🎙️ Not every manufacturing company is a giant or a startup. Some are still family-owned companies slogging it out, making key components that look simple but involve detailed problem solving every single day.
Numberall Stamp & Tool Co. is a family-run, rural Maine manufacturer making industrial marking tools for everything from lobster traps to Apollo missions. You’ve probably touched something they helped serialize—metal tags, numbered seals, marked valves—and never known it.
But the company’s real story is in its resilience. Founded during the Great Depression to stamp poultry leg bands, Numberall grew into a small but essential supplier for defense, aerospace, medical, and heavy industry. Now in its third generation, it’s modernizing under pressure—holding tight tolerances, adding CNC machining, and training the next wave of machinists (when they can find them), all from a town of 800 people.
Daniel, Alex, and Dieter—two generations of the Numberall family—join TOOL OR DIE to explain how rural manufacturers survive offshoring, boom-bust cycles, and demographic shifts. From WWII bomb sights to GE medical cuffs to engraved tags on the moon, this episode explores what legacy craftsmanship looks like when it’s still alive and evolving—and what it will take to pass it on.
Timestamps
01:00 – Numberall’s founding: chicken bands and rotary stamps in 1930s New York
04:00 – The move to Maine and becoming a three-generation family business
07:00 – What modern industrial marking looks like—and why it still matters
10:00 – Surviving downturns: dot-com crash, 2008, COVID, and inflation
14:00 – CNC modernization and cutting down weeklong jobs to hours
17:00 – Why tight tolerances matter in precision stamping
21:00 – Small team, long tenures: how to grow without losing legacy skills
25:00 – Workforce scarcity in rural towns and the automation trade-off
30:00 – From Apollo to Saudi oil rigs: Numberall’s surprising global footprint
34:00 – The role of human-readable marks in a digital supply chain
37:00 – Made in Maine: rebuilding manufacturing from small-town shops
40:00 – What federal support would actually help Main Street manufacturers
Key Topics
Numberall’s 95-year evolution and intergenerational leadership
How industrial stamping still outperforms lasers in speed and simplicity
Tight tolerances and raised engraving: the machining behind the marks
Surviving multiple manufacturing downturns as a small supplier
The strategic role of rural U.S. manufacturers in global supply chains
CNC upgrades and macro programming for legacy products
Why reshoring alone isn’t enough: training, capital, and market access
Engraving bomb sights and stamping serials for the moon missions
🔧 Learn more: numberall.com
Sponsor
This episode of TOOL OR DIE is brought to you by DOSS, the adaptive ERP.
DOSS kills implementation hell by working directly with your team, connecting all your systems to minimize data entry so you can focus on production. Instead of barging in like a bull in a china shop, they take a deep look at your actual operations and build a system that matches how you operate today, replacing only the parts that need improving—rather than trying to fix what’s already working great.
DOSS — One Platform, Total Visibility
TOOL OR DIE is hosted by Joel Johnson, former science & tech journalist turned corporate strategist who built brands like Gizmodo, WIRED.com, and Wirecutter; and Alex Roy, General Partner at New Industry Venture Capital (NIVC.us), known for breaking the Cannonball Run record and his work in autonomous vehicles. Each week, they speak with the people actually rebuilding American manufacturing—one machine, one company, one idea at a time.
Follow them at:
LinkedIn: joeljohnson | alexroy
X: @joeljohnson | @alexroy144
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