One of the biggest and most confounding challenges in the heavy equipment industry is how to get more construction companies to use telematics to monitor and manage their fleets.

The technology is well established and the ROI well proven, yet surveys continue to find only a small percentage of contractors using the technology.

The Association of Equipment Management Professionals and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers each formed a task force this year to find a solution that would increase that participation rate.  Earlier this month, the two task forces met in Chicago and agreed to work together to produce an industry telematics data standard with the potential of reporting up to 100+ data points on machine location, health and operating parameters.

As part of the new initiative, AEMP is finalizing in-depth surveys of its members to determine what their needs and concerns are and what sorts of roadblocks are preventing construction companies from embracing the new technology. Stan Orr, president of AEMP, noted that for heavy equipment fleet managers, the survey results reveal three key points.

Fleet managers don’t like going to multiple websites to collect data.

First, many fleet managers don’t feel like they have the knowledge or numbers to make a sound business case for an investment in telematics, Orr says. They need the facts and figures to take to their company owners to prove the ROI.

Second is education, Orr says. “There is still a strong need for an educational component from organizations like AEMP and AEM to help people understand what they can use telematics for, why it’s valuable and why they should be using it.”

The third concern, Orr says, is that the data is scattered. Fleet managers don’t like going to multiple websites to collect data, which is why an industry-wide standard for each of the data points is crucial. “Different manufacturers have different ways of measuring the same thing,” he says. This makes it difficult for companies with mixed fleets to compile standardized, fleet-wide information, and to integrate the telematics data feed with different back office and maintenance programs.

Manufacturers have the additional need to protect certain proprietary types of information about their machines and to guard against other parties aggregating data about their machines.

In 2010, AEMP, along with key OEM partners, developed and launched a telematics standard that included the four most critical data points. But the feeling in the industry today is that more data points, education and support are needed to boost adoption rates.

(To read about the 2010 AEMP telematics standard go here. For a copy of that standard go here.)

As far as a timetable on launching the new initiative, Orr says the standard will probably be phased in but that the two groups hope to be able to make an announcement at ConExpo in March. “They’ll probably take some of the low hanging fruit and make that data available and then keep working on it. I see this as a multi-year process,” he says.

*The Association of Equipment Management Professionals represents more than 500 fleet management professionals in more than 350 companies that work in construction, government, utilities, energy mining and related fields.  For more information visit www.aemp.org.

**The Association of Equipment Manufacturers is the North American based international trade group providing business development resources to advance the off-road equipment manufacturing industry in the global marketplace. Membership comprises more than 850 companies and more than 200 product lines in the agriculture, construction, forestry, mining and utility sectors. www.aem.org.

Caterpillar reported $14.621 billion in sales and revenues for the second quarter of this year with $960 million in profit.

Both numbers are down significantly from last year due to a slump in mining demand, as they were in the first quarter, and the heavy equipment manufacturer has again cut its outlook for sales and profit for the rest of the year.

Second quarter sales and revenue fell 16 percent between 2012 and 2013 while profits fell 43 percent. Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman attributed the difference to several different factors.

“We experienced headwinds during the quarter, and while we had a positive $135 million gain related to the Siwei settlement, it was more than offset by currency translation and hedging losses, an additional $1 billion of dealer machine inventory reductions and a decline of $1.2 billion in our own inventory,” he said in a prepared statement.

Oberhelman said the $1 billion reduction in dealer inventory was more than the company previously expected and hurt sales and profit for the quarter. Oberhelman expects dealer inventory to decline between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in the second half of this year to finish $3.5 billion lower than at the end of 2012.

“That means that we are underselling end-user demand this year, and it sets us up for better sales in 2014,” he added.

Because of the continued expected inventory declines, the company cut its sales outlook for 2013 from a range of $57 billion to $61 billion down to $56 billion to $58 billion. It also cut its profit per share outlook down from $7.00 to $6.50.

“During the first half of the year, we’ve had temporary factory shutdowns, rolling layoffs throughout much of the company, reductions in our flexible workforce, and we’ve reduced discretionary and program costs. While we’ve taken significant action already, we will be taking additional cost reduction measures in the second half of 2013,” Oberhelman said.

