roads have less litter and pot-holes. There was lots of construction even before the hurricanes. A lot has changed in Mississippi and it looks like it may be Alabama’s turn.
Several months back, an investor group led by Dale Earnhardt Jr., announced plans for a motorsports and entertainment park about twelve miles north of us. Thousands of acres of land are to be developed for the project and it will create thousands of jobs and eventually hundreds of support businesses.
West of Mobile Bay and along the Mobile River, we have a just finished 745-foot-tall tower, called the RSA Tower. It took more than four years to design and build, cost $200 million and supplied hundreds and hundreds of jobs. It has brought many new businesses into Mobile.
ThyssenKrupp AG recently announced they have selected Mobile, Ala., as the next North American site for their German steel mill company. It will be located about thirty-five miles north of us and the numbers used talking about it are almost beyond my comprehension. Three point seven billion dollars construction cost, twenty-seven thousand construction workers to build it and twenty-seven hundred permanent jobs when completed.
Just last night, while having supper with a few friends, one of them said they have so much work at a local ship repair facility that they cannot find enough workers. They are bringing in two hundred workers from outside the U.S.
So why am I bragging so much? It’s not really bragging; wait, yes it is, but – it’s about opportunities. While all of this big stuff has been going on, there have been dozens of new sub-divisions created with thousands of homes. There have been hundreds of muffler shops, printing companies, retail stores, shipping companies and lord knows what else pop-up in my area.  All of this activity creates mortgages, re-financing, insurance needs, etc. There’s a lot to do!
I may never get the opportunity to talk with anyone at the RSA Tower, the ThyssenKrupp AG steel plant, or the marine repair and shipbuilding company, but you can bet that I’ve already been talking to the muffler shops and the shipping companies. Three or four of them a week find themselves on my route. Most of them still have no idea what I do, but with time they will, and when they need my services they should be able to contact me; especially after I have left a card every time I visit.
One of the really big national field service companies used to send us about eighteen hundred jobs a month. About a year or so ago, that number dropped a lot. Wonder why? We had 993 jobs from them in January of 2006. We had 371 jobs from them in April of 2007. Whoa! What’s happened? Well, there are several possibilities none of which matter – the companies send what they send. Yes, it hurts but we are replacing some of the lost numbers with small numbers of jobs from lots of smaller companies. It takes time, but it is happening.
Do not put all of your eggs in one basket – you’ve heard it before. Stand on your own two feet – you’ve heard it before. Do not let any one or two companies dictate the growth and direction of your field services company. Stop at the muffler shops and figure out why I have put the RepReportsâ„¢ at www.TheRepReport.com.
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August 15th, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
I know the company ThyssenKrupp. My son works for them. They are an awesome company and have treated him with dignity and respect at every turn.
How is field inspections related to selling elevators? Teri