Banks Blog Archive
- Blog Articles
What Recession?
You can tell by the date of this column that Christmas was the day before yesterday. Last Friday, after I posted the Friday Night News, we held our big Banks Christmas party. And the emphasis—and this week's news—is on BIG! My job was to take pictures with our digital camera of each department of Banks employees as they were called up on stage. I'll post them here so you can see just how big we are. I'm talking number of individuals, not individual size of employees.
The Christmas party marks my first anniversary here at Banks. My very first assignment was to take the photos at last year's party. This is my 61st edition of the Friday Night News. Time flies.
When I started working here a year ago, we had 160 employees. I thought that was a whole lot compared to the Banks Engineering I knew a couple decades ago that had about one tenth that number of workers in one or two small buildings. Now we have seven BIG buildings, and we're out of room again.Posted by Pat Ganahl on December 27, 2002Lumpy's Torrid Truck
Chad Horning is a videographer who accompanied us to Bonneville for the recent running of the Sidewinder pickup to capture all the record-smashing action, including shots from an airplane as the truck sped down the course. If you live in the Los Angeles area and watch the 5 o'clock news, you saw some of his footage in the last couple of weeks as several TV channels reported on The World's Fastest Pickup. And, as I reported here on 11/15/02, you can sample several clips of his video work on our Sidewinder web site.
But Chad is not the subject of tonight's news. It's his dad, Richard "Lumpy" Horning of Burbank, California. They say the movies are made in Hollywood, but most of them, as well as TV shows, are really made in Burbank, and it seems like half the people who live there work for the studios in one way or another. Richard works for a company called Easy Rider Productions, which supplies portable generators, dressing rooms, wardrobes, and other on-location support for music videos, commercials, and feature films. These are all in the form of trailers—mostly 5th wheel—that must be towed by trucks. Richard's truck is a good-looking 2000 Ford F-350 XLT Power Stroke Super-Cab duallie long bed. He says he uses this truck strictly for work—nothing else—and since it's always pulling heavy trailers, he knew it could use some more go and some more whoa. And after Chad's connection with Banks, he knew where to get it.Posted by Pat Ganahl on December 20, 2002CBC News
A lot of our products tend to sound like TV stations.
CBC
It's called an acronym. In this case it stands for Computerized Brake Controller. And it's a patent-pending Banks exclusive that is now an integral part of our Banks Brakes. Other diesel exhaust brakes are controlled by a micro-switch, which is a simple on-off device just like a light switch at home. It must be physically mounted to contact the throttle, which means it must be adjusted to turn on when the throttle is closed (and, more than likely, readjusted periodically to keep it working properly). And, since it's a mechanical device, it can stick or otherwise malfunction. And it only knows how to do one thing: turn on and off.
The Banks CBC is much more talented. You could say it has a mind of its own. It's not a switch, it's a computer. You hook it up with wires, and it adjusts itself, constantly.
But it does considerably more than that. That's the great thing about computers: they're multi-taskers. They can do more than one thing at the same time.Posted by Pat Ganahl on December 13, 2002The Jeeps are Coming
Two things this week. The primary news is that we are tooling up for a new line of Banks products for Jeeps. The secondary subject is the process of tooling up, otherwise known as prototyping.
We've been noticing a few questions and answers on web site chat rooms talking about whether Banks is going to make products for Jeeps. The answer is yes, we are. We are going to make TorqueTube exhaust manifolds; cat-back, all-stainless, mandrel-bent exhaust systems including a straight-through stainless Dynaflow muffler; and high-flow air intake systems. Our first target is for '91-'03 Wranglers with the 4.0L straight six engine. As of today, we have a '99 and 2001 model in our shop, to which we are fitting prototype TorqueTubes. We have the basic design determined. The question, and it's not a really big one, is exactly how the outlet will be configured.Posted by Pat Ganahl on December 06, 2002
