With our April edition, we are taking a broad view of heavy equipment and trucking sales using the industry’s best Q1 2024 and Q1 2023 data. We’ll look at pricing & volume trends for most major construction, aerial, and transportation equipment categories.
Volumes levels rise for most construction categories
In the United States, we saw volumes increase for many construction equipment categories, including articulated dump trucks, dozers, wheel loaders, skid steers, motor graders, multi-terrain loaders, and scissor lifts. In many cases this has impacted median pricing for these assets.
Large hydraulic excavator volumes was an outlier, with a decrease in volume and median pricing in Q1 2024. There was also a decrease in median pricing in the United States for articulated dump trucks, wheel loaders, telehandlers, and multi-terrain loaders. Skid Steers and boom lifts saw a significant decrease in prices last quarter, while backhoe loaders had steady volume compared to the Q1 2023, with a slight decrease in median pricing.
In Canada, volume increases were prevalent across the board, including articulated dump trucks, dozers, hydraulic excavators, wheel loaders, boom lifts, scissor lifts, and forklifts. The volume spike was more significant for motor graders, backhoe loaders, and multi-terrain loaders.
For the transportation sector, truck tractors increased significantly in volume for both the United States and Canada. Adversely, the median pricing was down for both regions, where the top brands were Freightliner and International.
Price Index Summary shows depreciation
In the United States, Ritchie Bros.’ mix-adjusted price indexes for the three months ending March 31, 2024, show that prices for used large and medium earthmoving categories are down by approximately 6% and 17%, respectively. Meanwhile, truck tractor prices were down 22% and aerial equipment dropped to 13% (compared to 7% for the three months ending March 31, 2023).
Earthmoving equipment was also down in Canada by approximately 6% for large earth moving and 11% for medium earth moving for the three months ending March 31, 2024. Truck tractors were down 4% but aerial and vocational trucks didn’t show significant change compared to the same time frame last year.
Retail environment insights
Retail environment Retail sales volume in Q1 2024 was 16% higher than historical averages.
Volume trends for aerial and material handling equipment is running above historical trends, while earthmoving equipment was lower than historical trends.
Retail Values have been slowly declining for the last 18 months, following record highs during the supply-constrained pandemic. Values at the end of the Q1 2024 were 15% lower year-over-year, which was 25% lower than their pandemic highs.
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