Despite the losses, Oberhelman said he is “pleased” with how the company has performed and that the company expects profit to improve in the second half of the year.

“Operationally, we’ve done very well. We’ve taken action to aggressively lower costs, and we’ve been successful in the marketplace with end-user demand for Cat machines outpacing the industry overall,” he said. “In addition, our business in China improved—our sales and end-user demand for Cat machines were up in the quarter while the overall construction equipment industry was down.”

Kiewit, one of the largest construction companies in North America is selling these T-shirts and donating the proceeds to the Alberta Arts Flood Rebuild, after devastating floods overran parts of southern Alberta last month.

Good for them. You can order a shirt here. And/or  check out Kiewit’s Facebook page and tell them how much you appreciate it here.

There are a lot of natural disasters going around these days, the tornadoes in Tuscaloosa, Joplin, and Moore. Hurricane Sandy. The Colorado fires. T-shirts won’t raise a lot of money, but they’re a good reminder that we are our brother’s keeper.

There’s nothing like a good truck jump video to kick off your Friday. In June we posted a video of a Ford Raptor jumping 180 feet through the air after launching off a sand dune. The jump was a record for the Silver Lake (Michigan) Sand Dunes.

Not to be outdone, Bjørn Michaelsen tried to get everything his Chevrolet Silverado had with a dune launch of his own. And thought Michaelsen gets some pretty impressive air, the landing is even more impressive. We’ve really got to make a visit to this place. Check out the video below.

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In my second post on this subject, I mentioned a circumstance that made me realize I needed to ask for input from my team prior to making decisions. Here’s another example of how getting input before decision making helped to set the company on the right course.

Action No. 4: Ask for input prior to decision making.

It was the 90’s and another period of learning how to be a manager for me. It was my first opportunity to lead a medium-size company as president and CEO. The company specialized in exploration, mining and continuous production of industrial minerals. It was a company with three processing facilities, multiple mining locations and distribution throughout North America.

While this is not unique, it did present some interesting management challenges related to mining methods, process control, continuous improvement and international growth opportunities.

Many of the employees were well-trained and highly competent. In fact, I was only the second president of this company, which was founded in 1945. My challenge was to take advantage of the high-growth opportunity related to export markets and move the company to the next phase of business.

This necessitated greater employee engagement. So, an executive management team was formed for strategic thinking about the future direction of the company.

Asking for input on how best to use our resources and what new resources would be necessary to arm the mission, resulted in making a decision to undertake  a Total Quality Management Initiative. This became the cornerstone for changing the way employees worked.

We also developed and adopted the  Six Management Actions, which changed the culture from “It’s okay as it is” to “How can we do it better”. It took a couple of years of regular training, several process improvement teams and frequent and timely reporting (feedback) on results before the Six Management Actions became a normal way of working.

The company expanded into global markets, doubled and tripled in size and today is still one of the world’s top suppliers of specialty industrial minerals.

In my next post, I will wrap up this series on the Six Management Actions, looking at providing information and feedback in a timely manner and how not to over or under manage.

About the Author

Wes Lee, president of Lee Advisory Services, has a vast resume of experience in the construction equipment business, serving in positions ranging from engineer to president with several companies, including the former International Harvester (now Navistar), Kysor Industrial, Construction Equipment Trading Company, Dresser Industries, the former Komatsu Dresser (now Komatsu America), Eagle Picher Minerals, and Case New Holland (now CNH Industrial). He  retired in 2013 as vice president of key accounts for Volvo Construction Equipment North America. He can be reached at www.weslee.biz, wes@weslee.biz, (828) 279-2068.

Attributing year-over-year declines to “weaker sales, especially in the mining industry,” Volvo Construction Equipment reported its second quarter results with no change to its outlook for the rest of the year.

The company reported operating income of $203.8 million (SEK 1.324 billion). That’s a 52 percent decrease from the $422.2 (SEK 2.742 billion) million brought in during the second quarter of 2012.

Volvo CE saw net sales decline 19 percent during the past year from $3.035 billion (SEK 19.715 billion) to $2.466 billion (SEK 16.019 billion).

Despite the declines, Volvo CE reports that its order book was nearly at the same level as last year during the same period.

