Crawler crane manufacturers are nearly ready to restart a programme to compare US and Canada sales data.
The programme, organised by the US Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), was suspended at the end of 1999 when several manufacturers stopped sending data.
But in February, Terex Cranes, Kobelco, Link-Belt and Manitowoc were nearing the end of talks to restart sharing US and Canada retail sales of crawler cranes. Also, Liebherr is planning to contribute North American crawler crane sales data for the first time.
The data sharing system, which helps manufacturers estimate their market share, is anonymous. Respondents send in the number of machines sold in size classes. The AEM adds up all of these figures and sends the sales data, organised by US state and Canadian province, to participating manufacturers.
The programme is expected to begin by reporting the first three quarters of 2005. ‘Hopefully we will have everything in place by the end of March,’ said Howard Lyndon, Terex Cranes’s retired general manager of product services, now employed as a consultant. Data would be shared monthly.
‘The plan that has been in development for 18 months was to report January ‘05. We have pretty much everybody in agreement, but there are still minor issues to be worked out,’ he told Cranes Today.
He said that the group is waiting for data from one of the manufacturers in the group, but would not say which. No information will be released until all the manufacturers participate, he said.
Manitowoc’s vice president of worldwide marketing, Larry Bryce, told Cranes Today that a sticking point is how to report the numbers. ‘Everyone has different strengths and different bases and everyone is cautious about giving too much information that could be deciphered by competitors.’ He said that generally Manitowoc is a proponent of the data sharing system, provided all the contributors report. ‘Everyone has to report in the same way. There can’t be holdouts.’
The group has been expanded by one since 1999 – Liebherr. Liebherr Nenzing only sold its first crawler crane in the US (a LR 1250) in the late 1990s, according to marketing manager Wolfgang Pfister, though he says sales have grown quickly since.
Pfister said that Liebherr Nenzing and Liebherr Ehingen are willing to share crawler data in the North American market with a view to developing worldwide sales data. (Nenzing manufactures crawlers up to 300t capacity; Ehingen makes heavier crawlers). ‘We know approximately our standing, and what Kobelco is delivering, but it is not very accurate – the market is not very transparent,’ he said.
‘It is good to see what you’re missing,’ says Scott Moreland, Liebherr Nenzing vice president of sales. He said it was also useful for analysing the market for product opportunities. ‘By the same token, if you’re hitting the market with something that nobody else is, you won’t want it disclosed. It’s a double-edged sword.’
At the end of 1998, Liebherr Nenzing stopped reporting sales data to European construction equipment manufacturers’ association CECE because Sennebogen and Manitowoc pulled out, Pfister said.
The AEM does organise global data sharing by cooperating with CECE and Japanese equipment manufacturer association CEMA. Once domestic data sharing is re-established, the AEM would contact CECE and CEMA about exchanging crawler crane sales data. Data would be shared quarterly.
In addition to data from the first quarter of 2005, the crawler manufacturers are contributing sales data since 2000, so that a complete market picture can be seen. Lyndon said that getting the older data distributed was less of a priority than publishing the new figures.
