It’s more ripple than tsunami, but there’s been an increase in sales of excavators toward the upper end of the midsize category. Why? No one’s sure.
“It could be that there are more larger projects,” says Kurt Moncini, large excavator product manager for Komatsu America. “It could be acceptance of Tier 4 Final technology. It could be aging fleet replacements. Ease of transportability may play a role. While there have been no huge changes in performance there has been an overall leveraging of machine intelligence, but that’s true of all size classes.”
Some of this shift may result from variations in the rate of recovery of markets, says Rob Palermo, excavator product manager for North America with Volvo Construction Equipment. Buyers of 35- to 50-ton machines are in production, quarries and heavy and highway construction where government money has helped sustain the market.
Shane Reardon, excavator product specialist with Doosan Infracore, also cites a disparity in recovery rates of various markets as a factor. “The 20- to 25-ton class used to be one of the largest in volume but that has changed to the 35-ton class,” he says.
“Markets that the 35-ton machines go into have recovered faster and are growing faster than the other size class markets. The single-unit housing market has been slow to recover while commercial construction and infrastructure have been faster to come back. Roads have to be fixed regardless of economic conditions.”
While Reardon thinks there will be no pullback in the market for 35- to 50-metric ton excavators, he’s not sure whether that size class will continue to grow or merely plateau.
