The growth of leasing investment has played a key role in the demand for aerial work platforms. With the apparent saturation of the traditional engineering equipment market demand, many distributors are encouraged to invest in new business areas, and the industry generally believes that leasing of aerial work platforms can provide better returns and a clearer cost structure without hiring operators .
In the past two years, the leasing industry has attracted a lot of investment, provided manufacturers with a large number of orders, and has become an important part of increasing the total number of equipment. The development of leasing has been welcomed by customers, who need to work at high altitude to cope with various applications while reducing the cost of equipment ownership.
Considering the huge potential of the aerial work equipment market, many major Chinese manufacturers have entered the industry through new product lines, and their entry has made a tremendous contribution to the significant growth in market demand in the past two years. In order to stimulate sales growth, manufacturers have developed sales channels through cooperation with major leasing companies, and they usually obtain better purchase conditions than usual.
Market demand is strong, and many manufacturers are now increasing their production capacity. The rapid growth of the market has more than doubled the total number of equipment to more than 100,000 units in the past two years, which has led to increased risk exposure for leasing companies and manufacturers. Now, too many devices are competing for a limited workload.
The result is a sharp drop in rents, especially for the popular scissor lift, where the income is not even enough to cover the operating costs. On the other hand, lower rents usually result in high fleet utilization. The competition to attract leasing customers has also led to technological advancement, and the design and manufacture of equipment is of higher quality, which can meet the harsh operating conditions in leasing.
Battery technology is developing toward maintenance-free types, which can reduce the operating costs of rental customers. Lithium batteries have been introduced as a choice of traditional lead-acid types, although people are concerned about the cost and danger of lithium batteries, limiting their use to less than 20% of sales. With the advancement of technology and the requirements of environmental policies, this is still an important choice for manufacturers.
