My latest Ballard project

[marlinman93]

Sad. You can no longer visit the Kingston, NY facility to buy stuff. I was there about 15-20 years ago and the place looked disorganized. Now they only sell online.

That is sad. Wonder why they would want to stop people from buying at their business?

[xtriggerman]

The short answer is George became very suspicious of people ripping him off. It all started with an old buddy of his that he put in control of the retail store that was on the front of the shipping warehouse. This guy Bill (heavy mustash n glasses) did everything associated with the retail part up front. I bought my first two handguns from him in that store. Some time in the early 90's ? they found out Bill was skimming money out of sales with second sale receipts. But since he was an old bud, George just fired him with no police action. After a number of years, George hired him back in a very limited capacity as the retail parts clerk in the ware house on the left side of the drive in lane. He was alone to sell parts only and would call or walk down to the shipping warehouse to get the drive in customer parts. Last time I saw him he was still there back in about 2010 or so. Bill all ways treated me good with bringing up a selection of the parts I needed to pick out the best they had. I moved out of NY in 2014 and all my buds down their either died or were fired for stealing. George was too cheap to computerize his inventory. I listened in to a guy trying to sell him an inventory system once on microfitch computing. After the guy got done telling him all the wonderfull benifits of this new system, George took his glasses down and let them hang around his neck by a string, looked the guy straight in the eye and said, "Now that you told me what this WILL do, what doesnt it do!? Not a word about what it wont do"!. Then turned and walked out the front door of Auto Ordnance leaving the salesman there with his mouth open. This took place right in front of my assembly desk as I sat there not making a sound. And you wonder why everyone and their mother was stealing stuff. One of my assembly guys took parts and years latter shown me 2 semi Tommies he put together from seconds parts....Complete working ones. The only time we built stuff out of the seconds room was for filling the Historical Society guns. I questioned this practice from the house manager and he said, "Hell, those buyers dont buy them to shoot them"! Fred Nickols..... another penny pincher worthy of the Numrich administrative gang. Once this guy made me fill a 200 gun 1911 order for South Aftrica. Problem was, ol Billy Playford buggared up the 200 barrels by not leaving enough bore for lands. They had lines where lands were supposed to be. Key hole specials. I was surprised it took about 4 months before I was told to go get 200 Colt barrels from the Warehouse and get them to shipping as replacements. Like I said, we were on junk casing barrels that eventually made me quit my position there. It was impossible to get them to feed the smaller cartridges since the chamber face had rounded edges that in no way could mate to the frame feed ramp. It left a big groove between the 2 ramp surfaces..... pretty 101. So I took it up with Fred and he tells me "So when you go test fire the guns, only use 5 rounds in the mag instead of a full one, That way you can say it fed when it left here." Yeah, this was the atmosphere I was in. I quit the day Fred tried to ream me out for all THOSE guns coming back for impossible return repairs. Thats what happens when you got AH's running a gun manufacturing shop with little more mechanical know how on the difference between a phillips and flat head screw driver. I did get the last laugh in tho. Freds Desk was next to Steven Trast's desk who was Ira Trast's son. Ira was the President of AO. With Steve listening in on my after reaming beat down, I gave Fred my 2 week notice and I told fred that I wasnt going to take a hit for his misdirected sales approaches. So if you dont want me to go to Guns & ammo with how you guys run this place, I want a nice letter of recommendation or else. The look on Freds face was priceless cuz I knew stevy boy was going to run to dad and spill the beans on Freds BS. Needless to say, I got one hell of a letter and Freds begging me to stay was my happy ending. Sorry about the ramble..... I guess it still ticks me off thinking about that form of management all these years latter.