Arsenault Associates announced that its business within the construction sector has increased by 21.4 percent over the past three years. According to John Davis, senior fleet management consultant for Arsenault, the increase in new customers directly reflects a sharp rise in fuel costs and concern about regulations on construction equipment emissions.
Arsenault Associates is a provider of fleet maintenance management software and related technology solutions. Its Dossier software is among the most widely used fleet maintenance programs for on-road truck and bus fleets, but the construction industry had been a relatively small market. Today, off-road equipment fleets is one of Arsenault’s largest and fastest growing market segments.
Davis said that for many years, much of the construction industry only measured fuel use by the gallons delivered to a particular job site. They did not measure fuel consumed by individual pieces of equipment such as cranes, bulldozers and front loaders. That is rapidly changing.
“As the cost of fuel has risen, construction companies have begun to focus on their equipment, how it is maintained, how efficiently it runs and how much fuel it uses,” Davis explained.
According to Davis, the recent Conexpo-Con/Agg show in Las Vegas, a major show for the construction and aggregates industries, one presenter said that fuel, which represented 25 percent of job site costs in 2005, now accounts for 50 percent. The percentage is expected to rise to 60 percent this year.
“That increase in costs parallels the growth of our construction customer base,” Davis said.
In addition, Davis noted, federal regulations call for a major reduction in diesel emissions from off-road sources by 2010. Environmental Protection Agency regulations target 1 million off-road engines, many of them used by construction companies.
“We participated in Conexpo-Con/Agg this year and came away with an enormous number of sales leads. Maintenance management is becoming very important to smart construction people. I have to believe this is one trend that will continue and even accelerate,” Davis said.
