Also isn't Youngstown the same city that had the big hubbub with Trump and GM, and is still shutting down and being outsourced overseas?
There are two problems here. Infrastructure and local business owners.
Infrastructure can probably be overcome.
Most local business owners, on the other hand, can basically die in a fire and nobody will mourn them. The problem is that local business owners don't really believe in deadlines. So, those business cards you needed before flying to the conference? Yeah, not done yet. That vehicle repair that needed to be completed before the end of the week, yeah, not really. I can go on and on.
And then shitty winter weather just adds extra uncertainty to the mix.
So, you wind up outsourcing to non-local companies that actually hold their deadlines. At that point, why are you located where you are?
I suspect that when you are too far off the shipping lanes it sort of sucks the motivation out of you to be fast because anything you do will take either n hours ± 3 days. Busting your ass to do n/2 hours ± 3 days barely accomplishes anything. Best case you get it to 2 days because you can get an order in to your supplier before the daily cutoff.
The only thing that does reduce the uncertainly dramatically is having a relationship with other companies in the same space that allows you to borrow inventory back and forth, but one freeloader or egotist in the mix can screw that up.
Point is, I wonder if perhaps the ethos hasn't caught up with the expansion of overnight and 2 day shipping. Or was the over/under a scapegoat and something else is really to blame.
The small town areas have gotten used to the fact that 99.99% of their clients care more about shaving off $5 than getting something done on a deadline.
Well, you get what you incentivize.
The problem is that when someone shows up on a deadline, the systems can't adjust to accommodate.
For example, I have been in the situation where a dealership was going to hold my car for a week for a mistake that they made simply because they were going to wait for their normal parts shipment because it would cost an extra $20 to get that shipment in tomorrow from the next biggest city. Well, that's ducky, I have to be at the airport 48 hours from now, and it's a 90+ minute drive. Uber isn't an option--so I'm renting a car. Well, I'm probably willing to pay that $20, but the system can't accommodate it (not entirely true--it can--if you're big and loud like I am--but I'll still waste several hours yelling to pay them $20 instead of simply paying $20 immediately and getting back to work).
If you get enough of these annoyances piling up, the friction is simply too high. Car repair is sluggish--you need to own an extra car. Cell connections are erratic--you need local cell boosters. Internet connectivity is poor--you may be trenching a lot of fiber to connect to somewhere useful or carrying an expensive, wimpy satellite plan simply to cover outages. etc.
Business are hard and the default is failure--you don't need extra friction on top of it.