I almost thought I’d arrived at Bauma,” was Caterpillar chairman and CEO Glen Barton’s reaction when he arrived at the Conexpo show ground in Las Vegas in March. With the USA construction industry in strong shape, Conexpo-Con/Agg ’99 broke its own records with about 121,000 visitors and 1,883 exhibitors.
Such events are usually regarded as showcases at which exhibitors generate sales leads. But this one proved to be unusually strong for actual deals struck on site.
“I would have to rate Conexpo-Con/Agg ’99 as the best Conexpo from an exhibitor’s point of view since the 1981 Conexpo in Houston, Texas,” says Ron Dogotch of Tadano America Corporation. “Most importantly, the attendees came with their chequebooks in their hands and exhibitors booked record sales compared to the three previous Conexpos in Las Vegas.” Dogotch says that Tadano received “32 firm purchase orders during the show and more than 100 solid qualified sales leads as a result of the show”.
“This Conexpo was more of a selling show than we have experienced in the past,” concurs Grove Worldwide market support director John Bittner. “We had an outstanding show in terms of interest and activity on stand and sales exceeded our expectations because of the particular interest in our many new models. Sales were very good in all three Grove product lines and approached the $50m mark for all products for the week.”
Born to lift
Manitowoc, too, took unexpected orders on its stand, for more than 30 cranes, totalling more than $25m in value.
Ringhaver Equipment, a recent addition to Manitowoc’s distribution network, ordered 16 cranes, including five 888s (230 US ton capacity), a 777T truck crane (220 US ton), two 777 crawlers (175 US ton), six 222 crawlers (100 US ton) and two 111s (80 US ton).
All Erection & Crane Rental placed orders for a 2250, two 888s and two 777T truck cranes. It also took delivery of the exhibited model 21000, the massive 900t capacity crawler that dominated Manitowoc’s display and was probably the largest single piece of machinery at the show. Anthony Crane also ordered a 2100 and two 777Ts.
Few cranes attracted as much attention as the 21000, which at any one time had at least half a dozen visitors climbing all over its body. Imagine the impact had it been equipped with full boom for the show! Manitowoc also made an impact with its imaginative promotional initiatives, which went way beyond the usual pens and keyrings to the temporary tattoos (or transfers) bearing the company’s logo with the legend “Born to Lift”. Children, and one or two adults, needed no encouragement to rub them onto their arms.
Coming of age
Terex Lifting, which showed 50 separate pieces of equipment, took orders for about $75m, said president Fil Filipov, fully justifying the $1.5m outlay on exhibiting and entertaining distributors and customers. In fact, sales made by Terex Lifting during the week were about the same value as the sales it made in the full year of 1995. Terex’s offering was notable less for the actual product on show – almost all of what was claimed to be new was actually only new to North America, or was a different boom on an old body – than for the sheer range of products: crawlers, towers, truck cranes, boom trucks, rough terrain cranes, scissors lifts, boom lifts, telehandlers and reachstackers.
For Filipov, Conexpo ’99 represented something of a personal triumph. Perhaps because of the international nature of Terex’s manufacturing operations, or perhaps because of the speed at which the group has grown, many Americans had failed to realise quite how diverse Terex now is, Filipov said. In Las Vegas there was equipment manufactured at several locations across the USA as well as Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.
Four of the eight tower cranes on show were Terex product: a Peiner SK 315, a Comedil GTS 511 city crane, a CBR 32 self-erector, and a CTT 331 flat-top. The other four were shown by Potain (a self-erector and an MDT flat-top), Liebherr and Comansa (an LC 2074).
Contrast that with just the one tower crane exhibited at the last Conexpo in 1996, by Liebherr. Potain’s presence heralded the establishment of a new US subsidiary, Potain Corporation based in Miami, from where a push into Latin America will also be launched in due course.
