While people fall year-round, the freezing season is the perfect time to think about fall prevention. Fall hazards such as slippery leaves, wet pavement and frozen water are common in the colder season. They can't be ignored, even when businesses are extremely busy. The injuries sustained from a fall can range from the bruised ego to death. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 5,333 fatal occupational injuries in the United States in 2019. Out of the 5,333 fatalities, approximately 900 or 17% of the total were the result of slips, trips and falls.

“As we enter into 2022,” — when you say that out loud it sounds a lot like “2020-2.” Don’t be alarmed, I believe things are moving in a positive direction. I have laid out trends that I see as important factors moving into the new year. I am not going to prognosticate about where the stock market is going, but rather about what I feel is going to be the most important factors impacting supply houses across the country.  

There are certain world/U.S. events that you can recall exactly where you were when they happened. The first in my upbringing was the attempted assassination of President Reagan. I was walking up to our front porch after getting off the school bus when my mom told me about it. The Space Shuttle tragedy: I was in school that day. If my memory serves correctly, we had a grainy TV on that was on one of those huge school AV carts.

Each year, ASA members compete for the award by submitting an application and their prior year’s incident rate (300A form). Thank you to all those that participated in the ASA Safety Award competition, and to all those who help form ASA's safety culture and education through volunteerism, and support through such efforts as its Safety Recognition Program.

The latest people news within the PHCP-PVF industry and supply chain.

The end of a year is always a good time to reflect and plan for the year ahead, and this is especially true when that year (or two) has been particularly challenging. When reflecting on my last year, one stand-out moment was getting to hear Shark Tank’s Daymond John speak at ASA’s NETWORK conference in Las Vegas this November.

Congressman Smucker toured the new distribution facility and was one of the first to see APR’s latest implementation of warehouse automation. While on site, Congressman Smucker took time to address the APR warehouse 1^st shift teammates, along with the corporate and leadership teams. 

It is pretty rare to see a private, family-owned company reach fourth-generation leadership, much less fifth. For more than a century — 120 years to be exact — the Dowd family has led Charlotte, North Carolina-based pipe and fitting manufacturer Charlotte Pipe and Foundry. Built by W. Frank Dowd in 1901, the original foundry in Charlotte employed 25 men and produced cast iron soil pipe and fittings.

Culture seems to be all the rage in the corporate world today, or maybe that’s just because I read a lot about it, and because we really focus on it being real. At Eastern, we have a healthy desire to have a positive impact on the lives of people we come in contact with. One of the ways we foster this is through our 28 Fundamentals, or as we call it, The Eastern Way.

Net sales of $6,803 million were 26.6% ahead of last year, 24.5% higher on an organic basis with 1.8% from acquisitions and a further 0.3% from the impact of foreign exchange. Inflation in the first quarter was in the low teens.