Dumpers in the doldrums

The humble site dumper has been particularly badly hit by the recession. According to Barford's managing director Niall Wordsworth, the market may be down by as much as 90%. While no official figures are collected, Wordsworth reckons the UK and Irish markets accounted for 7,500 units in 2007 and estimates only 700 to 800 will be sold this year. "It's dead in the water," he says.

The dumper's fate is closely associated with the house building market, which has virtually disappeared in the machine's biggest markets: the UK, Ireland, Spain and France - all of which are in deep recession. UK hire companies are seeing dumper utilisation falling to 40% or even lower. "For every two dumpers in the fleet, one is standing idle," says Terex's national sales manager Pete Barfield. Wordsworth believes it is closer to two out of three are idle.

Thwaites' sales director Ian Brown says many hire companies have sent large numbers of dumpers to auctions and this has undermined residual values. "I can only allow half as much for a traded-in three year old 9t unit as I could two years ago," says Barfield.

The only area still seeing any movement, albeit very slow, is at 3t and below. Ausa's Glen Pritchard is still seeing sales at 1.5t and below, which he puts down to small builders doing house extensions and the like. He says the fall in the value of Sterling against the Euro compounds the problem for the Spanish manufacturer.

Three tonners

Wordsworth says there is a trickle of three-tonners being sold mainly to utility companies, while Brown says some heavier units are being sold in Germany for road-building projects. At the lighter end, Thwaites has introduced a new sub-1t unit due out in September, but it will face plenty of competition in the walk-behind end of the market with wheeled units from the likes of the Belle and Muck Truck. If anything, the market for tracked walk-behinds and stand-on dumpers is even busier, with the likes of Ammann importing the Cormidi range, TCP, Hinowa, JCB, Messersi and others all offering product.

One company active in all these markets is Wacker Neuson, which recently closed the factory in Tredegar and moved production of its bigger (ex Lifton) wheeled dumper to Austria. "Some people said we were moving dumper production out to Linz and that would be the end of it - but that's definitely not the case," says area sales manager Brian Gardner, adding: "They're here to stay." The factory is currently doing pre-production runs and all dumper models remain available.

Wacker Neuson has also seen a dramatic fall in sales, with the 3t and 1.5t machines holding up better than the heavier units. Gardner also believes the fall in residuals is mainly due to large number of low-hour dumpers going through the auctions: "I went to an auction last week and you could get anything you wanted; 3, 6 and 9-tonne units with very few hours on the clock - and in big numbers too." While this limits what he can allow in part-ex, he says he is not currently hit by the fall in Sterling as there is still stock in the UK, but this may not be as easy when replacement stock starts arriving from Austria.