If you produce more than you sell you are obviously producing too much
and what is too much is something nobody wants at the price stated

Company that shows loss and is loosing money is not doing everything ok

 >EDITOR'S NOTE: In the years after World War II, thousands of
 >companies made a promise to their workers: Invest your most
 >productive years with us, and we'll take care of you with a pension
 >when your working days are over. In recent years, though, hundreds of
 >thousands of workers and retirees have seen those promises broken.
 >This is the story of how that happened at one small Ohio company.
 >
 >HOWLAND, Ohio (AP) _It had been another tense week at Ajax
 >Magnethermic Corp. But after 35 years at the struggling company, Jim
 >Necastro was glad just to have his job, especially with retirement a
 >few years away.
 >
 >Certainly that was worth a toast on this June afternoon. He cracked
 >open a cold beer and stretched out on his backyard patio.
 >
 >Then Don, a neighbor who worked for a local security company, came
 >trotting across the lawn.
 >
 >"Hey, Jimmy," the neighbor half-shouted. "My guard just called me
 >from Ajax. He said they just closed and he's supposed to lock the
 >gates."
 >
 >By evening, the windows of the plant on Overland Avenue were dark,
 >the gates were padlocked and a sign hung from the chain-link: "Closed
 >Until Further Notice."
 >
 >The shutdown was so sudden and unexplained that even the following
 >Monday, 90 of Ajax's 138 employees showed up for work.
 >
 >Necastro's job was gone, but that was hardly his only worry.
 >
 >Somewhere behind the padlocks, alongside the stilled machines and
 >vacant desks, could his pension be in there too?
 >
 >
 >
 >A pension is a promise. And through the years, Ajax's workers had no
 >reason to doubt the word of the company's owners, three men who knew
 >each worker by name.
 >
 >But then the company changed hands. And changed hands again. And then
 >again. By 2002, Ajax was owned by a subsidiary of Citigroup Inc., the
 >nation's biggest bank. And when Citigroup decided to walk away from
 >Ajax, that promise was lost.
 >
 >Nobody ever explained to Ajax workers nearing retirement just how
 >that could be the case. They would have to figure it out on their
 >own. It would take three years of waiting, of sifting through clues
 >and wrestling with bureaucracies.
 >
 >Three years to learn that thousands of dollars they'd been counting
 >on would not be coming.
 >
 >
 >
 >Necastro was just 22 when he returned home in 1967 after serving on
 >an aircraft carrier off Vietnam. He had been back a week when he
 >found work in the test lab at Ajax.
 >
 >The company, housed in a former military tank factory - a box of red
 >brick and murky glass just outside the manufacturing town of Warren,
 >Ohio - employed a hundred or so people then. Its president, John
 >Logan, and his two partners often strode the plant floor, greeting
 >workers by name.
 >
 >"You could talk to those guys," an Ajax veteran, Art Racco, said.
 >"They knew what you built. They knew how complicated it was."
 >
 >The company wasn't big, but it played a key role in the Mahoning
 >River Valley's gritty, thriving economy, making electric melting
 >equipment for the area's steel mills.
 >
 >Necastro didn't expect to stay long. But it was a comfortable place
 >where co-workers became his closest friends, sharing poolside
 >barbecues and Caribbean cruises together. Long after Necastro's first
 >marriage failed, his friendships at Ajax remained strong.
 >
 >But by the time he finished a third decade at Ajax, things were
 >changing. Most of the steel mills in this valley 50 miles southeast
 >of Cleveland had been shuttered. Many storefronts east of Warren's
 >historic courthouse square had gone dark. Logan and his partners were
 >gone too, selling out to a British conglomerate, BBA Group PLC.
 >
 >And by the 1990s, business was flagging.
 >
 >But a venture capital company owned by Citigroup Inc. looked at Ajax
 >and saw opportunity. In 1998, with a few Ajax executives as minority
 >partners, it bought the company with $135 million borrowed from a
