Machines Continue to Roll

In an Uncertain Market, New Equipment Incentives Give Pros Fresh Opportunities

Despite the doomsday forecasts of armchair economists, machine heads marched on this trade show season. Starting with World of Concrete in January and culminating in CONEXPO-CON/AGG in March, record numbers of equipment professionals brought their eyes, ears and almighty dollars to purchase equipment from the North American marketplace; almost 150,000 people attended CONEXPO (the biggest construction equipment trade show in the world in 2008). With machine season in full swing (The Work Truck Show and The Rental Show get big nods as well), manufacturers cut new edges with bold products to attract new customers.

This year especially, expanding compact machine categories emerged from the trade show morass. Small and steely telehandlers are invading America more and more, highlighted by the JLG (G5-18A) and Caterpillar alliance (TH255), both now manufacturing compact telehandlers in Shippensburg, Pa. Revolving from tool carriers to single-application machines, Compact Power and Toro focused on growing the rental base with their first dedicated trenchers — Toro’s TRX-15 and TRX-19 tracked trenchers and Compact Power’s Boxer 118. Suddenly, compact wheel loaders are storming American jobsites like never before, as manufacturers like Gehl (AWS46), Wacker Neuson (WL Series) and Caterpillar (906H and 908H) brought out new models of these bucket-biased, compact construction titans.

Manufacturers are diversifying their equipment offerings, reaching out to new markets to weather any economic downturn that might affect slowing sectors like the residential market. At CONEXPO, I sat down with ASV president Mark Glasnapp to discuss the recent acquisition by Terex, but we also touched on the future of the equipment industry.

“At our October dealers meeting and at our dealer council meeting this week at CONEXPO, we spent more time talking about what opportunities are outside of the housing market,” Glasnapp said. “We are turning our focus to forestry applications and brush cutting with our bigger machines. We’re pushing golf course and power line maintenance. Despite whatever you see on the housing side, the commercial and non-private public spending is continuing to go along at a pretty good clip. There’s a lot of opportunity out there and we’re going to go after it.”

To help further persuade professionals to start pulling out their pocketbooks, the government has added depreciation bonuses and expensing provisions to its recent H.R. 5140 Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. The bill allows businesses to write off an additional 50 percent of the value of new investment expenditures in 2008 for items subject to current depreciation law. The remaining value of these investments would be depreciated over the life of the item. Additionally, small businesses would be allowed to write off the entire cost of new investment expenditures up to $250,000. Read more about rental tax incentives on page 8 of this issue and online at www.compactequip.com.

For contractors, dealers, rental houses, municipalities, utilities, homeowners and all of those constructive machine-intensive industries, it’s a great time to purchase a new piece of compact equipment. When the forecast is looking cold and questionable, it’s always wise to have a few extra irons in the fire.

Keith Gribbins
Managing Editor
kgribbins@benjaminmedia.com

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