Big noises
Link-Belt drew attention to its display by loudly revving the engine of a Link-Belt-sponsored Nascar saloon racing car several times a day, much to the consternation of neighbouring exhibitors. The car drew a certain amount of interest, but in truth it was not entirely necessary, given the quality of crane product that Link-Belt displayed. Grove showed more cranes, Manitowoc showed a bigger crane, but no one exhibited more all-new, never-seen-before cranes. The six new Link-Belt cranes comprised: two crawlers (the 80 US ton LS-138II and the 250 US ton LS-278H); a truck crane (the 40 US ton HTC-8640); and three rough terrain models (RTC 8030, 8040 and 8070, the latter of which, at 70 US ton capacity, is the largest RT that Link-Belt has ever produced). The key feature of the new RTs is the new carrier featuring automotive-style four-link suspension at the rear, with the patented Hydro-gas ride as an option – “the best ride in the business,” according to marketing & sales director Bill Stramer.
Link-Belt’s distributors got their first sight of the six new models last November at a Conexpo preview meeting and the cranes were then shared with end-users. By the end of the Conexpo show orders in hand for the new models exceeded 300 units, says Stramer.
It was no coincidence that next to Link-Belt was Mannesmann Dematic which, in spite of showing just a single crane, managed to attract plenty of attention by making it the 650t all-terrain AC 650. The proximity of the Link-Belt and Mannesmann Dematic stands was designed to coincide with the announcement of a working agreement between the two companies. As reported previously in Cranes Today, in the end no deal could be agreed.
Mannesmann Dematic suffered a further blow just before the show when it lost its USA chief, Roland Hammer, who proceeded to work the Liebherr stand as the new sales and marketing vice president of Liebherr’s mobile crane distributor Schiller International.
But Mannesmann Dematic was not without success during the week, concluding the sale of a CC 5600 crawler to Marino Crane of Connecticut for a sum between $6m and $7m.
The 21 machines on Grove Worldwide’s stand included four new models from Grove Crane. Among these was the RT 530E, a 30 US ton rough terrain crane on which much depends. It has been brought to market in what for Grove is record time – 12 months – and has been dubbed by some “the Terex buster” as Grove hopes it will win back market share from Terex in the Middle East and Africa. Production begins in June but orders are already stacking up: 50 before the start of Conexpo, 70 by the end. Also new from Grove was the German-built 180t all-terrain GMK 5180 (badged 5210 in North America, 210 US ton), a 15 US ton YardBoss 4415 industrial crane, and the hybrid all-wheel steer and drive ATS 540 truck crane (see Trucks and booms p36).
Asian offerings
Also much in evidence were Japanese manufacturers, looking to grow exports to compensate for the downturn in their home market. Tadano, Kobelco and Sumitomo (which owns Link-Belt) are already active in North America. New from Tadano was the TR 650 XXL-3, a 65 US ton capacity rough terrain crane with a 42.2m boom. Also shown were the 30 US ton capacity TR 300XL-3, launched in the USA last year, and American versions of the 60t and 120t all-terrain Tadano Faun models built in Germany. In North America they are badged ATF 650-XL (given a double winch and wider tyres) and ATF 1500-XL. Tadano also introduced the TMZF 294, a 2.9t capacity, 360O continuous rotation loader crane mounted on a pick-up truck. The unit on show had been sold to Procrane of Canada.
Kobelco showed its new CK 1000, a 90t (100 US ton) crawler crane that goes against Link-Belt’s LS-218H and Manitowoc’s 222. The CK 1000 has a maximum boom length of 61m (200ft) and 66m+21m (190ft+60ft) boom and jib combination. Rated line pull is 11.4t (24,255 lbs). Five units were sold off the stand during the show.
It was unfortunate for Hitachi that it had to make do with a video presentation of its cranes’ capabilities rather than have an actual crane on display, for Conexpo marked the launch of its marketing efforts for cranes into North America, offering models of 70t, 90t, 110t, 180t and 200t. It is aiming for sales of at least 20 units a year.
A Japanese crawler in disguise was an 80t IHI model, which was wearing Terex/American Crane colours and badged as an HC 80. It is one of several models that IHI is supplying to American Crane. It was on show alongside American Crane’s own new HC 210, a reconfigured version of the old AC 1500, with the back end reworked to give a shorter tailswing. Even though this makes it less efficient, it seems to be what customers want, American has decided. The 210 US ton capacity crawler crane has 85m of main boom (280ft) and 107m (350ft) of boom and jib combination. It claims to be “the fastest set-up luffing crane in its class”. Six units have been shipped to date.
