The graph above shows the market shares of different manufacturers for crawler mounted hydraulic excavators by percentages and categorized by their weight class between 2012 and 2014. Manufacturers are in the other category if we had less than 30,000 sales data points for them.
Key Takeaways for Decision Makers
CONTRACTORS/RENTERS: Price competition between brands in the online resale market is likely stronger for smaller weight classes of excavators, as there are a greater number of OEMs with meaningful market share. For the largest size classes in contrast, overall prices are likely to be more heavily influenced by the top manufacturers.
In part one of this series of analyses for crawler mounted hydraulic excavators, we examined the price fluctuations in the auction vs. resale markets as well as possible causes. In part two, we are looking at the market share ownership overall and across weight classes for the resale market. For other articles on market share analysis you can read this one focused on Electric Scissor Lifts.
This analysis demonstrates that in the resale market from 2012 to 2014, Caterpillar had the highest market share for all crawler excavator weight classes with the exception of machines weighted 90.1 metric tons and over. In addition Caterpillar had the highest share of the overall market, with 40.3% of postings for excavators of all size classes. The other manufacturers shown in the chart above are Bobcat, Deere, Kobelco, Komatsu, Takeuchi, and other. Across all weight classes, they own 5.8%, 12.4%, 3.2%, 11.5%, 4.7%, and 22% respectively of the crawler excavator resale market. Komatsu is the only OEM aside from Caterpillar to lead an individual size class, with a whopping 56.4% of the market for machines weighted 90 Mtons and over, despite only having less than 16% in all of the smaller weight classes. This suggests there may be some barrier to entry or other reason that makes the market for the largest crawler mounted excavators undesirable to enter.
In our previous market share analysis focusing on electric self-propelled scissor lifts, the market was dominated by the top three manufacturers, who together controlled 98.9 percent of the market. Though it is still heavily influenced by the top producers, there is evidence of a comparatively higher degree of competition in the market for excavators. This is reason, as discussed in part 1 of our focus on excavators, to look at the market overall as opposed to an individual manufacturer when seeking to review and predict prices.