[Milsurplus] Re: Dead electronics

[Bob Camp]

Hi

Motorola's policy of scrapping out older radios goes back a *long* way. 
They have been doing it at least since the late 1940's. When they do a 
trade in deal on new gear the stuff they get in trade goes straight 
into the crusher. It does not matter if the gear they get is theirs or 
somebody else's. It all goes into the crusher. At least that was the 
situation when I worked for them back in 1970's and I don't think they 
have changed the policy. Back then we couldn't even pull gear out of 
the crush pile for in house testing. That's how serious they were about 
the policy. It's not something that somebody just dreamed up one day.

In the same time period I also worked in enough two way shops to know 
that a lot of customers were presented with multiple deals on a radio 
system. A used system was often sold directly against a new Motorola 
system. Since Motorola made no money on used gear sales their strategy 
did make sense, it did sell more radios.

You can argue weather it is moral or even rational to do what they did 
and the arguments certainly have some merit. The only realistic counter 
argument is that they seem to be the last "American" company left in 
the business. What ever the net effect of all their policies they 
certainly worked better than their competitors.  They also took a lot 
of gear that is no longer supported out of circulation without duping 
it on a bunch of customers who would have had to foot the bill.

Germanium transistors are a bit pricey if you ever find them. Same 
thing goes for custom IC's that were made on three inch wafer lines 
that died years and years ago. Stating one of those up would be a 
couple hundred million or so. You would need to sell a lot of obsolete 
IC's to pay that sort of bill. Supporting the stuff they scrapped out 
in the 1970's would not have been possible 10 years later. The stuff 
just died a bit early ...

Life is strange ...

	Bob Camp
	KB8TQ



On Jul 18, 2004, at 12:45 PM, Patrick Jankowiak wrote:

> The waste is incomprehensible.
>
> Motorola scraps cellular equipment by the railcar load (seen it). They 
> see no profit in having it resold to be shipped overseas to the 3rd 
> world, when they can try to force the 3rd to buy new equipment.
>
> They also scrap 'last years model' of new in the box unused FRS 
> radios. Don't want them showing up on the global market as used. Even 
> the AA or AAA batteries, which come with them in some cases, are 
> scrapped and not made use of. It is all a sin of gluttony on a 
> corporate level. And Motorola is not the chiefest among sinners, so do 
> not think me railing against them, they are only one of many many 
> more. The idiocy and irresponsibility of it is beyond belief.
>
>
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