Bruin Brake Cables Comments on 60 Minutes Formaldehyde Report

FOX LAKE, Ill., March 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- It may have surprised some when television's 60 Minutes did a segment recently about Lumber Liquidators and how they're selling wood flooring with dangerously high levels of formaldehyde. For Rick Gelscheit, the owner of Fox Lake, IL, based Bruin Brake Cables, it came as no surprise at all. In fact, it felt like deja vu.

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"Americans are buying dangerously inferior emergency brake cables from China already," he said. "It's no surprise that they're also buying dangerously inferior wood flooring from China, too."

In the Lumber Liquidators story, 60 Minutes described how Lumber Liquidators sells Chinese manufactured flooring that tested to levels 20 times that allowed by the California Air Resources Board, known as CARB. While the lumber is labeled as CARB compliant, it clearly isn't. That's similar to the situation where Chinese emergency brake cables are inferior but the sellers of the cables won't fess up to the problem.

Another similarity between the Lumber Liquidators and the emergency brake cables stories is that, while Chinese manufactured lumber and emergency brake cables are consistently and dangerously inferior, American made wood flooring and emergency brake cables are not. The Chinese manufactured wood flooring has American children playing and crawling on floors that emit high levels of formaldehyde, a known carcinogenic. The Chinese manufactured emergency brake cables have families driving in cars with emergency brake cables that are far more likely to fail in an emergency than they are to help save those families.

According to the 60 Minutes report, Lumber Liquidators' flooring assembly is done in China with glues that are high in formaldehyde. The flooring is cheaper to make that way. It's the same with emergency brake cables made in China. Short cuts and inferior materials reduce the cost of manufacturing but at the expense of quality and safety.

Bruin Brake Cables makes emergency brake cables that uniformly pass a pressure test to as high as 1,200 foot pounds (the occasional cable that fails the test is rejected). Gelscheit said they've also tested the Chinese made emergency brake cables. The Chinese manufactured emergency brake cables fail the test approximately 90 percent of the time. Some have slippage. Some fail dramatically, exploding out of the testing equipment.

"We've seen Chinese cables fail at only 400 foot pounds," said Gelscheit. "You don't use your emergency brake cable every day. But, when you do have an emergency, do you want to trust your family to an emergency brake cable that's liable to fail?"

Gelscheit says he used the highest quality cable and there are no shortcuts in the manufacturing process. That raises the cost of production. However, he still sells his cables at prices comparable with the inferior Chinese emergency brake cables.

For Gelscheit, the problem selling his superior American made emergency brake cables is complicated because he has to compete with massive manufacturing conglomerates. They sell a wide range of aftermarket automotive parts, not just emergency brake cables.

"The auto parts chains buy their emergency brake cables from the same distributors who sell them motor oil, sparkplugs and all kinds of other parts," said Gelscheit. "It makes it very difficult to break into the stores so consumers can purchase our quality emergency brake cables."

Most of Bruin Brake Cables emergency brake cables are sold through their online stores at Amazon and eBay. But, Gelscheit is determined to break into the auto parts stores where foot traffic will give American consumers a better chance to buy emergency brake cables that will work in an emergency.

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SOURCE Bruin Brake Cables