|
Don't panic! I'm not pulling the plug, just trying to find someone to carry on the legacy. Someone who can run it better than I can.
We've had some health issues at the McCornack household, I'm getting older, and my wife is...she's even more mature than I am. She's been in and out of the hospital a couple times this year, and needing considerable bed rest, and I think she did it just to prove how essential she is, because I've had to chose between making my own oatmeal and getting orders out on time. I should have picked out one of those striking young women you see in the magazines as my bride instead, but she was one of those when I met her, so go figure.
On the bright side, my own health has been great. Recently I had my annual Wellness Checkup, and my doctor told me I'm in terrific shape for a 90-year-old man, which isn't as flattering as it sounds because I'm only seventy five (thadub – thank you, thank you, you've been a great audience). But seriously, I'm 75, and my doctor has been bugging me about writing up an advance directive, and things fall apart.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago one of my eyes blew up; my right eye, no less, which has always been my favorite. I was in the middle of my monthly 320-mile-round-trip drive to my latest fiberglass supplier and something ruptured inside my eyeball and started pouring blood into it. Totally painless, and it sounds much grosser than it is, but when these red blood cells drift into focus they become 'floaters' and I currently have around 150,000 of them (no, I didn't count them all, I measured a fraction of my field of view, 1/80 wide and 1/80 high, counted inside that, and multiplied by 6400) plus they clump together and now there's big nasty wads of them blocking my vision, and that eye doesn't focus right any more either. My opthamologist (a good guy, he did my previously mentioned spouse's cataract surgeries not long ago, which involved me making even more of my own oatmeal) saw me the next day, said he was in over his head on this one, and sent me to a retinologist, who will see me next year.
Hey, that'll be January third, which isn't deep into next year, but still. I miss binocular vision, I miss my knees, I miss typing without my wrist making noise, I miss being able to put on trousers while I'm standing up...everything takes longer and is harder to do, I'm not doing any more R&D, I haven't driven MAX once in 2023, and it's time for somebody else to take the reins. Shipments are going out in the order they're ordered, which will continue, but it's more workload than suits my golden years.
So Kinetic Vehicles is for sale. It won't cost you a bundle, all the tools are amortized, the main thing is, the business needs a good home. Locost builders have relied on Kinetic Vehicles for decades, and should be able to continue doing so. I'm not going to sell it to someone who is going to break it up and sell the parts (I made that mistake with Pterodactyl, my ultralight manufacturing company, which is another long story) and I'm not going to sell it a little at a time myself.
The main issue is the fiberglass. You either need to be a fiberglass fabricator yourself, or have one nearby. We had a great fiberglass supplier until last year, but they had to downsize a bit due to COVID, and now it's a six hour drive to our current fiberglass fabricator and back (because I drive the big thirsty van at 55 mph so the gas station owner doesn't yell “Yippee! Ka-CHING!” when I pull into town, but believe me, he's still happy to see me). Our local laser cutter is cool, though they've gotten a little big for their britches in that minimum orders have grown a bit robust these last couple decades, but there are CNC laser shops all over the country. Kinetic owns the CAD files for all the steel stuff, and shipping isn't too bad if you want to use the laser guys we've already got trained. Everything else comes from outside vendors, who can drop ship direct to your customers.
If this is interesting to you, email <jack@kineticvehicles.com> with the subject <KV interest>, and if you have questions, you can ask them here on this thread.
_________________
Locost builder and adventurer, and founder (but no longer owner) of Kinetic Vehicles
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Members
