Glen Tellock
Analyst · Buckingham Research Group.
Well, there's a couple of things in there, Joel, that I think you're getting at is, one is the E&C companies. When you look at the backlogs of the E&C companies, they're substantial. And you combine that with what I think one of the articles in the USA Today was the amount of cash that's sitting on the sidelines. I had a conversation with a customer yesterday that said this is the first time in his 40-year career that all the projects, that heavy equipment, that the equipment that's working that's on, not one of them is privately funded. It's either a stimulus package job or it's something for the government. And he said he's never seen that, both the people he talks to and the people he works with, the backlog is there, the demand is there, they're just waiting to see what's going to happen from an economic standpoint. So there's a lot of things that are out there that cash is available. And so I think there is this pent-up demand. Now what does that do for us? I think you will see pockets of the equipment that's being used. It's a slower trajectory than it has been in prior upturns, and the reason because it's more on the large-scale projects, which is the larger-type equipment, the higher-capacity equipment versus the residential and commercial construction, which use a lot of the small RTs, the small self-erecting tower cranes and the boom trucks. So when you take those out of the equation, you're going to see the higher-capacity crane. I think the other thing that comes into play here is why -- will we use that as some of the inventory, but what gives us a little bit of advantage in North America, and I'll put it to North America, is the comment that Eric or Carl made. When we track our dealer inventory and utilization rates on a weekly basis, and when you see the levels of the dealer inventory right now, they are carrying some of the amounts that they had in the past, and I think some of it is because they're just tenuous. And so that gives us, as we look across our entire dealer inventory in North America, we have some indications of where we think some of the strength is going to be. So I think, again, that creates an uptick in one project as it comes about, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're restocking their inventories. So I think it's a long-winded answer to your question. Yes, I think E&C has big backlogs. They're ready to go. I think they're holding off, but at the same time, I think our customers are holding off also until they absolutely have the project in hand. And that leads to a little bit of a slower recovery I think than you've seen in the past.