 >consortium of banks, and put the debt on Ajax's books.
 >
 >The plan: build the business, pay down the debt, and sell the company
 >at a profit.
 >
 >At the time, Ajax was still a going concern. But could it do well
 >enough to survive this huge new debt? As the months dragged on,
 >office workers who got glimpses of Ajax's books whispered that
 >profits were not increasing fast enough to pay it down.
 >
 >As months ticked by without a sale of Ajax, workers nearing
 >retirement started worrying whether that might affect their pensions.
 >The company tried to reassure them.
 >
 >"There have been a number of rumors and discussions circulating
 >regarding the possibility that either Ajax or its new parent,
 >Citicorp Venture Capital, might modify the pension plans," it told
 >workers in a 1999 memo. "It is important that each of you be aware
 >that ... plan benefits earned as of any given date (known as accrued
 >benefits) cannot be eliminated, changed or removed by any company."
 >
 >But the rumors persisted. So in 2001, David Holmquist, a company
 >lawyer, gathered workers in the Ajax lunchroom to soothe concerns.
 >One worker captured it on videotape.
 >
 >"What happens if we go bankrupt?" a worker shouted from the back of
 >the room.
 >
 >Holmquist paused, as if pondering his answer.
 >
 >"Our bankruptcy lawyers will do just fine," he said. "The company has
 >no right to any of the money in the pension plan except if the plan
 >is terminated and there are more funds than needed to give everybody
 >... all the money that they have earned."
 >
 >At the time, Holmquist assured them, money the company had set aside
 >for their pensions was sufficient to pay them what they had coming to
 >them. That was true, in part, because much of the pension money was
 >invested in the stock market, which had been booming. But what had
 >gone up would soon come down.
 >
 >Meanwhile, workers found new reasons to worry.
 >
 >In 2002, the company shut Ajax's satellite plant in Richmond, Ky.
 >
 >"What about our retirement benefits?" workers there wrote to the CEO.
 >"Will we be left with nothing?"
 >
 >Dave Hanton, a midlevel manager in Howland, began stopping by the
 >desks or calling the homes of co-workers over 55, asking them to chip
 >in to hire a lawyer to check on their pensions. About 100 workers
 >kicked in $50 each.
 >
 >A few workers, including Tom Kearney, who had 28 years with the
 >company, asked if they could get the value of their pension in a lump
 >sum if they retired immediately. As Kearney remembers it, the answer
 >was no.
 >
 >Then, more bad news.
 >
 >In May 2002, the company announced it was scrapping severance pay.
 >Two days later, nearly 60 employees were called into the cafeteria
 >and told they were terminated. Two weeks later, the company announced
 >that "due to unforeseen events" it was eliminating health insurance.
 >
 >Finally, on the afternoon of June 28, Ajax ran out of rope. It was
 >out of cash and its lenders would give it no more.
 >
 >"I and a few others sniffed it out," says Lou Moliterno, a former
 >Ajax vice president. "At 3 o'clock, I actually threw together a box
 >of some stuff ... and rushed it out to my car."
 >
 >By evening, the gates were shackled.
 >
 >"Ajax Magnethermic," says Tom Illencik, then an Ajax middle manager,
 >"closed and ceases to exist."
 >
 >
 >
 >Abandoned employees puzzled over what to do.
 >
 >"Not sold. Not bankrupt? How do I get pension?" Necastro scribbled in
 >a note to himself.
 >
 >As it turned out, money set aside for the pensions was still safe,
 >but there wasn't as much of it now. The stock market had plummeted
 >and interest rates had dropped, leaving the pension accounts holding
 >less than half of what was needed to pay promised benefits.
 >
 >With Ajax shuttered, who was responsible for making up the
 >difference?
 >
 >In their search for answers, workers flocked to Mother_Ajax, an
 >Internet discussion board set up by Mike Smith, a salesman who lost
 >his job in the May layoffs.
 >
 >That's where many first heard about a deal to resurrect Ajax. It was
 >complex, and some elements of it are still unclear. But the paper
