Don’t dig a grave for trenchers yet.
Published in: Diesel Progress North American Edition
Date: 11/1/2004
By: Yengst, Charles R.
If someone has tried to tell you that trenchers are a thing of the past, like the buggy whip, I can tell you they are still here and there are some interesting trends that make it seem like they will be here for some time to come.
Trenchers have been around for decades and have been used by millions of contractors and utility people for handling trenching activities at construction job sites. Yet today there are many products in the market that do very much the same job as a trencher and can do other tasks including loading and lifting that the trencher is not designed for.
The move today, however, is for suppliers to make the trencher look more like other machines and take on the appearance of a backhoe or grader. Adding versatility to the machine is the name of the game, as the suppliers seek new ways to make the machines more useful and yet retain the ability to efficiently trench for utility lines, irrigation ditches and drains and other shallow excavating needs. About half of the ride-on trenchers sold today, for example, have backhoes and four-wheel steering.
Small, walk-behind trenchers are becoming more popular and more units are going into the booming housing market. Primary fiber optic cable was laid in the 1990s but it is still necessary to bring it and other utilities to the house. This is accomplished with smaller trenchers, as they are easier to manipulate in constricted areas. Some of the larger trencher manufacturers like Ditch Witch and Vermeer have recently introduced compact/ walk-behind trenchers with low hp ratings and smaller sizes. The rental houses love these machines and everyone from United Rentals down to and including the big home improvement centers like Home Depot are buying the smaller trenchers to accommodate building contractors.
Something else that is making trenchers more useful is improved hydraulics and hydrostatic drives. The benefit found in a hydrostatically driven trencher is its smoother operation with fewer breakdowns and less downtime due to on-site repair and rental return.
There are really several different types of trenchers. There are traditional ride-on trenchers and more recently, self-propelled walk-behind models. Mini-trenchers, usually rated below 11 hp that have to be pushed or pulled to work, are a completely different, yet an important part of the overall trencher market. Mini-trenchers rated 5 hp are not competing with most of the self-propelled trenchers rated at 20 or 150 hp and are more like rototillers and sold to a different clientele for the most part.
As for the market for self-propelled trenchers, the market hit its peak in the late ’90s, then declined by about 35% over a three-year period, hitting bottom in 2002. Since then, there has been a slight turnaround and this year’s sales are getting much stronger. Sales in 2004 should exceed 11,000 units, with the forecast in unit sales approaching 13,000 units by 2006, still short, however, of the peak in sales during the previous business cycle. The mini-trencher market was sitting in the range of 3000 units annually at the end of 2003, but that too has shown improvement and will likely be another 15 to 20% higher when the year ends.
Ditch Witch is the premier supplier of self-propelled trenchers, accounting for over half of the market. Vermeer and Case are the other two major manufacturers of self-propelled trenchers, both having nearly 20% of the market. These three companies account for over 90% of the market. Burkeen Manufacturing is the only other volume supplier in the market, with all of its machines on the small end.
Vermeer is the unit leader in the crawler trencher market, which is a subset of the overall market for these machines. A number of other companies are involved including Parsons, Guntert & Zimmerman, H&S Company, Inter-Drain, Kukla, Port Industries, RWF Bron, Tesmec, Trencor and Wolfe. Cleveland Trencher, which had been a supplier for many years, appears to have little or no activity in the market at this time.
On the mini-trencher side, Trench-Master is the leading supplier, followed by E-Z Trench, Ground Hog and Kwik-Trench. These four companies represent over 85% of the small machine market, while several other companies such as George Evans, Elite Trenchers and For The Edge vie for the balance of sales.
Trenchers are here to stay. The growth in the market will not be as strong as it once might have been, but trenchers will still be here for a long time to come, generating sales in excess of $500 million per year, as they do today.
Charles R. Yengst is president of Yengst Associates, Wilton, Conn. The web address is www.yengstassociates.com, e-mail cyengst@yengstassociates.com.
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