A look at how the year’s unexpectedly buoyant construction market influenced equipment sales
By Chris Sleight — PowerProgress.com
At the start of the year, Trendlines looked at how some expected and unexpected factors added up to a surprisingly buoyant U.S. construction market in 2023. The CHIPS act stimulated some huge factory construction projects, housebuilding stayed resilient despite rising interest rates and infrastructure construction started to tick upwards.
As I write this, Off-Highway Research is finalizing its data on construction equipment sales last year, and the results reflect the strong underlying drivers. Preliminary results suggest sales were up 8% in 2023 to take the market to over 305,000 units sold. It was the third consecutive record year for construction equipment sales and the first time ever that more than 300,000 construction machines were sold in the U.S.This was all very much at odds with markets elsewhere in the world, most of which fell back slightly in 2023 from the very high levels that were achieved the previous year. For example, equipment sales in Canada dropped around 5% in 2023 and the European market was down by a similar amount.
Top performers
In the U.S., the growth was robust and most of the individual product categories saw increased sales. There were no declines in sales for any machine types – the “weak” performers just stayed at the same high levels achieved in 2022.