The exorbitant wait times dealers endured in recent years as they ordered equipment are a thing of the past.
The supply chain in 2024 is not exactly perfect. Is it better, though?
Dealers say it is.
“I don’t know that I would say it’s totally back to normal, but it is mostly back to normal,” says Matt Dibble of Dibble Equipment. “Most of the headaches we were dealing with over the last few years are not an issue anymore.”
Goodfellow Corporation’s Chris Baron largely agrees.
“If I order a cone crusher or a screenbox today, I can have it in 30 days,” says Baron, vice president of sales at Goodfellow. “It’s unbelievable how much [the supply chain] has improved. It’s across the board with parts, with manganese, with belting [and] the track units, the cones, the jaws, the screens – everything across the board is improved.”
Equipment supply is much more predictable in 2024 than it was two or three years ago, according to Dibble.
“I feel like the consistency issues have been resolved,” he says. “Every now and then you might run into something that you thought you’d be able to get, but you can’t. But, for the most part, things have normalized.”
Additional perspective
Mellott’s Rich Blake sees improvements in equipment supply, as well.
Yet, like Dibble, Blake says supply issues do pop up. In those instances, Blake says it’s typically on the dealer to deliver an answer for the customer.
“[The supply chain] feels normal in some ways, but you’re still a phone call or an email away from a manufacturer indicating that they can’t meet that delivery,” says Blake, president and CEO of Mellott. “The accountability always falls on us.”
Today’s customers have different expectations on deliveries versus customers of the past, he adds.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, it was days or weeks,” Blake says. “Now, it’s literally minutes and hours.”
As such, the current business environment demands dealers to stock equipment and parts more readily.
“We’re having to take steps to have increased inventory,” Blake says. “That goes for new equipment and used equipment.”
Mellott isn’t the only dealer to increase its inventory of late. As Baron describes, dealers nationwide have ample inventory at the moment.
“We all have a lot of equipment in stock right now,” Baron says. “There’s a surplus of equipment in the marketplace. There’s a lot of manufacturers that are sitting on a lot of inventory because all of the dealers are full of equipment.
“It is certainly a good time for the end user to look at purchasing,” he adds. “A lot of us are motivated – particularly with used equipment.”
Related: Will dealer strategies shift with a normalized supply chain?