According to the Volvo quarterly results announcement, good news during the second quarter included the good order intake mentioned above, along with improving trends in China, Europe and the Middle East.

The company also saw its operating margin more than double compared to the first quarter of this year. However, at 8.3 percent, it’s a drop from the 13.9 percent achieved during the same quarter last year.

Speaking of China, Volvo recently announced that its Chinese subsidiary SDLG will enter the North American market with two wheel loaders.

By market, Volvo expects Europe to decline by anywhere between 5 and 15 percent by the end of the year, while  North America, South America, China and the rest of Asia are all expected to finish anywhere from a decline of 5 percent to a gain of 5 percent.

In addition to the skilled labor shortage currently keeping the construction industry from meeting the increased housing demand it has seen in the past 6 to 10 months, a shortage of building supplies is now keeping these contractors even further off pace, reports Reuters.

According to the report, regional building materials makers—the companies that supply home builders with wall and roofing materials as well as interior fittings—are still operating in a very tight credit market because of the recession.

In addition to the tougher federal regulations on lending that make some small building material suppliers unattractive to big lenders, many of the smaller, regional banks these companies went to for loans didn’t survive the recession.

And it’s not just odds and ends that contractors and middlemen are having a hard time getting their hands on from suppliers.

One company that Reuters talked to was facing a shortage of oriented strand boards—the most commonly-used roofing material in the U.S. In fact, a National Association of Home Builders survey in June found that 22 percent of homebuilders have reported a shortage of these boards, which are strands of wood bonded with wax.

Plus, analysts told Reuters that many of these suppliers have “ridden the coat-tails of the wider housing market rebound” and have deceptively overpriced shares.

“It’s a really attractive industry from an economic perspective but … from a valuation perspective we find it less attractive,” David Manger, a portfolio manager at AMI Investments, told Reuters.

A photo of a Boggs Paving Inc. dump truck from the company’s website.

Last week, a grand jury handed down a criminal indictment charging Boggs Paving Inc., based out of Monroe, North Carolina, with government contract fraud.

The 29-count indictment charges the company and six co-conspirators with the following crimes: conspiracy to defraud the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT); conspiracy to commit wire fraud; conspiracy to commit mail fraud; money laundering conspiracy; money laundering and wire fraud.

According to the Boggs Paving website, the company was started in 1994 by Drew Boggs, who is named in the indictment, and his brother Chris, who is not. The company grew into Boggs Group which is comprised of the paving company along with Boggs Materials, Inc. and Boggs Transport, Inc.

According to the indictment, Boggs Paving obtained federally and state funded construction contracts for 10 years with the help of Styx Cuthbertson Trucking Company Inc., a certified disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) and small business enterprise (SBE).

The USDOT uses its DBE program to increase the participation of disadvantaged business enterprises in federally funded transportation-related projects. To obtain these contracts, a DBE or SBE must perform a part of the work and be paid for it.

However, the indictment alleges that Boggs Paving used Styx Cuthbertson Trucking Company Inc., a certified DBE and SBE, as a “pass through” to obtain these contracts while doing the work themselves.

According to the charges, Boggs ran “payments through a nominee bank account in Styx’s name but funneled checks back to Boggs Paving and its affiliates, which were not DBEs or SBEs but were doing the actual work.”

The indictment continues saying, “each time a deposit was made into the nominee account as supposed payment for construction work performed by Styx, a Boggs Paving employee would immediately cut a check from that Styx nominee account to the Boggs entity or another firm that had actually performed the work.

So what did Styx receive in return? The owner, also named Styx Cuthbertson, received an unspecified kickback from Boggs for using his name and DBE status.

The indictment charges that to sell the act, Boggs dressed up company trucks by covering up the “Boggs” logo with a magnetic decal of the Styx logo. Plus, Boggs allegedly lied to both the North and South Carolina Departments of Transportation on DBE paperwork and submitted bids purporting to be from Styx.

Boggs also allegedly “performed numerous clerical functions in Styx’s name, including creating quotes on Styx letterhead for construction contracts; drafting fraudulent contracts between Boggs Paving and Styx for subcontract work purportedly performed by Styx; creating invoices for work supposedly done by Styx; and giving Styx Cuthbertson pre-prepared documents (including quotes, contracts, and DBE reports) for his signature.”

