Professor Elam

Monday Feb 16, 2015

Well here we are again with if not an oil field bust, a huge downturn with lots of jobs eliminated. 

In the past I have thought it would have been a good idea during these times, i.e., the aftermath, to develop some alternate paths of endeavor for the Permian Basin or South Texas.

A great deal of oil field work involves metal fabrication. I have seen exquisite paint jobs on natural gas processing units that did not have a single flat surface but there were no paint drips anywhere. 

Here is an example of what I am describing. 

XKS.com specializes in restoring Jaguar and other British sports cars.  This in turn spawns  other work like specialized paint shops. Take a tour on the website and you will see some exquisite metal work. 

While on specialty shop would hardly support an entire town, a chain of such shop along with the manufacture of retro parts, like fenders, hoods, interiors for say 1960s mustangs and cameros would be  a pretty good start. The same sort of idea might extend to 

refurbishing antique tractors, a growing field

airplanes

trucks

I met one fellow who does this for wooden wagons,he is located in fredricksburg

We already have custom boot makers, this could be extended to all sorts of tack gear as wellas western wear. There are no less than two magazines devoted to just such activity. Remember more people ride horses now than when Wyatt Earp was alive!

This would also be a high end type business with well to do clients. In short it would not be so subject to the cyclical nature of the oil field. 

An example is the location of the CAF at the MAF airport. The CAF does this type of work on WW II aircraft. The dry climate here is one reason the  CAF readily moved from the Valley with its high humidity. 

As is always the case, the aftermath of a boom brings plenty of affordable metal buildings with large overhead doors, high ceilings, which would be handy for this sort of work.