Trail Boss Blog

We replaced our failed shipping service on our web store with a new one. This should be up and running early next week (June 6th). Hopefully it will work better than the previous one. We will also have most items available in inventory then too.  Given all the recent inquiries we're expecting an initial spike of orders and we could be backed-up for a few days shipping your order out, so thanks in advance for your patience.

We are ordering way more supplies much farther in advance than we've done in the past, and expect to be able to keep items in stock through the up's and down's of demand. Well, at least through the up's :). However, while availability of supplies and services for us domestic manufacturers is better than a year ago, things are still disrupted with unexpected delays and lack of (what used to be) standard stocked items.  We will endeavor to persevere.

Please contact us at info@trailbossusa.com if you need direct assistance.

A couple of recent website contacts brought this quote to mind:

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."  Mark Twain (in response to an inquiry asking if he had died)

We are frequently asked about inventory status, sometimes we're asked why many things are out (then back, then out again), and even a couple have asked if we're still alive. Here's an explanation of our inventory management and today's small manufacturing challenges.

First it helps to understand we're a very small volume manufacturer, making hundreds of things at a time, in a world designed for making thousands and tens of thousands.  Its difficult to find good quality suppliers who are willing to make or sell smaller lot sizes. Its pretty typical of those who make smaller lot sizes to also run out of the items they're providing. When they're out we have to wait until they get more back in their supply stock.

Second, the pandemic disruption is still a thing. Its even a thing for domestic US manufacturers like us, and like our suppliers, who are almost all domestic as well. We and most of our suppliers are fortunately not waiting for goods in containers floating of the US coasts.  But nearly everything we buy now takes twice or three times as long to deliver.  We're still getting caught by unexpected long delivery times, even when we allow more time by ordering sooner. This means we run out of supplies, which means we run out of inventory before we've had time to convert those supplies into Trail Boss tools.

Third, one of our key suppliers who used to take 6 weeks or so to provide their product, now takes 5 months.  Since we've had a lack of other supplies as well we've had some time to work to solve this problem and are about to roll-out our results to you all (yay!).

Fourth (and finally the last) we have been managing our inventory pretty closely and conservatively marking things as "out of stock" even when we expect a re-supply soon. This is because re-supply deliveries are often unexpectedly delayed by a couple of extra weeks, sometimes more. That results in a back-order situation for customers who bought an item, only to be told they have to wait. And we need to then spend time managing those back-orders. So now we only put things back in stock on the webstore when we know for sure the items are available, or will be available to ship within a few days (not weeks or months).

Anyway, there you have it, a little sausage-making peek into the world of small manufacturing. On our webstore there's a convenient button you can push that asks us to notify you when something is back in stock. Please use that, we keep these requests and send out emails to all when items return. And if you need to buy something now even if it is out of stock, please contact us and we can invoice you for it.

With our shovel supplier of the past 7 years abandoned us at the beginning of 2022 we've been working on our own-made Trail Boss shovel ever since. Its been a fun and fairly challenging project. We're finally pretty close to production on our round digging shovel head, with the various pieces designed, fab equipment in-house, and raw materials and outside supplies ordered and on their way.  A flat shovel, primarily designed for slap-packing and dirt transfer is not far behind.

With metal shovels being around since the bronze age, starting maybe 3000 years ago (like the 1750 B.C. one in the headline picture), we decided it was time to make yet another variation on this most-iconic and most broken variety of digging tool. See https://shovelzone.ca/history-of-the-shovel/ for a pretty good read on the history of shovels.

We made and physically tested several of our own variation, including different blade thicknesses, heat-treat processes, blade/tang mounting methods, etc.  We finally settled on this design:

The design criteria was to make it functional, strong, and durable, but also lighter weight with improved pack-ability over the previous design. The blade is roughly the same size as our previous shovel, just slightly smaller than most round shovels so that it fits nicely in smaller packs. The overall head-length is significantly less because of the mount design, and the weight is less because there is less steel mass, utilizing a stronger well-tempered alloy.

Since the design also significantly shortens the bending moment between the shovel tip and coupling we decided to not issue a braced version. In our testing the lower coupling with the steel segment appeared to hold up quite well under some serious stress. And yes, we do highly recommend using a steel handle segment when digging with the shovel.

We all took turns beating it up, with Alec doing the "full body-weight test" out in the wild after he found this convenient granite crack to hang himself from a few times:

We're about to restock our inventory with handles and heads. They should be back on early next week.  That said, we're already low on Rogue, McLeod, and Hard Rake heads due to a lack of the adapter piece. We should have another large batch of those in by end of this month, and we have blades ready to mount to them once we get more head adapters back in stock.

Hey All, we've received a lot of requests about when out-of-stock items, mostly packages, will be available. The main reason a package is "out" is because one item is missing, and usually its a Rogue-style head.  We buy these blades from Rogue, and as most of you know Rogue's lead time on their standard tools is unpredictably long, including the blades we buy from them too. If you'd like a Trail Boss now, and can wait for a Rogue head a bit longer (like all of us), please have a look through the individual items to see if there's something there that'll suit you. Cheers!