This year, the overriding mood of the triennial CONEXPO-CON/AGG equipment trade show was one of guarded optimism. Crowds poured into the Las Vegas Convention Center on March 7-11, but many were window-shopping. Equipment manufacturers brought out their latest machines with the highest-tech solutions but also were careful to offer more economically priced items for the rental customer. It was a record-sized show, but some of the biggest draws were displays of far-in-the-future technology.

Attendance at the show topped the 2014 event head count, with nearly 128,000 people walking the show floor. Attendees included an 8% increase in buyers over 2014, according to show organizers.

“Exhibitors are writing sales at an incredible pace, and attendees clearly came to Las Vegas to buy,” said 2017 CONEXPO chair Rich Goldsbury, also CEO and president of Doosan Bobcat’s North America and Oceania division.

Making up roughly 20% of the audience and facing a strong dollar and export costs, the show’s international attendees could indicate broader global growth in the equipment market. “Last year, the global market overall fell 5%, and we feel very strongly that was the bottom of the cycle,” Chris Sleight, senior consultant with U.K.-based Off-Highway Research (OHR), told ENR. “This year, we’re looking at probably 7% global growth overall.” OHR forecasts sales of more than 695,000 pieces of equipment in 2017, surpassing the estimated 650,133 pieces of equipment sold in 2016. Looking at the U.S. market, OHR attributed slow sales growth in 2016 to nervousness over the presidential election and expects steady growth in U.S. equipment sales in the next few years.

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美国设备数字

Commissioned by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and released at CONEXPO, a study estimates that, in 2016, direct and indirect sales of off-highway equipment and ancillary products contributed to the U.S. economy $416.2 billion, out of approximately $31.3 trillion in total sales activity in the U.S. from all economic sectors.

AEM’s study, conducted by IHS Economics, measures the economic contribution the industry makes to the broader economy in terms of jobs supported, contribution to GDP and taxes.

IHS董事总经理Scott Hazelton说：“展望未来，我们看到了改进的建筑，农业和设备行业的基本面。”

Hazelton说，新利luck尽管这项研究表明，2016年，设备行业在美国直接雇用了424,000名员工来生产非公路设备，但当包括间接和诱发的就业捐款时，该行业支持130万工人。直接雇用的人的平均收入高出78,000美元，比全国平均水平高出58％。

AEM计划使用这些数据游说特朗普政府和国会。AEM Industries Inc. AEM董事长兼总裁Michael Haberman说：“该报告明确指出，一个主要的基础设施方案将对设备制造业以及美国的整个经济产生重大好处。”

AEM还将推动税收改革和放松的监管要求。哈伯曼说：“税收改革可能会对我们的业务和客户的业务造成非常好的资本涌入。”“如果增加了税收负担，那么有很多客户不介意额外的机​​器。”


研发努力改变普通铁

Equipment sales have been slow in recent years. A drop in construction due to the Great Recession was followed by an upward creep in prices to absorb the shift to Tier 4 Final emissions standards. But with signs of recovery in U.S. construction spending and possible renewed public investment in infrastructure, equipment makers rolled out new compact and small crossover machines to show potential buyers what they have been working on in the lab.

Case Construction Equipment launched the DL450, a compact track loader with a full dozer blade and linkage. Code-named Project Minotaur, it is only a concept machine and will not be available until next year, at the earliest. “It’s a very practical evolution of two product lines,” says Scott Harris, Case CE vice president for North America. “It provides the power and performance of a small dozer in a platform that will also work as a loader and run the attachments that a contractor currently owns for their skid steers and compact track loaders.”

JCB用Teleskid在其展位上转过头来，Teleskid是一个紧凑的滑动车轮装载机，带有望远镜繁荣。该机器可以比可比的CTL或打滑器延伸到更远的范围，并在其机箱下方挖一米，这是一个行业。“这个行业本质上是相当保守的。但是，当客户看到一台无法做其他机器无法做到的机器时，说服他们去坐下来购买机器非常容易。” JCB首席执行官Graeme MacDonald说。

“Already, we’ve seen a lot of interest in the TeleSkid, so I’m convinced we can not only take more share of the market but actually grow the market itself.”

Innovative designs weren’t limited to compact equipment at the show. While large heavy equipment, such as excavators and wheel loaders, updated emissions controls and fuel-saving measures, the work-truck market saw some new developments. Ardco unveiled the AMT 400 and AMT 600 articulated, multipurpose trucks that easily can swap out different work bodies as needed. The two-seater articulated truck chassis can accept a wide range of work bodies, including a flatbed, water tank, drill bed, dump bed or a fuel-and-lube set. The different beds can be switched using only a crane or forklift.


全球的Equipment Looks to Growth

In a reversal from recent years, activity in China is a bright spot in global equipment sales. “China is seeing a genuine recovery. There’s some solid investment plans going on in China now,” says OHR’s Sleight. “We’ve seen—last quarter of last year and first couple of months of this year—that excavator sales, in particular, have gone up very steeply.”

Zeng Guang’an, chairman of China-based Liugong Machinery Co., echoed this point of view. “In the past five years, the global construction equipment market has changed, especially in China,” he told reporters at CONEXPO. “In the last half of 2016, the market in China was booming, and, in the first two months, our excavator orders have seen a 300% increase.”

Zeng attributed this turnaround to government investment, urbanization and China’s recovering mining sector. “We believe that we will continue to see strong demand for the next few years,” he said.

“跳(中国挖掘机)可能是一个提单ip, but it does follow a trend of growth,” observes Sleight, who notes that there is still a long way to go. “In five years, China might get to 170,000 machines [sold a year], but, in 2011, it was nearly half a million pieces of equipment. There is distress there and overcapacity.”

但是，随着中国在印度和日本的恢复和积极的迹象，预测美国建筑的增长可能只是全球设备销售增长的单一组成部分。

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