A survey of construction industry end-users by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers shows plans to increase construction equipment fleet sizes, staff levels and start adopting telematics technology.
The Snapshot Survey provides a generally upbeat outlook, especially among smaller companies with less than 1,000 employees.
According to Benjamin Duyck, Market Intelligence Analyst at AEM, more than 1,200 responses were obtained. After further survey pool analysis and refinement, roughly 680 were analyzed. Demographic information was captured from all respondents.
Key takeaways from the survey include:
- Roughly 40-43 percent of companies with <1,000 employees indicate that they will increase their fleet size over the next 12 months and +/-30 percent indicate they are maintaining their fleet size. Larger companies (+1,000 employees) seem to have a less positive outlook as only 25 percent are planning to increase their fleet. When asked how the companies would increase their fleet size, the uniform response was that, across the board, roughly +/-36 percent of companies would achieve this by renting, or buying and renting. The majority of fleet increases would still be achieved through buying.
- More of the smaller companies (based on employment size) seem to be planning to increase staff levels compared to the larger (1,000+ employee) companies.
- Companies who listed Lifting or Hoisting as one of their product categories seemed to be more positive about the future. While overall, 40-45 percent of companies indicated that they planned to increase their fleet, 54 percent of those that listed Lifting or Hoisting indicated growth. Across the board, there seemed to be little difference between the product categories with regards to the decision to increase the fleet size through renting and renting/buying.
- Across the equipment categories the amount of core equipment people might rent is roughly the same. However, when we look at the employee breakout, we notice that smaller companies (<1,000 employee) are more inclined to rent core equipment. This is a logical assumption as these smaller companies need more flexibility to remain competitive and might have less CAPEX to buy equipment.