Increasing fuel costs, tightening emissions regulations and new, sophisticated technologies are changing the landscape of earthmoving equipment. According to these eight industry experts earthmoving machines are easier to operate, easier to maintain, more fuel efficient and more technologically sophisticated than ever before.

Kevin Bellows, John Deere Construction & Forestry Division, manager of product marketing

Mark Wall, Hitachi and John Deere, product marketing manager for excavators

Paul Golevicz, Kobelco, brand marketing manager

Ed Samera, Terex Construction Americas, vice president

Bud Martin, Terramite Corp., sales manager

Buddy Goodman, Volvo Construction Equipment, Hauler Loader, team leader, product specialist
John Bartz, Volvo Construction Equipment, Hauler Loader, product planning

Adrian Hall, JCB The Americas, market development manager

Bill Seidel, vice president, global product & brand marketing, Case Construction Equipment

RER: What does the overall earthmoving equipment market look like? For which type of earthmoving equipment are sales growing most rapidly and why?

Bellows: The market has softened a bit and is primarily impacted by the downturn in the housing market. This has had a cascading effect on certain segments of the business, such as the rental and landscape markets. Business continues to be strong in the larger earthmoving equipment such as large wheel loaders, excavators and dozers, driven in part by larger infrastructure-related projects, with particular growth in the resources/oil and gas arenas. CTLs continue to be a hot product as contractors gain confidence in the application flexibility of this machine and the expanding lineup of sizes and brand offerings.

Wall: There is a lot of interest in oil exploration and pipeline projects but, in general, I’d have to agree with the consensus that the market is probably softening just a little bit.
Speaking from an excavator point of view, I feel fortunate because I don’t think the excavator market drops as fast as the rest of the market. We see the decline, but not as quickly as some of the other types of machines.

Golevicz: If you define the earthmoving market in terms of excavation, the market is still fairly strong overall, with the exception of housing, which has slowed down considerably over the past 12 months. Other markets, including commercial, are holding steady.

Martin: We are seeing a steady growth in the compact TLB market. Customers are realizing that the smaller machines once built to replace manual labor make more sense and are more cost effective than the larger machines. Fitting the proper-sized machine to the job is critical. This is particularly true since lot size and multi-family dwellings are being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas.

Goodman: If we look at the U.S. market, for the first half of the year it’s been kind of flat for everything and we’re expecting on the second half of the year that there should be a rise about equal to ’06 in the total market, give or take.

Hall: Overall the North American market year to date is down 14 percent, although there are some products that are experiencing growth. The mini excavators and ADT’s have seen market increases. Agricultural lines are also slightly up due to an increasing use of palatable loads. The commercial sector is seeing some up trends as well.

Seidel: Unfortunately, construction equipment manufacturers are all wrestling with the fact that demand in North America is off somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 15 percent, depending on market. The market for heavy equipment has faired better than light equipment.
The biggest market growth is in mid-sized excavators and compact excavators. Midi-excavators are up nearly 30 percent, despite the otherwise down market, and the compact excavator market just keeps growing. When work projects get harder to come by, contractors will take on smaller jobs — both physically smaller jobs that require more compact machines and jobs that don’t require the heavy capital investment needed for larger projects. Rental is another solution, as contractors look for ways to get the work done without necessarily investing the capital required to purchase equipment.

RER: What kinds of improvements do customers most often ask for to help them make their jobs easier (regarding ergonomics, productivity, performance, etc.)?

Bellows: North American contractors are very focused on uptime, productivity and safety. They are regularly looking for machine improvements in these areas to maximize output and utilization. Skilled operators are increasingly difficult to find and retain ,and directly impact these key drivers, so contractors look for machines that are simpler and more intuitive to operate (simpler, more ergonomic controls and/or operator skill aids such as auto-functions, grade control, etc.), have better visibility and built-in safety and abuse-protection measures (safety lock-outs, keyless operation), and are more comfortable for extended-hour operation. Contractors with larger fleets and more spread-out operations are also very interested in machine remote monitoring capabilities so they can better track the status of their equipment and their less experienced operators, and better plan their scheduled maintenance.

Wall: Let’s start with a little history here. John Deere has a unique process for developing machines. We have customer involvement at a very early stage of our development. As a matter of fact, even before we start putting pens on paper, or I guess lines on computer screens now, we have customers come in to get their opinions about the current machine along with the competition to find out what they like and don’t like. From there, we start doing concepts. Then, we bring customers back in throughout the design process and ask them if we’ve understood and implemented what they told us.