Equipment sales still going strong

“Price escalation has made it tough to have a pricing schedule to customers,” Baron says. “We’ve just been really aggressive with our inventory. That’s the best way for us to navigate it. We’ve also tried to internalize manufacturing to meet our timeline for customers.”

Availability

Says Goodfellow Corporation’s Chris Baron: “We have a number of producers looking to capex spend into 2025.” Photo: P&Q Staff

Although Dibble believes pricing is relatively stable at the moment, he is more broadly concerned as a dealer about equipment availability.

“Pricing is still escalated, but I don’t see where it’s going to get a lot worse than this,” he says. “I think from an availability standpoint that we’re still waiting to see what’s going to happen. I can see things toward the end of summer getting harder to get.

“From what we’re hearing, I think there’s certainly concern with the economy and what’s going to happen toward the end of the summer,” Dibble adds. “Guys are talking about the economy taking a turn for the worse later in the year. Obviously, nobody knows for sure. People hear stuff and they run with it. But my gut says as we get through the summer that certain things may be harder to get. I don’t know for sure, though.”

A solution to simply “not knowing” is to plan further ahead.

“We’re usually not talking about equipment for next year at this time of year,” Dibble says. “For us, that usually happens toward the middle or later part of summer. That’s when you hear: ‘That thing over there has to be replaced.’”

But those planning conversations for 2023 are already underway.

“We’re probably a couple months ahead of schedule in that regard,” says Dibble, whose company serves the Northeast. “The typical buying season has been accelerated due to supply and longer lead times.”

Harris says 2023 planning moved up in his market, as well.

“If you want to take a positive away from all of this, people have had to get more organized and do longer-term planning,” he says. “That doesn’t always solve the problem right now, but they understand the economy that we’re in and what we’re facing. The reality of the matter is if I want equipment, I’m not going to get it all this year so I can put it into the winter.”

As Dibble describes, it’s a dealer’s responsibility to regularly update customers about supply issues so they can adjust accordingly.

“They may or may not want to know,” he says. “They may be so busy running their plant or with operations. They may call and say: ‘We want to do this this year.’ But then we’re like: ‘You’re too late. We can’t get anything this year.’ And then we’ve kind of lost them in that regard.”

And for dealers, only so many sales opportunities surface in the course of a calendar year.

“There might be five jaw crushers sold in Ohio this year,” Harris says. “If you miss out on one of your five opportunities, you missed out on that potential for a number of years because the person isn’t going to call you next year asking for another.”

Featured photo: P&Q Staff

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