In the end, the alleged act paid off for Boggs in the form of 35 federally funded contracts where the company was the prime contractor and an additional two contracts where the company was a subcontractor. In total, the contracts were worth $87.6 million for Boggs.

Boggs claimed DBE credits of approximately $3.7 million on these contracts for payments purportedly made to Styx. Styx only received payments of approximately $375,432 for actual work on these contracts, all according to the indictment.

Boggs Paving and its co-conspirators are scheduled to be in court August 20 and face a maximum of five years in prison for the conspiracy charge. Each wire and mail fraud and money laundering conspiracy count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison, while the money laundering charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Each of the charges also carries a $250,000 fine.

The SUV that crashed into the Second Avenue Subway construction site is seen at rest in a ditch. Credit: NBC 4 New York

Of all the construction sites that deserve a driver’s undivided attention upon approach, New York City’s Second Avenue Subway likely deserves the most.

As we’ve shown you before, the cavernous digging going on beneath the surface at this site is like a scene of of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Not exactly something you’d want to drive headlong into.

Yet, that’s exactly what a driver of an SUV did over the weekend. According to a report from NBC 4 New York, the driver collided with another car and crashed through a fence at the site before ending up in a ditch.

Two people were removed from the SUV and treated at New York Hospital with minor neck and back injuries.

“From what I understand, it’s 8 feet to the bottom of the Second Avenue subway tunnel, so he’s lucky it stopped where it did,” witness Peter Moreno, told NBC 4.

Lucky indeed, judging by this photo…

Citing a “softened” marketplace compared to what the company originally expected for 2013, Terex Corporation announced year-over-year declines in both net sales and operating income for the second quarter and has cut its outlook for the rest of the year.

Net sales for the equipment maker were $1.9 billion in the second quarter, down 5.1 percent from the second quarter of 2012. Meanwhile, operating income plummeted 51 percent in the last year, from $175 million to $85.3 million. Terex said the main reason for the decline was $65 million in restructuring charges during the quarter.

“The second quarter results reflect this lighter order environment overall, as our Cranes, Construction and Material Handling & Port Solutions (MHPS) segments all experienced lower revenues than originally expected,” said Ron DeFeo, Terex Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, in a prepared statement.

“However, we do continue to see strong performance from our Aerial Work Platforms (AWP) business, and good operational execution by our Materials Processing business in a challenging environment.”

As DeFeo noted, Terex’s AWP division was certainly the company’s bright spot for the quarter with a 17 percent year-over-year sales jump to $607 million. AWP operating income rose 30 percent to $101 million.

The Cranes division reported growth over the past year as well with revenues rising 3 percent to $521 million. However, operating income for the division fell 54 percent to $23 million.

Meanwhile, the company’s Construction division reported the largest drop in revenues at a 30-percent fall from last year. Construction revenues were $275 million while operating income fell 50 percent to $5 million.

The Materials Processing (MP) division and Material Handling and Port Solutions (MHPS) divisions also reported losses. MP saw a 7-percent drop in sales to $176 million, along with a 14 percent drop in operating income to $25 million. MHPS sales dropped 16 percent t0 $370 million, while last year’s $11 million in operating income tumbled into an operating loss of $57 million for the second quarter.

“We expect stronger MHPS performance in the second half of 2013 as we begin to deliver increased revenue from their large backlog,” DeFeo said.

Looking forward, Terex has cut its total sales outlook for the remainder of the year from its previous estimate of between $7.9 billion and $8.3 billion to $ 7.5 billion and $ 7.7 billion.

“Overall by geography, North America continues to improve, but now at a slower pace. Europe remains challenging, particularly for our Cranes, Construction and MHPS segments, and the markets in the rest of the world remain mixed,” DeFeo said.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of its famous “bowtie” logo, Chevrolet has released a cool graphic and a ton of photos charting the symbol’s evolution, along with a bit of official history.

The 1914 Royal Mail is the first vehicle to bear the Chevy bowtie.

According to the automaker, the Chevy bowtie was introduced in 1913 by co-founder William C. Durant on the 1914 Chevrolet H-2 Royal Mail and the H-4 Baby Grand. The logo was placed at the front and center of both models. Since then it has adorned 215 million Chevrolet vehicles.

