Confidence among equipment managers improved slightly in the first quarter of the new year, according to the Equipment Manager Confidence Index, published by Construction Equipment. The Q1 2022 Index is 114, up from 105 reported in the fourth quarter of 2021. The Index is the highest it has been since October 2020, except for a upward blip in July 2021. It has been as low as 99 in June 2020.
Read more 2022 construction outlooks in our Annual Report & Forecast.
The Index measures equipment manager confidence on a scale of 0 to 200, with 200 indicating full confidence that the next month will be “better.”
“The passage of the infrastructure bill has certainly affected confidence,” says Rod Sutton, editorial director of Construction Equipment. “Confidence is still tethered to the pandemic and to supply issues, but knowledge that money is available for infrastructure building and maintenance helps.
“But fleet managers are not confident in the future health of the overall economy, and remain pessimistic about buying new equipment,” Sutton says. “That index remains below 100, which likely is dampened by weak supply.”
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, members continue to plan for more maintenance spending in coming months.
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.
