Construction Equipment Manufacturers

There are over 800 construction equipment manufacturers in the United States with the majority of them being small or medium-sized companies, employing around 70,000 people. However, the bulk of the industry's sales are dominated by only about two dozen very large multinational organizations which operate globally. Recently, there has been a consistent restructuring of the industry. Large numbers of companies are either being bought out by the larger firms who are diversifying their product lines, or are going out of business all together. This has resulted in several of the major players being interrelated - such as Ingersoll-Rand and its owned subsidiaries Melroe and Bobcat construction equipment. Case or New Holland construction equipment or CNH is known equally well as Case, but also has Kobelco (well known for Kobelco excavators) as a subsidiary. Others include, Mitsubishi construction equipment, Bobcat equipment, and Daewoo construction equipment.

Foreign competition for heavy equipment markets is intense. Since most construction machinery is expensive, sales rely heavily on good financial packages. Japan, Germany, and other European countries also produce high quality construction machinery and compete with US manufacturers – not only in the United States, but all over the world. For example, JCB, a construction equipment UK company, is now the third largest manufacturer of heavy machinery after Caterpillar Heavy Equipment and Komatsu Construction Equipment (who are most often associated with Komatsu backhoes).

With over 160 types of equipment for heavy construction, many construction equipment manufacturers choose to specialize in just one product or one product type, such as Hamm AG which builds road rollers. Other manufacturers will specialize in construction machinery for one industry such as Soilmac which builds drilling equipment and tunnel boring equipment. Many construction equipment manufacturers produce a wide range of equipment used in any of several construction industries such as mining, road and building construction, agriculture and demolition.

Heavy construction machinery can be classified generally by the type of work that is done with it. For instance, graders, loaders, shovels, backhoes and excavators are all used in civil engineering. The wide variety of products sold by these construction equipment makers basically transform the earth or terrain, often for further activities in the location such as building or removal of natural resources. Another function they perform is the transporting of materials, equipment or products. The John Deere loader is a prime example of a vehicle which performs this function. For example, Bobcat excavators might loosen the soil and rocks and then an articulated dump truck might move the raw material to another site. Conversely, once the engineering stage is completed, construction vehicles such as trucks and loaders bring in the building supplies.

Some construction equipment suppliers such as Ingersoll Rand make equipment which can be classified as service equipment for the construction site. Mobile generators and compressors are just two examples of this. Another characteristic which often separates types of construction equipment is that of size. For example, Komatsu makes the largest bulldozer in the world and Liebherr specializes in extreme size dump trucks, while Takeuchi makes a compact excavator and Kubota makes a small size tractor which is very popular.

Overall, US construction equipment manufacturers remain the dominant suppliers of construction equipment around the globe but overseas suppliers are fast catching up. Market share percentages vary from country to country and, in many cases, U.S. market shares are declining to German, Japanese, and more recently, Korean competition.

Bobcat Heavy Equipment  ¦ JCB ¦  John Deere