The report that came out last week from IHI Global Insights (see more detail at http://rermag.com/trends_analysis/headlinenews/construction-job-loss-study-100209) was fascinating in considering the depth of the recession in the construction equipment industry, which has suffered 8 percent of the job losses during the recession in the United States. That's an amazing number, and it's far more than have been lost in the automobile manufacturing industry, which has gotten an immense amount of media attention. I don't know how many commentaries I've read about the potential for catastrophe should one of the Big Three go out of business and how the government bailing it out is almost a matter of national survival (bringing back the old saying ‘what's good for General Motors is good for the U.S.A.). And how many have pointed out the potential number of vendors to the car manufacturers that would suffer, the number of people that would go out of work, and on and on.
But I've heard little mention of the impact on the economy of the construction equipment industry, which is so much larger. It could be that the car manufacturing industry simply touches everybody's life in a different way. We can all relate to it because we all buy cars. So everybody pays at least a little attention to automobile manufacturing. We all know something about GM cars, about Fords, about Dodges and Buicks and Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs and Cadillacs. We've all driven many of them, ridden in them, seen them every day and perhaps discussed their relative pros and cons in relation to Japanese or European competitors. Much of U.S. popular culture revolves around cars — they are sung about in rock and roll songs, they are an iconic symbol of modern life. Movies are made about them. Learning to drive is a critical rite of passage, driving is a part of growing up. And it's part of our daily life.
Obviously people don't have the same relationship to construction equipment so what happens to this industry doesn't capture the popular imagination the same way. I'm not sure that if the Beatles had written “Baby, You Can Drive My Mini-Excavator” it would have done as well as “Drive My Car.” Perhaps Bruce Springsteen's “Pink Cadillac” was originally meant to be “Pink Wheel Loader,” and Prince changed his fine “Little Red Skid-Steer Loader” to “Corvette” at the last moment. Wilson Pickett's “Mustang Sally,” let the truth be told at last, was really about Mustang's line of skid-steer loaders, and Janis Joplin's line about “Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz” was originally written about a ride-on trencher but she couldn't get it to rhyme with anything.
Well, I think you get my point by now, but the reality is, would there not be some dramatic reverberations on the U.S. economy if such icons as Caterpillar and John Deere and Briggs & Stratton were in trouble? How about Terex and JLG and Bobcat, are they not important? Do not hundreds of suppliers and vendors depend on relationships with those companies? Are not many thousands employed by them, and how many thousands have lost their jobs already because of their cutbacks?
Another point is that construction equipment is used for things that are useful. How badly we need to shore up infrastructure, repair our roads and bridges, expand transit systems, so many contributions to our quality of life.
Neither I nor anybody else is asking for government intervention to bail out construction equipment manufacturers. But what we'd like to see is stimulus money being spent on badly needed infrastructure that will improve our quality of life, help this country prepare for the future and put people back to work.
Now, if I could only find the keys to my D-9, I'd have a productive day. I hope it's a productive day for you all as well.
