First, let me start this off as being a small business owner on the side. Right now I’m paying my employees out of my full time job to keep them going because business is down in 2020. There are lots of patriotic Americans out of work.

I recently got into it with a well known company in the firearms industry. Their defense was they just had too many orders and were understaffed. This individual was telling me they were working additional shifts and overtime and were beyond capacity.  

Let me tell you what this “really” means from someone that runs numbers and keeps the books. What they are doing is refusing to add more American workers to their payroll to keep payroll taxes down and profits soaring in time of a crisis. No matter how remedial the job is it gives a person real money to put food on the table and roof overhead. Even if temporary, it has and gives purpose.

If you hear someone complaining about how swamped they are DO NOT let them get away with it. Remind them that there are good people out there that need jobs. I’ve also personally seen hungry liberal leaning people get needed jobs in the firearms industry and end up as total converts and strict 2nd amendment defenders. If someone gives you the under staffed line of BS take it to them ask to speak to someone up the chain of command.  

Didn’t know quite where to post this but everyone is adding to their collection and this seemed as good of place as any.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Is there a chance that you're perhaps speaking past one another? When someone starts talking to me about production "capacity", I take it to mean that they are talking the entire 24/7 production capacity of the machine. So if a business owner were to tell me that they're working at capacity (machine staffed 24/7), then the only way to increase that capacity would be to increase tooling (buy more machines). This is the stumbling block area, as new machines can easily hit many hundreds of thousands of dollars, and demand is fickle. Sure, right now, there is tons of money pouring in. But that could all change literally any day for businesses connected to the firearms industry.

Perhaps more to your point, I would agree with looking at the possibility of adding additional shifts if I had capacity available and orders stacked deep. Perhaps this would be hiring some folks to form a second or third shift operation. Again though, lots of factors to consider. I'd be bummed out if I ramped up 10-15 new employees, just to have demand swing in a month, and have to let them all go.

It's hard to say about someone else's business.

Making guns and ammo is hardly like running fast food or a lawn service.  You need to find people who can run complicated machinery, which has the ability to main or kill them if they don't know what they are doing.  Plus they have to keep up quality, or customers rightly complain about that.

And are people the limiting factor, or would they need new equipment and facilities?  What's the availability and timing of those?  And after all of that, and a business is up and running at twice the output, is it just in time for the market to be glutted, and having to sell stuff at a loss as there's no longer a market for it?

Wow here is a dumb take that belongs in GD.  

OP can't get enough product therefore his suppliers are un-Amercian.

So if they have 5 machines for a specific task and have 15 employees to work 8 hour shifts over 24 hours where should they put the extra employees that you say they should hire?

Try running a company that manufactures anything and see how quickly your attitude changes. Materials, overhead, staffing, payroll, market uncertainty, all while you are the LAST person to get paid after all expenses are accounted for.

And while hiring more employees sounds great, there are so many other variables at play. It’s not black and white. Do you risk buying more machines, adding space, etc with an uncertain future? Or do you maximize your efficiency and try to keep your current staff employed, your business solvent, while working to churn out as much product as possible?

What if the government locks down businesses it deems non-essential? Does patriotism pay your bills if you go under because you expanded during a time that called for a modicum of calculated austerity?

It’s not easy.

Actually you'er not tracking not even in the same AO.

I do have outstanding orders for my business/personal and when talking to CSR she told me they need more people but the company won't hire them. I know from running a small business this is when you can keep your overhead down and orders off the charts. Ive seen this in several distributors and they think this is just a short time fluke due to the political environment here in the US. It's utter bullshit when you won't hire more people. You may not realize it but what you make in your check is not what your employer actually pays to have you on property. Sadly if you don't understand that you probably don't understand what's coming your way in the next few years either. I truly envy you, I really do.

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Being unAmerican = being a ar15  owner who voted for Biden . . .  Just saying - you know who you are

I don't think it is as simple as just higher more people.  I have seen several companies sink by trying that.  There is an art to expanding without losing what made it successful to start.

I work in pool/landscaping, doing the actual sales/install of the projects.  So while different than manufacturing, we have some of the same issues.  We need more people and am slammed to the point that we can't keep up.  I can respond to about 4-5 new clients a week.  Right now I'm sent 6-8.  So I'm looking 3-4 leads a week, just by not being able to respond to them.

But where do we hire qualified, experience people to do the work?  When the market ramps up, the only people looking for a job are inexperienced or lack the skills to interact with people.  Yes, there is entry level positions, but you still have to bust your butt to do it, namely running a wheelbarrow back and worth all day. We can easily get a new person to fill any job, but they won't be any good for a year or two.  In the meantime, they cause as much, if not more, problems than before they came around.  I have been at a few places that try to have people fill spaces and the company loses exactly what made it successful.  Having key people in the right places is important.  Certain businesses, including specialty manufacturing, isn't easily scalable.  So you can't just ramp up production without losing quality or profitability.  I worked at a company that made more money selling 2.5 million worth of landscaping than it did at 5 million dollars.  They tried to expand too quickly and they are now out of business.