VINCENT ROCCO (AMCAST): We have increased capacity now, but some of our distributors and customers have put so much stock on the ground in the last year and a half they’re not necessarily ready to take advantage of our increased production capacity. For us, we’ve needed to adjust delivery schedules and things like that.
Overall, we have a lot of positivity surrounding 2024. I think still in the back of everybody’s mind is when the growth is going to flatten out or start to decrease. We’re continuing to find ways to expand into new markets and take advantage of our increased production capacity.
CHARLIE JOHNSON (DSC DREDGE): We are a little different from a manufacturing standpoint as a lot of our equipment is custom. With the dredges that we build, it’s kind of hard to stock every engine that you might need because you never know what the next dredge is going to be.
As far as sizing, our backlog is strong. We’re almost full for 2024 and we’re working into 2025 now. But the supply chain has been a paramount obstruction to business. It’s the worst that it’s ever been. We’ve had to pivot and find ways to address that.
NICK PEARMAN (ROGERS GROUP): We buy a lot of custom-built equipment, like processing plants, because of the workload and demand. With anything that takes a lot of time to fabricate that’s not an off-the-shelf part, it’s probably the worst it’s ever been as far as lead times.
There are still a lot of components – especially electrically – where the lead times are horrible. You’ve got transformers and mains that are over a year. We’re still not out of it, but I can’t wait until the day it gets back to normal.
OLIVER NOBELS (SCHURCO SLURRY): We get stuff turned out very quickly, but whenever we have projects that require customization on motors, it’s extremely difficult. From any of the major motor manufacturers, we hear: ‘This is going to be a custom build and it’s going to be 26 weeks minimum.’ That kills us for our projects. It’s always the custom designs that require these massive lead times.
KEVIN HAMBRICE (TERRASOURCE GLOBAL): We came into 2024 with our strongest backlog ever and a great quote pipeline coming into the year. We’re pretty bullish overall on 2024 in terms of growth. The real difference maker for us is that we improved lead times over 33 percent to position us well for our capital and our parts business.
