And why I love this company. Got this email from RMR (Rocky Mountain Reloading) just now. Gives a little insight into what's going on in the industry but also gives insight into the character of the owner.
We are getting our butt's kicked!
You may have noticed that we took down most of the listings for the in-house products. Don't worry! We are not permanently discontinuing them. We are just trying to give ourselves some time to catch up in production. Basically, you guys were ordering more per day than what we could produce. Also, there is a copper shortage in the US right now that kept us from getting enough strip to fill all of the orders that we had. We've ordered more than enough copper to fill all the orders but the mills are delaying shipment because of the huge increase in demand. Part of why we charge for orders up front is so I can order the copper strip that we will need to fill all the orders. If you have been following the price of copper lately you will see that it has been crazy and steadily increasing every week until now.
We are not the kind of company that takes backorders and then cancels them on people because the product went up in price on our end. So, the in-house products that are not on the website anymore are because we needed to conserve the copper that we do have for the products that we have sold the most of. And we were kicking-butt up until a couple weeks ago when our main lead core guy broke his finger and had to get it pinned. That took away one of our bullet machine operators so that he could work on the lead core machines. Then the guy who took over the lead core machines had to take a week off to have a baby! Well, he didn't have the baby, but you get the idea.
Anyway, we've been hit with a few setbacks, but we are doing our best to get things moving. Our packaging team is overworked and wearing out but they promise me that they are doing okay and enjoying the overtime. They just wanted me to ask you guys to allow a little more time for the in-stock orders to ship out. We needed to change the in-stock orders from 3-5 weeks out to 6-8 weeks. Will all the orders take that long to ship? Probably not. But will it help if you give us a full 6-8 weeks to fill all the orders?
YES! To give you guys an idea on how many bullets we have shipped, so far for 2021 our crew of 5 packagers have shipped out 156 pallets via USPS. With an average of about 100k bullets per pallet thats over 15 million bullets so far this year. That doesn't even include the orders that shipped via freight lines. That's JUST USPS flat rate boxes. I can't tell you how proud of them I am. Everyone has been constantly hitting above their weight and they're all amazing employees. They work so hard that at this point I feel our customers should cry when they open our boxes because the amount of love and dedication that hits them in the face is just so overwhelming.
I can truly say we love what we do. We've not had much of a break since this time last year, but somehow we keep going. I think if it wasn't for our customers and how they make us all feel, most people wouldn't have stuck it out this long. All that being said, at some point we were going to break if we didn't slow down. We've got employees that can't grip things well anymore and others taking several trips to the chiropractor. So, in their interest I took some bullets off the website and I extended the shipping times for in-stock orders.
We may also have to extend the wait time on the in-house orders to give our guys enough time to get back to work and at full production again, but we will have to see. Anyway, just know that we are doing our best to get orders out as fast as possible so please be patient with us.
We are getting our butt's kicked!
You may have noticed that we took down most of the listings for the in-house products. Don't worry! We are not permanently discontinuing them. We are just trying to give ourselves some time to catch up in production. Basically, you guys were ordering more per day than what we could produce. Also, there is a copper shortage in the US right now that kept us from getting enough strip to fill all of the orders that we had. We've ordered more than enough copper to fill all the orders but the mills are delaying shipment because of the huge increase in demand. Part of why we charge for orders up front is so I can order the copper strip that we will need to fill all the orders. If you have been following the price of copper lately you will see that it has been crazy and steadily increasing every week until now.
We are not the kind of company that takes backorders and then cancels them on people because the product went up in price on our end. So, the in-house products that are not on the website anymore are because we needed to conserve the copper that we do have for the products that we have sold the most of. And we were kicking-butt up until a couple weeks ago when our main lead core guy broke his finger and had to get it pinned. That took away one of our bullet machine operators so that he could work on the lead core machines. Then the guy who took over the lead core machines had to take a week off to have a baby! Well, he didn't have the baby, but you get the idea.
Anyway, we've been hit with a few setbacks, but we are doing our best to get things moving. Our packaging team is overworked and wearing out but they promise me that they are doing okay and enjoying the overtime. They just wanted me to ask you guys to allow a little more time for the in-stock orders to ship out. We needed to change the in-stock orders from 3-5 weeks out to 6-8 weeks. Will all the orders take that long to ship? Probably not. But will it help if you give us a full 6-8 weeks to fill all the orders?
YES! To give you guys an idea on how many bullets we have shipped, so far for 2021 our crew of 5 packagers have shipped out 156 pallets via USPS. With an average of about 100k bullets per pallet thats over 15 million bullets so far this year. That doesn't even include the orders that shipped via freight lines. That's JUST USPS flat rate boxes. I can't tell you how proud of them I am. Everyone has been constantly hitting above their weight and they're all amazing employees. They work so hard that at this point I feel our customers should cry when they open our boxes because the amount of love and dedication that hits them in the face is just so overwhelming.
I can truly say we love what we do. We've not had much of a break since this time last year, but somehow we keep going. I think if it wasn't for our customers and how they make us all feel, most people wouldn't have stuck it out this long. All that being said, at some point we were going to break if we didn't slow down. We've got employees that can't grip things well anymore and others taking several trips to the chiropractor. So, in their interest I took some bullets off the website and I extended the shipping times for in-stock orders.
We may also have to extend the wait time on the in-house orders to give our guys enough time to get back to work and at full production again, but we will have to see. Anyway, just know that we are doing our best to get orders out as fast as possible so please be patient with us.