However, while we have a certain date of its first appearance, the logo’s origins are rather murky. Chevy says that one theory is that Durant was inspired by the wallpaper design during a stay at a hotel in Paris.

Then there’s the explanation offered by Durant’s daughter Margery in her 1929 book My Father. She wrote that the design was an original design of her father’s, explaining that he would doodle nameplate designs on pieces of paper at the dinner table. “I think it was between the soup and the fried chicken one night that he sketched out the design that is used on the Chevrolet car to this day,” she wrote.

However, Durant’s widow Catherine disagrees, saying that the logo was inspired by a design from a newspaper ad in Hot Springs, Virginia. According to Catherine, William Durant exclaimed, “I think this would be a very good emblem for the Chevrolet.”

Thanks to recently discovered evidence, the final theory seems like the most likely. Ken Kaufmann, historian and editor of The Chevrolet Review, found an ad from the Southern Compressed Coal Company in the November 12, 1911 edition of The Atlanta Constitution. The ad was for “Coalettes,” a refined fuel product for fires and the product’s logo had a slanted bowtie form similar to the shape that would become the Chevrolet icon.

Regardless of its origin, the Chevy bowtie is a world-renowned brand now. Throughout the years, the design has undergone several minor changes to make it appear more current. The “Chevrolet” word mark was once present and then it was taken out. It’s put on weight only to lose it, and it’s even been surrounded by other shapes. Track its complete evolution below.

The original 1913 Chevrolet Bowtie

Closeup of the 1914 Royal Mail’s grille and the bowtie.

The second iteration of the bowtie from 1936.

1936 Chevrolet Standard sedan

1947

1947 Chevrolet Fleetmaster

1955

1955 Chevrolet BelAir

1969

1969 Camaro SS

1974

1974 Chevrolet Impala

1982

1995

1995 Chevrolet Blazer LS

2004

2013

2014 Camaro SS

Sauvage

LBX Company has announced the appointment of Eric Sauvage as its next president and CEO, succeeding Robert Harvell who will retire at the end of the year.

Harvell will remain a senior advisor and board member after his retirement.

Sauvage joined LBX—the makers of Link-Belt hydraulic excavators, scrap/material handlers, demolition equipment and forestry equipment—in 2008 as vice president and CFO.

Armed with a master’s degree in international management from the University of Dallas, Sauvage has more than 24 years of experience in many financial and operations leadership positions.

Harvell said in a prepared statement that Sauvage’s “broad business background in both the international and domestic markets, extensive experience in the construction industry, and proven work record and accomplishments within LBX makes him well suited to lead the organization.”

Sauvage is actively involved as a board member in several community organizations including the World Trade Center of Kentucky Board, the Business Education Network Board and the American Heart Association Board.

Easily find and mark reliable drilling locations with Hilti’s PS 1000-B X-Scan radar detection system, which provides clear 2D images of objects concealed in concrete structures, including rebar, post tension cable, metal and plastic conduits, glass-fiber cables, voids and wood.

The compact, all-in-one scanner has quick start-up and produces easy-to-read images within minutes. The objects are shown in either a 2D plan view or cross-sectional view directly on the display.

The PS 1000-B X-Scan has a rubber-coated housing and is water and dust resistant. Covered by Hilti’s Calibration Service, the unit will be calibrated once a year.

Decreases in demand for construction and mining equipment in Indonesia and mining equipment in Latin America led to year-over-year declines in both net sales and operating income for Komatsu in the company’s first quarter, which ends March 31, 2014.

However, expanded sales of construction equipment and parts in Japan and the Middle East largely compensated for those demand declines, keeping the Japanese equipment maker confident that it will still achieve the large gains in both sales and operating incomes that it predicted back in April.

Komatsu saw its net sales dwindle 3 percent to $4.6 billion (455.1 billion yen) from the same period a year ago. Operating income fell 6 percent to $534 million.

Construction, mining and utility equipment net sales were down 3.1 percent year-over-year to $4.2 billion (416.6 billion yen), while industrial machinery net sales fell 6.3 percent to $411 million (40.3 billion yen).

