Over The Wire — October 2026
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Over the Wire
October 2026 · 3 Ideas, 2 Quotes & 1 Question
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| October is when next year’s budgets get written, so this issue is built for that: a pause in the orders data, a raise coming for anyone on Social Security, and a stamping supplier worth knowing before 2027 programs are set. Pour a coffee; this will only take a few minutes. | |
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Worth Your Time
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01 · The Numbers
Durable goods paused in August. The parts underneath did not.
New orders for manufactured durable goods were flat in August at $338.6 billion, after two straight monthly gains. The pause came entirely from transportation. Take that out and orders rose 0.3 percent, with industrial machinery, primary metals, and electrical equipment each up more than 1 percent, and orders excluding transportation are up 11.2 percent from a year ago. If you build the parts that go into machinery and equipment, August was a better month than the headline says.
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02 · Your Money
Your Social Security raise gets announced October 14.
The 2027 cost of living adjustment is set on October 14, when September inflation numbers come out. Estimates from the analysts who track it run from 3.4 to 3.8 percent, which would be the largest raise since 2023 and well above this year’s 2.8 percent. On the average retirement check of about $2,084, that is roughly $70 to $80 more a month. Worth knowing before you set a 2027 household budget, and worth a second look once the real number lands.
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03 · Worth Your Health
Six in ten people with high blood pressure do not know it.
A University of Oxford study of adults in the UK, published this month in BMJ Public Health, found that 59 percent of people with high blood pressure had never been told they had it. Among those already on medication, half still had readings above 140 over 90. It is one country’s data, but the pattern is not new, and the fix is cheap: a cuff at the pharmacy or on your own kitchen table, checked more than once a year.
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04 · The Floor
Reshoring is up. The parts to support it are the bottleneck.
A new survey from the Reshoring Initiative finds 36 percent of OEMs actively reshoring production, up from 29 percent last year, and 63 percent planning capital investment in domestic capacity. The snag they report most is not labor or tariffs. It is gaps in domestic components: the brackets, housings, harnesses, and hardware that a reshored line still has to buy from somewhere. One line from the survey stuck with us. Manufacturers said they can plan around a known cost; they cannot plan around a moving target.
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3 Ideas
I. A rough 2027 volume forecast is the most useful thing you can hand a supplier in October. It commits you to nothing, and it lets material get ordered and press time get held before the calendar fills. In a tight year, the parts that ship on time are usually the ones whose numbers were in the plan before the year began.
II. The cheapest tooling is the tooling you already own. Before a part gets redrawn, ask whether the existing die, mold, or fixture can be modified to make the new revision. A change to a tool that already runs is usually weeks and a fraction of the cost of a new one, and it keeps the part on the press that already knows it.
III. Lead time is not one number. It is material, capacity, and finishing added together, and each one can be bought down separately. Expediting the wrong one costs money and moves nothing. Tell us which of the three you actually need shortened and we will tell you what it takes.
2 Quotes
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”
Henry Ford
“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”
W. Edwards Deming
1 Question
Which part on your 2027 plan runs on a tool older than the engineer who owns it?
That tool is worth a look before next year’s run, while there is still time to fix it on schedule. Send us the drawing and we will tell you what we see.
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Principal Spotlight
Stampings up to 400 tons, with the tooling built down the hall.
Clow has stamped metal in Merrifield, Minnesota since 1970, when Everett and Gladyce Clow bought a small shop. It is still family run, by second-generation Reggie Clow and third-generation Gabe Clow, on a single campus of more than 396,000 square feet with over 400 employees, 60 of them with 20-plus years in the building. The floor runs a press fleet up to 400 tons, an 8,000-watt fiber laser, press brakes, robotic weld cells, CNC machining, and a tool room that designs, builds, and maintains the dies on site. ISO 9001 registered, and set up for short- to medium-run programs as readily as volume. If a bracket, panel, or chassis part is being laser cut or machined because the quantity never seemed to justify a die, that is the case Clow was built for. Ask us about it.
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News from Lupton
On the Road
Two sales meetings, one week in the Brainerd Lakes.
Our team spent two productive days at Cragun’s Resort in Brainerd, Minnesota for Lupton’s annual sales meeting, working through territory plans, the programs we are chasing for 2027, and the best way to get a drawing from your desk to the right press faster. While we were in the neighborhood, we joined Clow’s sales meeting down the road in Merrifield. The highlight was the plant tour and a walkthrough of the process improvements they have made across the floor this year. It is one thing to read a capabilities list. It is another to stand next to the press. Good to see everyone, and thank you to the Clow team for the hospitality.
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Servicing the Working World Since 1969
The key to our success is our people.
Founded in 1969, Lupton Associates helps OEMs, engineers, sourcing teams, and program leaders move custom components from requirement to practical manufacturing and quotation paths.
Our team brings decades of territory knowledge, manufacturing-process experience, and customer relationships to every project. We start with what is known — the drawing, material, volume, timing, documentation, or supply problem — and help determine the information and manufacturing review needed next.
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Have a part you’d like a second set of eyes on?
Or just hit reply. I read every response, and we’ll tell you honestly whether there’s a fit.
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Lupton Associates · 343 N. Main Street, Suite 201, Canandaigua, NY 14424 · (585) 393-4999
luptons.com |
Next step
Have a part worth a second look?
Send the drawing, material, volume and timing. We reply with a straight answer.