 >trail - contained in county court papers, state incorporation
 >records, federal pension files obtained through a Freedom of
 >Information Act request, and securities filings - tells much of the
 >story.
 >
 >The banks that were Ajax's main creditors decided to get out of the
 >business with what they could. In July 2002, they sold the right to
 >collect the debt for pennies on the dollar.
 >
 >Park-Ohio Holdings Corp., a Cleveland company, was the buyer, in a
 >deal that essentially gave it control over how Ajax would be
 >liquidated. Park-Ohio reopened the plant, gradually rehired many
 >workers and then acquired Ajax's equipment and assets.
 >
 >But Park-Ohio did not buy Ajax itself - so it had no legal
 >responsibility for the promised pensions.
 >
 >Those responsibilities remained with Ajax, now an empty vessel, still
 >owned almost entirely by Citigroup's venture capital company. But not
 >for long.
 >
 >Citigroup sold most of its interest in Ajax to a shell company set up
 >just for that purpose by Jerry Crawford, brother of Park-Ohio's
 >chairman and CEO.
 >
 >When the deal was done, ownership in Ajax was dispersed, with no one
 >owning 80 percent of it.
 >
 >The figure is important. Under federal law, no company could be held
 >responsible for funding the $9 million pension shortfall unless it
 >owned at least 80 percent of Ajax.
 >
 >That raises some questions: Why was a shell company formed to buy
 >control of a worthless Ajax? Was the sale structured intentionally to
 >avoid responsibility for funding the pensions?
 >
 >Crawford wouldn't answer and referred the questions to an attorney
 >who did not return phone calls. His brother Edward, the Park-Ohio
 >CEO, also declined to comment. So did a spokesman for Citigroup, and
 >a spokesman for Credit Suisse First Boston, the lead lender to Ajax.
 >
 >Structuring a deal specifically to evade responsibility for pensions
 >is illegal. The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which
 >is responsible for enforcement, investigated, filing an
 >administrative subpoena in late 2002 for access to company files
 >still held in the Howland Avenue building. For reasons that are still
 >unclear, the PBGC was not able to see the records for 15 months.
 >
 >The agency found no evidence of evasion. It's very difficult to
 >prove, said spokesman Gary Pastorius.
 >
 >However, a PBGC staffer who worked on the later stages of the case,
 >said the agency apparently was unaware that the shell company that
 >bought the largest share of Ajax was owned by the brother of
 >Park-Ohio's CEO. That might merit a second look, he said.
 >
 >The PBGC has a big stake in how this all turns out. Its main role is
 >to insure pensions, covering the shortfall when companies default on
 >their obligations.
 >
 >That has been happening with increasing frequency, pushing the agency
 >into record deficits. In just the past year, the agency has
 >shouldered 120 terminated pension plans, assuming responsibility for
 >the benefits of 235,000 workers and retirees. The problem has grown
 >so serious that the Bush administration and Congress have been
 >working to craft a law that would require companies to fully fund
 >their pension plans.
 >
 >So, former Ajax workers "started calling the PBGC and started
 >clamoring for what was going to happen," said Moliterno, a former
 >Ajax executive. The answer was a long time coming.
 >
 >Almost 2 1/2 years after Ajax closed, letters from the PBGC arrived
 >in the mailboxes of the oldest Ajax workers informing them it would
 >begin paying their monthly pensions. Part of the money would come
 >from $7.9 million the agency recovered from Ajax pension accounts -
 >of $16.7 million owed to workers. Taxpayers will cover the rest.
 >
 >But that does not mean the former Ajax workers will get all the
 >retirement income they had been counting on.
 >
 >The PBGC provides workers only with the benefits they earned before
 >their pension plan was terminated. But in most pension plans -
 >including Ajax's plan - much of a worker's pension is accumulated in
 >the last few years of his working life. For the many Ajax workers who
