Stats on washing machines

[frontloadfan]

I spent some time surfing, trying to find out the sales figure for washing machines is in the United States. I found one site, and they have a report on US washing machine sale for 2004. Problem is, you can only access the index as to actually access the report you have to pay like $295.

So I figured I would save some money and see if any of you know, what are the sales figures for both Top Loaders and Front Loaders here in the US?

 

[DADoES]

I bought one Fisher & Paykel IWL12 toploader in October 2004.

 

[gansky1]

8,831,700 automatic washers were shipped from factories to US markets in 2004, including Glenn's.

http://www.appliancemagazine.com/editorial.php?article=717

 

[Designgeek]

And *fourteen million* microwaves and *eleven million* fridges! Holy cow!

Assume 250 million Americans, and if average household size is three people, that's 83 million households... 8.8 million washers in a year means on average they get replaced about every ten years.... the microwaves every five years... and the fridges somewhere in between (I would have thought fridges lasted longer, but OTOH these must be getting swapped out for higher-efficiency models).

Numbers like that are cause for awe at the degree of industrial capacity it takes to do that, and a certain amount of worry about how we're going to keep doing it in a world of finite resources.... all the better that folks here know how to restore the oldies.

(Here's me wanting to swap the energy-hogging hulk of a fridge I have here for a new SunFrost but can't afford to do it at the moment....)