I landed in Richmond last night after my flight back home from the west coast and was standing outside the terminal having a smoke while waiting for the baggage claim belt to start disgorging bags. There was a manhole cover stamped "Made in India", and it occurred to me that I've seen a whole lot of manhole covers lately made there. So this morning I searched Google images for "manhole covers made in india" and for some reason, there are scads of pictures there from various places in the US with Indian-made manhole covers. That's where I grabbed the picture above.
Are Indians really making making cast iron products so cheap that it's worth the shipping costs of importing them? I mean, we're not talking marshmallows here...cast iron is pretty damned heavy. I guess it's another thing we can thank the unions for.
2 comments:
I think I can understand why the Indians have so much scrap metal that they make manhole covers now:
http://www.uss-bennington.org/shipbreakers/shipbreakers-1.html
Back in 2002 I saw a manhole cover outside of Hartford Hospital. It read that it was made from confiscated guns. Not just any, but it was YOUR confiscated guns. ?!? I've never owned a gun, let alone had one confiscated. What could account for such arrogance? A Clinton era art project:
http://www.artsusa.org/animatingdemocracy/labs/lab_054.asp
Finally - when I was in Rome I noticed that on their manhole covers they had an old acronym: SPQR. And when I saw that I knew exactly where I was.
Indian companies reprocess slag. American companies can't do that due to EPA regs.
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