Texas leads U.S. equipment purchases in Q3, sales down 19 percent from 2013

The number of road construction equipment buyers in Texas was by far the most in the U.S during Q3 2014.The number of road construction equipment buyers in Texas was by far the most in the U.S during Q3 2014.

If you believe everything is bigger in Texas, than it should come as no surprise that the state also needs the most road construction equipment. At 68 buyers during the third quarter of 2014, Texas construction companies financed the most road construction equipment in the United States.

The numbers are according to an analysis of Equipment Data Associates data segmenting out companies likely to be engaged in road construction.

The top 10 states in the number of buyers for both new and used road construction equipment is as follows:

1: Texas (68 buyers)
2: Florida (58)
3: North Carolina (52)
4: California (48)
5: Georgia (35)
6: Minnesota and Pennsylvania (tied at 32)
7: South Carolina and New Jersey  (tied at 29)
8: Missouri (28)
9. New York (26)
10: Colorado (24)

Excavators led the way for highway and bridge construction companies with 347 financed purchases during Q3. That’s 21 percent of all equipment purchased. In addition, 200 wheel loaders were purchased (12 percent of the total), 125 compact track loaders (8 percent), 121 double drum vibratory rollers (7.6 percent), and 101 crawler dozers (6.9 percent).

All in all, 1,625 road construction units were financed during Q3. That’s down 10 percent from Q3 of 2013 when 1,813 units were purchased. The amount of buyers from Q3 2013 (874) decreased by 5 percent during the same quarter of 2014 (828).

Out of all purchases, 922 units were new equipment, including 197 excavators (21 percent), 136 wheel loaders (15 percent) and 97 compact track loaders (10 percent).

A total of 703 used units were purchased including 150 excavators (21 percent), 64 wheel loaders (9 percent) and 58 crawler dozers (8 percent).

[pullquote align=”right”]When it comes to used equipment, North Carolina had 30 buyers, behind only Texas with 39.[/pullquote]There were several more companies buying new equipment (503 buyers) during Q3 than used equipment (433 buyers).

When it came to new road construction equipment purchases in Q3, Florida at 40 buyers edged out Texas’s 39 buyers. However, Texas led all other states in the number of used equipment buyers, at 39. North Carolina came in second with 30 buyers.

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*Editor’s note: The road construction segment includes companies in two SIC codes determined to have road construction capability, buying a variety of highway and bridge construction equipment, including dozers, excavators, wheel loaders, track steers, skid steers, etc. Equipment Data Associates is a division of Randall-Reilly and tracks public Uniform Commercial Code-1 filings submitted by lenders in financed equipment transactions.