Creepy crawlers still a mainstay.

Open any copy of any end-user equipment magazine and you will find literally hundreds of ads covering machinery for sale, auctions, hot deals and lots of prices. In that pile of information it is difficult not to find a huge number of ads on crawler dozers or crawler tractors, which after about

Dozers come in all sizes and shapes, with the conventional and triangular tracked undercarriage designs found everywhere. Strangely enough, most of these "creepy crawlers" still look a lot like they did 50 years ago. They just work a lot more efficiently and do more dirt moving today than they did back then.

The market for dozers in North America, like most equipment segments, has been hurt by the slowing economy, the tragedy of 9/11 and continued weak demand during the Iraq war early this year. Industry sales hit a peak in 1998, exceeding 15,000 units, then declined to the point where demand in 2002 was off by about 40 percent from the peak. In fact, last year's sales level was just a hair above the lowest demand during the past 10 years. That's the bad news.

The good news is that industry sales are improving this year (primarily in the second half) and will likely exceed those of 2002. The reason that we have difficulty knowing how things are going is that first half sales this year were lower than in 2002 because of the hiccups in business caused by the Iraqi invasion and the fears of a major war.

Two companies decided to leave the dozer race in the past year or two. Daewoo finally decided that enough was enough and opted to focus on marketing its other products in North America in 2003. The company had less than 1 percent market share in each of the past four years since it started selling crawler dozers in this market. Total Daewoo sales of crawler dozers since 1999 were less than 200 units, a good enough reason to pull the plug. Pug Power, a small supplier ill the market for several years, dropped out in 2001.

Caterpillar, the perennial leader in the market, still accounts for about half of all sales in unit terms and more like two-thirds of all sales in dollar terms. The company dominates nearly all size categories of machine sales, although in the small dozers, Deere and Komatsu are major players. Cat produces its larger dozers in Peoria, while sourcing smaller models from Japan and a few mid-sized models from France and Brazil.

Deere, which has improved its market position in recent years, holds the second slot in market penetration, with just under 30 percent of total industry sales. Third place from a unit standpoint goes to Komatsu, accounting for about 13 to 15 percent of the total in recent years. From a dollar point of view, Komatsu would likely be considered second in the market.

Deere, with great strength in small dozers, is vying to move into the larger dozer field. The company has two new models, its 950 and 1050 (rated 230 and 326 hp respectively), produced for it by Liebherr in Austria, although sales since that arrangement began a few years ago have been limited. The line of crawler dozers produced by Deere in the U.S. runs from 70 to 185 hp, again, with its strongest presence in the under 100 hp category. All Deere dozers are designed with hydrostatic transmissions. The Deere-produced machines carry Deere diesel engines, while the two models produced in Austria by Liebherr carry Liebherr engines.

Komatsu, which produces the large majority of its machines in Japan, also sources two models from its factory in Brazil. Having the largest spectrum of machines and the highest powered dozer in the industry, Komatsu is really the sole competitor to Caterpillar in the very large dozer categories. A few small suppliers (Liebherr, Dressta and Ryhno) carry machines competing in the larger horsepower categories, but their respective sales in North America are nil.

The top three dozer suppliers accounted for about 90 percent of all sales in 2002, leaving just a small portion of the market for 12 other companies to fight over. Case and New Holland are included in this group with Case accounting for about 5 percent of the market and New Holland about 1 percent. Other suppliers, all with 1 percent or less in market share include Intensus (China), Farm Pro (China), Rhyno (Russia), Dressta (Poland), Hyundai (Korea), Liebherr (Austria), Rayco Manufacturing (U.S.), Struck Corp. (U.S.), Sutter Equipment (U.S.), and SmallDozer.com (China). I should note that Dressta is formerly the Dresser Industries product line updated and produced in Poland.

Industry sales this year are likely going to grow about 4 percent, followed by 9 to 10 percent improvement in 2004. These numbers should make dozer manufacturers and their suppliers happy.