 >were near, but not yet at, retirement age, the loss is considerable.
 >
 >Necastro was expecting to retire at 65 with a pension of $1,600 a
 >month. Instead, he gets $785.70. Hanton, a manager, was expecting
 >$2,300 monthly or a $344,000 lump sum. Instead, at 63, the PBGC is
 >sending him $1,305.85 a month. In the time spent waiting for the
 >first check, he burned through much of his savings. The floor plans
 >he and his wife drew up for a retirement home have been shelved, and
 >talk of travel together has been put aside.
 >
 >The scaling back of expectations has been hard to accept, and not
 >everyone has been able to let it go. For some workers, the pursuit of
 >Ajax is no less than an obsession.
 >
 >"It's become a vendetta," Racco acknowledges. Hunched over his
 >kitchen counter, he fingers papers in a binder full of documents from
 >the case as if it was a holy text.
 >
 >The fight for pension dollars has so consumed him that it nearly
 >wrecked his marriage, he says.
 >
 >"Six months ago we went to a counselor," he says, his voice breaking.
 >"I watched her cry. I watched her say 'I just want my husband back to
 >the way he used to be.' That's when I said 'I've got to change.'"
 >
 >But things keep happening that make it impossible to put aside his
 >anger.
 >
 >He badgered Citigroup about his pension and finally got this reply in
 >August of 2004:
 >
 >"I have confirmed with counsel that Citigroup Inc. did not acquire
 >the assets or liabilities of the Ajax Magnethermic Corporation
 >Employees Pension Plan . . . You might want to contact the PBGC..."
 >
 >And earlier this year, Racco tracked down a lawyer whose name is on
 >top of the pension termination papers filed with the PBGC. Yes, the
 >attorney confirmed, he was the one who formally threw in the towel on
 >Ajax's pension plans.
 >
 >"Who hired you?" Racco asked.
 >
 >"That's privileged information," the lawyer replied.
 >
 >Smith, the former Ajax salesman who was among those fired without
 >notice, is another who couldn't walk away. For three years, he has
 >pursued a lawsuit demanding severance pay.
 >
 >In July, a federal judge ruled that he and other workers may have
 >grounds for a claim against the banks that made loans to Ajax. But
 >suing a former employer has made it impossible for him to find
 >another job, he says. He spends most days helping out at his
 >brother's heating and air conditioning business. His savings and
 >unemployment checks tapped out, he filed for bankruptcy last year.
 >
 >"It's something you try to push toward the back of your mind," he
 >says of the past 3 1/2 years. "Otherwise you'd go crazy."
 >
 >While a few of Ajax's former workers continue to battle, most say
 >they are trying to move on.
 >
 >Kearney started his own business. Necastro is savoring the time to
 >fish and watching his dollars until he qualifies for Social Security
 >next year. Hanton is doing odd jobs for neighbors and repairing old
 >tractors, a longtime hobby.
 >
 >Still, some wonder if there isn't a lesson in what happened to their
 >company and their pensions.
 >
 >Sitting at his kitchen table, Hanton shakes his head and smiles,
 >recounting the sermon on financial planning he preached recently to
 >one of his sons and the response it drew.
 >
 >"He said Dad, look at you. You did all the things that you were
 >supposed to do and look what happened to you," Hanton recalls.
 >
 >"And, you know, I couldn't give him an answer."
 >
 >

 Here in Ísland Toyota has over 25% of the market

 So What!
 Read the above email closer!

 "No other brand comes even close"  To what?

 Oh boy what other startling revelations do you plan to let us know about
from rice rocket land.

 "Most cars last 5 - 10 years"

 Humm, My 1939 Plymouth stock P-8 Coupe and 1977 stock Caprice Classic are
both driveable!

 "It is not unusual to see 20 years Toyotas"

 Oh what does that prove?  I have seen many in a junk yards!

Can we assume you do not mean Cuba?  All the cars there are nearly 40 year
old American cars.  ;)

mike hunt

Here in Ísland Toyota has over 25% of the market
No other brand comes even close
Most cars last 5 - 10 years
It is not unusual to see 20 years Toyotas