According to the company’s report, it retains a positive outlook for the fiscal year, expecting net sales increase to increase 9 percent to $21 billion (205 billion yen) and operating income to grow 44 percent to $3.1 billion (305 billion yen).

Our friends over at Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers did a pretty cool thing during one of their recent auctions. Rather than grabbing normal footage of the huge event, they commissioned a “tilt-shift” filming.

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, tilt-shift photography is basically a technique of filming that plays with the focus of the camera a bit to make normal scenes look miniature.

The result at a Ritchie Bros. auction is that all of this huge equipment ends up looking like toy models. It’s a very cool effect. Check out the video below.

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You need to find out where your equipment costs are compared with others in your industry. One key way to do this is through benchmarking.

Do not discount someone else’s success. I have heard many client employees say, “Well, sure they can do that. They’re bigger than us… they don’t have the seasonal restrictions we do… or we have an older workforce.” And the capper: “Yeah, but their wages must be higher.”

And so it’s key to not only know where others are in your industry, but also know the best in class and world class averages. The construction industry has fairly inefficient maintenance practices, so just comparing yourself to other contractors may make you feel like the tallest person in the crowd, when all you are is the tallest pigmy in the tribe.

There is far more merit in looking at what we could achieve versus just looking at a relative point and saying, “Hey, we’re not doing too badly.” For example, as the accompanying chart points out, the average breakdown rate for construction companies with more than $25 million fleet replacement value is 31 percent. But I have several clients who have achieved a 1.5 to 5 percent breakdown rate.

So if you have a 32 percent breakdown rate, and you’re just comparing it to the industry average of 31 percent, you think you’re doing fine. It’s much like observing the other swimmers in the water after the sinking of the Titanic and reassuring yourself you are doing relatively well in comparison. Instead of admiring your treading action, you should be swimming toward a boat.

The following charts on cost and performance metrics represents a combination of data from the Association for Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP), Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) and our own extensive database as fleet management consultants.  Compare your costs and performance against others not only in your industry, but who are best in class and world class.

About the Author

Preston Ingalls has more than 41 years of maintenance experience and is president/CEO of TBR Strategies, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based maintenance and reliability consulting firm. He has consulted with firms that have won the Association of Equipment Management Professionals’ Fleet Masters Award for fleet maintenance excellence in 2004 and 2009. In addition, he assisted two other organizations in winning the North American Maintenance Excellence Award.

Beginning this fall, Ford will offer a prep package on the 2014 F-150 that allows the truck to run on compressed natural gas (CNG), liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and gasoline.

The F-150 will be the only CNG/LPG-capable half-ton pickup on the market and will be capable of driving more than 750 miles on one tank of gas, depending on the tank size selected as part of the prep package.

Ford says that works out to about 23 miles per gallon on the highway.

The package is factory-installed and includes hardened valves, valve seats, pistons and rings allowing it to operate on either natural gas or gasoline through separate fuel systems.

The move is based on the success Ford has seen with natural gas on its commercial vehicles. Jon Coleman, Ford’s fleet sustainability and technology manager said that the automaker has received requests from businesses and fleet customers for the option.

The CNG/LPG prep kit plus upfit—a Ford Qualified Vehicle Modifier will supply fuel tanks, fuel lines and unique fuel injectors—will cost an additional $7,815 to $9,815, again depending on the size of the fuel tank you go with.

That additional upfront is nothing to simply brush off. But, because of the stability and lower cost of CNG prices—the fuel sells for an average of $2.11 per gallon of gas equivalent, and in some parts of the country is as cheap as $1 a gallon—Ford says the package pays for itself in savings.

“With the money saved using CNG, customers could start to see payback on their investment in as little as 24 to 36 months,” Coleman said.

The F-150 will be one of eight commercial vehicles offered with a CNG/LPG option, joining the Transit Connect van and wagon, E-Series van, F-Series Duper Duty trucks, F-650 medium duty and the F53 and F59.

You can read more about CNG and the fuel’s potential for return on investment for fleets in Tom Jackson’s in depth ROI piece by clicking here.

The president spent an hour last week giving a speech detailing yet another jobs program. During the last election cycle we were promised a new era of green jobs facilitated by the hand of government. Now it’s “infrastructure,” he says. That’s where the jobs are!

