Oh yeah, working for myself is MUCH more appealing than the idea of working for anyone else. The older I've gotten the less I am inclined to want to take orders from those who typically know less about what I'm doing than I myself do.

While it would be nice to have someone else worry about the bottom line, makin payroll and all such things I still prefer to pilot my own boat. At least that way I'm still workin with an asshole for a boss, just one I can better understand

Invoicing and getting paid can absolutely be 2 very different things when times are good, even worse when they're bad, and although the news keeps tryin to coddle us into thinking things are gettin better here, I am less than sure that's anything resembling the truth.

With well over $100k of outstanding invoices, had I been able to have gotten paid on all my accounts receivables I would have been able to make it for another cuppla years on just those funds. However, when your customers are themselves hangin on by slim threads and many dropping like flies it's really hard to get paid.

The printing industry in the US has been on a slow downward spiral over the last decade, with the smaller Mom & Pop operations (which many of my customers were) in an even steeper decline. The little fish are gettin eaten up by the bigger ones and even in many of the larger shops employees and management alike have had to take salary cuts and wage freezes as a way of life as the industry as a whole tries to survive.

Like fossil mentioned there are also scammers aplenty in the used equipment business, so many in fact that my Mom and I kept an ongoing file of them that was passed around to our friendly competitors in efforts to minimize such stuff occurring to us and our friends in the business. And yeah, one of my buddies got submarined by a scammer for a 1/4 of a million on just one deal which most likely will drive him outta business too, a business he's had for like 20+yrs now, sad indeed, but just one of the many such stories I know in the industry as a whole.

While I'd absolutely LOVE to open up a hot rod shop I know this is impractical as very few actually make it for long and most don't even last any longer than it takes to run through the owners savings. The typical customer comes in, picks your brains on what he wants to do, the parts he'll need to get there with, then hits the net, buys it all and does it themselves, or tries to. Not exactly a rosy scenario for a shop owner. Even my old shop, Bar None Motorsports was an enterprise the 5 of us did in addition to our fulltime jobs.

Meh, still kickin some ideas around and seein what's available here locally but the local economy is mostly tourist based and seasonal to boot, with very little industry per se. I could commute 45-50 miles each way and find work in Ft. Worth but that's not very appealing either.

Luckily my personal expenses are really low so my salary requirements are equally low which allows me latitude in what I chose to undertake. Maybe I'll just say "Fuck it" and become a Walmart greeter