Orlando, FL

Auctioneers on Monday announced sales of more than $190 million at a large heavy equipment auction held in Orlando last week.

The five-day auction, which ended Feb. 23, beat the company's previous record of $172 million netted at the same site a year ago. More than 6,000 people from 71 countries registered to participate either in person or on the Web to bid on equipment ranging from more than 340 hydraulic excavators to 180 forklifts, according to a news release.

HK, China

HONG KONG: China Railway Construction Corp, a major builder in China, plans to raise up to $5.4 billion from its Hong Kong and Shanghai initial public offerings despite recent market volatility, a person familiar with the deal said on Monday.

China, aiming to ease bottlenecks caused by its surging economy, earmarked 1.25 trillion yuan for railway infrastructure investment in its five-year plan through 2010, nearly quadruple the levels under the previous five-year plan.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) and ISO today announced a strategic alliance to significantly increase the insurance industry's impact on equipment theft. Through the alliance, the databases of National Equipment Register (NER), a member of the ISO family of companies, will be made more widely available to law enforcement through NICB's network of agents working with law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

JERSEY SHORE — Borough police are looking for two young men who took a front-end loader for a brief joy ride Friday morning before crashing the construction equipment into a parked car and a garage.

Officers say they have a pretty good idea who the thieves are, thanks to a fresh coat of snow and a surveillance camera in a nearby convenience store.

“We’ve had several phone calls since the photo was aired on Channel 16. We’re pretty sure who they are. We’re trying to find them at this point,” Jersey Shore Police Detective Daniel Hull said Friday afternoon as he talked about the incident and the clues left behind.

Bridgewater, Mass. - Thieves find a flourishing market for stolen heavy construction equipment
Ronald Bussiere figured his company’s construction equipment was too big to steal. Then someone swiped a skid steer loader — commonly known as a Bobcat — from a Lynn demolition site eight years ago.

Bussiere expected to be one of the thousands of business owners with construction equipment stolen that would never be found.

Oman

CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill - VIPAR Heavy Duty announced the parts network’s expansion into the commercial vehicle equipment market. The new entity will be known as VHD Equipment Network, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of VIPAR Heavy Duty. VHD Equipment Network will focus on the $9 billion North American commercial vehicle equipment market that represents over 1,700 companies that distribute, install, buy, sell and repair truck-mounted equipment.

DUBAI: The Gulf’s booming construction industry is feeling the heat of soaring materials costs and labour shortages amid concern that supply pressures coud delay the completion of projects.
The economy minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose construction and real estate sectors contributed 23 percent of the economic output in 2007, has warned that supply constraints might slow construction in the area.

“Regional and international factors that could unexpectedly cause a recession (in construction) should be watched, Sheikha Lubna al-Qassemi told an industry conference in Abu Dhabi earlier this month.

List ranks Deere high as corporate citizen
Deere & Co. has achieved its highest rank ever in the annual “100 Best Corporate Citizens” list.
The yearly evaluation, compiled by CRO magazine, scored Deere fourth among more than 1,000 publicly traded, large-cap U.S. companies. The publication is a journal of The CRO, a membership organization for corporate responsibility officers.

Among the categories considered, the Moline-based Deere scored well in climate change and human rights. It also had strong scores for philanthropy, environment and financial performance.