Decisions, decisions

By Marcia Gruver Doyle and Mike Anderson

As most contractors enter their fourth year of uncertain work, equipment choices become more critical. Some key factors to consider as you determine your 2012 equipment strategies:

Why buy new?

Aging, slowing fleets best remedied by buying new, efficient equipment

By Mike Anderson

The 30-metric-ton excavator you place your top operator into this season will be the most productive – and deliver the most revenue – if it rolled off the assembly line dangling a tag with your name on it.

Buying a brand new machine means buying the best machine available at this particular time, say equipment manufacturers. And this remains the most compelling reason for contractors to do exactly that when adding to or turning over their fleets in 2012, despite announced price increases by manufacturers due to enhanced technologies to meet new emissions requirements.

“The competitive nature of the market requires us to improve the productivity of the machines.”

“There have been a lot of improvements to the equipment other than just complying with Tier 4 Interim emissions standards,” says Bruce Boebel, crawler dozers product manager for Komatsu America. Whether it’s articulated dump trucks with traction control systems, dozers with lockup torque converters or excavators with factory-installed telematics solutions, the construction equipment rumbling out of factories now is the most proficient, fuel-efficient and productive it’s ever been, says Boebel. “It’s not merely to meet the new emissions standards,” concurs Lee Haak, a former Komatsu America product manager who now heads up the company’s used sales side with Komatsu Remarketing. “The competitive nature of the market requires us to improve the productivity of the machines.

“A guy who’s holding on to a five-year-old machine isn’t going to enjoy a lot of the technology now available,” says Haak.

With the arrival of Tier 4 emissions requirements, “the machines are just different than they were before,” says Dennis Slater, president of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. “You have a lot of effort being put in to mak

The 30-metric-ton excavator you place your top operator into this season will be the most productive – and deliver the most revenue – if it rolled off the assembly line dangling a tag with your name on it.

Buying a brand new machine means buying the best machine available at this particular time, say equipment manufacturers. And this remains the most compelling reason for contractors to do exactly that when adding to or turning over their fleets in 2012, despite announced price increases by manufacturers due to enhanced technologies to meet new emissions requirements.

“There have been a lot of improvements to the equipment other than just complying with Tier 4 Interim emissions standards,” says Bruce Boebel, crawler dozers product manager for Komatsu America. Whether it’s articulated dump trucks with traction control systems, dozers with lockup torque converters or excavators with factory-installed telematics solutions, the construction equipment rumbling out of factories now is the most proficient, fuel-efficient and productive it’s ever been, says Boebel. “It’s not merely to meet the new emissions standards,” concurs Lee Haak, a former Komatsu America product manager who now heads up the company’s used sales side with Komatsu Remarketing. “The competitive nature of the market requires us to improve the productivity of the machines.

“A guy who’s holding on to a five-year-old machine isn’t going to enjoy a lot of the technology now available,” says Haak.

With the arrival of Tier 4 emissions requirements, “the machines are just different than they were before,” says Dennis Slater, president of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. “You have a lot of effort being put in to making the machine not only more fuel efficient, but also able to do more in less time.” Contractors have learned to be “lean and mean,” says Slater, “and machine efficiency is going to be a key part of that moving ahead.”