“Although the economy is recovering from the effects of the pandemic, equipment managers are only slightly more confident that a full recovery is on the way,” says Rod Sutton, editorial director. “It continues to be difficult to predict where the general economy will go, and the ongoing infrastructure debates are not helping. A confidence index in this range is encouraging, however.
“According to our mid-year update to our 2021 Annual Report & Forecast, about 40 percent of equipment managers are lowering their expectations for the year,” Sutton says. “Fleet condition is also weakening a bit, with some equipment managers struggling to maintain ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’ fleet status.”
The Equipment Management Confidence Index is published and available to the entire industry at ConstructionEquipment.com/EMCI. Other data trends are available only to members of the Index group. For example, confidence that the economy will be better in upcoming months crept past 100 for the first time since the pandemic hit in March 2020.
Additional insights available to members:
- Overall economy health
- Current fleet health: now v. last year
- Future fleet health: now v. next year
- Equipment acquisition: better or worse to buy new
- Equipment disposition: better or worse time to sell used
- External rental: better or worse time to rent
- Peer to peer rental: better or worse time to generate revenue
- Planned maintenance: spend more or less than last year
- Rebuilds: more or less likely than last year
In addition to the Confidence Index, members of the platform also provide opinions on trends within asset management, including acquisition expectations, rental plans, and maintenance. In the third quarter, for example, the index showed that managers are not looking at the next few weeks as a good time to buy new equipment. With the free access, managers can see how the trend is unfolding and compare themselves to others in the platform.
Equipment end users can have access to these insights for free. Others, such as manufacturers or dealers, may gain access to the data as observers by registering here. The next Index computation occurs at the end of September. Equipment managers can join the group anytime this month in order to provide opinions and access quarter-over-quarter trends. Baromitr’s visualization features also allow members to analyze performance and compare how they are doing relative to others in the group.
The data-driven Index is powered by Baromitr, a scalable, peer-benchmarking platform. The Equipment Manager Confidence Index is a custom algorithm that combines multiple inputs to calculate a score from 0 to 200. The higher it is, the more confident equipment managers are.