Obama’s been talking about infrastructure for six years now and so far it’s been all hat and no cattle. And I’m not sure where all those green jobs are, especially if the Chinese keep putting out cut rate solar panels and companies like Solyndra keep going bankrupt.

But if the president really wants to stimulate job growth he may want to think long and hard about all the jobs his war against coal has cost us.

According to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the new EPA rules on coal generated electrical power are going to eliminate 887,700 jobs and bring compliance costs nationwide to the tune of $15 to $16.7 billion. Obviously, the ACCCE is biased in favor of coal, but scan the daily headlines across the country and you see the pink slips piling up:

• 3,000 mining jobs in eastern rural Kentucky since the start of 2012.
• 300 jobs in Montana and Wyoming since early 2012.
• 3,300 jobs in West Virginia in 2012 alone.
• 1,200 jobs lost when Alpha Natural Resources  closed eight mines in West Virginia, Virginia and Pennsylvania in late 2012.

Right here in Equipment World‘s own backyard Drummond Coal announced this month it plans to layout 425 workers.  These are good jobs too. The kind of jobs that can sustain a family. Union jobs, skilled labor. Jobs that pay $20+ an hour and keep getting better as you attain seniority.

I’ll be the first to admit that coal has environmental drawbacks. It needs to be regulated and its environmental impacts mitigated. But how fast, how soon? In the deepest and longest lasting recession since the Great Depression, should the federal government be declaring war on any industry?

What rankles me the most, however, is that the EPA, under the president’s direct control, doesn’t give a hoot about job loss. This report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce details how for 45 years, the EPA has turned a blind eye to the human cost of job losses resulting from its regulations.

If Congress can’t get accurate data about the damage federal regulations are doing to jobs in this country it can’t do cost-benefit analysis.

According to the report, in 1967 Congress required the EPA to provide “a comprehensive study of the economic impacts of air quality standards on the nation’s industries and communities.” Yet a decade later when this mandate was coded into law the EPA, “ignored this congressional mandate, thus depriving Congress of a significant body of data that would shed light on the impact of regulations on jobs and employment.”

Then again in 2009, when six Senators asked the EPA for an evaluation of additional job losses due to air quality regulations, the EPA responded, more or less, by saying: “Hey, not my job.”

It seems the least the president could do, if he were serious about jobs, would be to call his own agency on the carpet about its refusal to calculate the jobs lost due to federal regulations. If Congress can’t get accurate data about the damage federal regulations are doing to jobs in this country it can’t do cost-benefit analysis. Bad information, bad solutions. No information, no solutions.

A business that can’t or won’t do cost-benefit analysis won’t last a year. Amazing that a government can go on for 45 years without honoring this basic operating procedure.

In 2010 we reported on the California Air Quality Board’s absurdly incorrect numbers on the amount of pollution diesel construction machines put into that state’s air. They overestimated the amount by a factor of three to four times. Nobody at CARB got fired, as is the case with most government agencies, even though hundreds of contractors had to upgrade or sell off their fleets at a loss.

There are dozens of government agencies that put out detailed numbers, highly respected and bankable information. Why can’t the EPA do the same?

Is it the case that environmental agencies are afraid to show us the math, knowing that accurate numbers would doom their pet causes?

Is it too much to ask the EPA to follow the laws Congress passed?

Is the EPA above the law?

If the president and were serious about jobs, he should ask.

Thanks to big increases in agricultural equipment sales, CNH Global saw jumps in both net sales and operating profit in the second quarter.

The company reported a year-over-year 9 percent increase in 2Q net sales to $5.5 billion and a 26-percent jump in operating profit from equipment sales to $659 million.

Comprising 83 percent of CNH equipment sales in the quarter, ag equipment more than made up for losses seen in construction equipment sales.

For the quarter, CNH sold $4.5 billion in ag equipment, up 13 percent since the same period last year. Meanwhile, ag operating profit increased a whopping 28 percent to $647 million.

Construction equipment net sales fell 6 percent to $949 million. Operating profit fell even further—30 percent to $12 million.

For its full year outlook, CNH expects agricultural equipment unit volume to be up 5 percent, while construction equipment unit volume is expected to be flat to down 5 percent.