Kickstart: Labor shortages prompt big machinery sales

Machinery sales have been booming as U.S. manufacturers invest in new equipment. That's been happening in the plastics industry, as reports from the Plastics Industry Association have pointed out, but those investments have been widespread everywhere.

As the public radio show Marketplace reported this week, orders for equipment that manufacturers use to make things — known as core capital goods — hit a 40-year high in January. (You can find the graph via the St. Louis Federal Reserve here.)

Part of the push is that consumers have money to buy goods, but the labor shortage is affecting manufacturers' ability to deliver items.

"The challenge has been meeting that demand, with all of the supply chain issues, and workforce challenges that we continue to see kind of around the world," said Chad Moutray, chief economist with the National Association of Manufacturers, told Justin Ho of Marketplace.

Automation and other equipment that manufacturers can use to make more things with fewer people is driving capital expenditures.

Plastics News Economics Editor Bill Wood has been tracking similar numbers tracking investments in new equipment.

"It is good news for our economy and our industry," he says.

I'm sure that anyone who follows the auto industry is aware of the shakeup at Ford Motor Co., where the Dearborn, Mich., automaker is splitting its traditional vehicle operations and its nascent electric vehicle business.

The new arrangement — with internal combustion engine vehicles becoming the Ford Blue unit while electric cars will go under Ford Model e — is planned to let car development teams focus on their particular product range.

But I want to mention some other piece of Ford news that saw it giving special priority to a very special customer.

As Michael Martinez from our sister paper Automotive News writes, Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon and the last surviving crew member of Apollo 11, ordered a 2022 Lincoln Nautilus crossover in October. He wanted it delivered in time for his 92nd birthday on Jan. 30, but his order sat unproduced for months amid the semiconductor shortage.

But when Ford CEO Jim Hackett heard about Aldrin's delayed vehicle, he stepped in and the Lincoln team and assembly line workers prioritized Aldrin's car to deliver it on time.

On the opposite end of the scale for "technological breakthroughs" from walking on the moon, you've got the thermoplastic polyurethane and high-end materials on Nike's LeBron James low-rise shoes being used to promote a breakfast cereal.

Nike and Post Consumer Brands teamed on the project to tie in the basketball star's shoes to Fruity Pebbles cereal. The shoes are being released just in time for National Cereal Day on March 7. (Because there's a day for everything.)

As our sister paper Advertising Age writes, the colorful take on the regular LeBron James shoe has textiles with the colorful image of the cereal and a color changing dye in the uppers.

For his part, James called the experience "surreal."