A Mascus Report

With over 430,000 used heavy machinery and trucks listed for sale on its website, Mascus is one of the world’s largest online listing platforms to buy and sell used construction, mining, forestry, agricultural, material handling equipment and commercial transport vehicles. The company has been active for 20 years, operates from 33 offices around the world, and supports 54 domains in 38 languages.

Why this report?

Being a global online platform with a large amount of used heavy machinery and trucks listed for sale all worldwide and receiving over 3.7 million visits to Mascus websites every month, we are able to capture a lot of relevant statistics about the industry. In this study, we have compiled business intelligence data which reflects the global demand for used heavy machinery and trucks for the year 2019.

Additionally, the annual report is an insightful summary of the Mascus site performance in the following areas: audience, content and demand, to create a complete performance outline of our platform.

1. Audience overview

Audience remains one of our top priorities and we are constantly working on increasing the quality and volume of our web traffic globally for our advertising clients. In 2019, almost 25 million unique buyers and sellers visited Mascus which is a 4% increase compared to 2018. The demand or the interest in buying used heavy machinery and trucks remained strong like in 2018. We have also witnessed 7% increase in mobile traffic in 2019 compared to 2018.  

As half of the users are visiting our sites from a mobile phone, we are pushing more and more the Mascus app that ensures fast access to listings and brings buyers one call-click away from sellers.

On Mascus, the audience share split for visits by device category in 2019 was the following: 51.27% mobile, 41.50% desktop, 7.23% tablet. Buyers find it more and more convenient to search for used heavy machinery and trucks from their mobile devices in the detriment of desktop usage. The Mascus app that was launched at the end of 2018 has an audience of 20 000 users every month. The app is available for Android and iOS devices.

As we expected, mobile traffic gained almost 6% in audience share in 2019, while desktop traffic lost 4% share compared to 2018. Our responsive website is adapted to offer a seamless experience on all types of devices.

TIP: OEMs, dealers and traders of used equipment should ensure their company website is mobile friendly. Mascus can help you rebuild your used equipment website, find out more info here.

Looking at our users’ location, 80.64% of visits come from Europe, 7.79% from Asia and 7.66% from Americas. Consequently, the majority of countries in the following top are from Europe. However, United States moved from the third place in 2018 to first place in 2019 in terms of users visiting Mascus site, with an increase of 25% more users than in 2018.

In terms of demographic measurements, as expected, the large majority of our users are men (78.58%), while less than a quarter are women (21.42%). More than half of our users are from the 35-44 (28%) and 25-34 (27%) age brackets, followed by those between the ages of 45-54 (21%) and 55-64 (12%).

Although most of our audience comes from online, attending live events relevant to the industries we work in and meeting our users and customers personally is always a priority for our local teams. In 2019, we had a stand at 30 important fairs and industry shows (such as Bauma (Munich), CTT Bauma (Moscow), Agritechnica, Solutrans, BICES, MAXPO etc.) and visited another 60 fairs. Aside from large industry shows, our Mascus representatives were present at most Ritchie Bros. live auctions all over the world in 2019.

2. Content overview

In 2019 we focused on bringing more valuable listings on Mascus and offering more choices to potential buyers both locally and internationally. The total number of used heavy machinery and trucks listed on Mascus in 2019 (the monthly average exceeding 430,000 active listings) shows a 7% increase compared to previous year.

Overall, in 2019 we had a total of 5,084,300 active listings on Mascus (including equipment listed for auction and rental), with 1,102,024 new listings and 1,439,116 removed listings. Removed listings is a strong indicator that the machines were disposed of or sold. The monthly dynamic in 2019 for newly added listings (counted at the end of each month as newly published in that respective month) and the removed listings on the Mascus site has seen a 24% increase compared to previous year, which indicates a more active offer and demand, which could be attributed to the scheduled auction events.

In the following section, we share top 3 new listings and removed listings by machine category and brand on Mascus in 2019. This top remains the same as in 2018. Close to half of the new listings on Mascus in 2019 were used construction equipment items.

Farming tractors and crawler excavators are continuing to occupy the first two positions both in new listings and removed listings on Mascus in 2019. On the third position, we see trucks as the third most newly listed items, while panel vans are the third most removed item type.

Compared to previous year, the total number of removed/sold used construction machines has gained 4% in the content share, while the number of removed listings of trucks and other industrial transportation vehicles has decreased by 2%.

If we examine the country of origin of active listings in specific sectors in 2019, USA, Poland and France were the top 3 countries with the largest offer of used construction equipment. Denmark, Germany, and Sweden were where most listings of used agricultural equipment on Mascus originated from, while Spain, Netherlands and USA were leading in transportation vehicle listings. Sweden, Poland and Germany had most used forestry equipment listed on Mascus. It is worth mentioning that 24% of material handling equipment listings on Mascus originated from Germany.

Overall, considering listings in all sectors, there were a few changes in the top 10 countries with items for sale on Mascus in 2019 compared to previous year. Netherlands surpassed France by a small margin and United Kingdom entered the top and replaced China on the 9^th position.

3. Demand overview

Potential buyers searching for used equipment have two easy options for contacting sellers on Mascus: sending contact requests by email or calling the seller directly for a more immediate response. The specific details we have gathered regarding the demand from email contact requests, provide us with valuable insights on the most sought after machine and vehicle types and brands per sector, the location of the buyers as well as where the machines and vehicles for sale are located. Therefore, we have analysed the statistics of buying request via emails rather than phone calls, as the former metric offers more in depth data.

The percentage of buying requests received for Mascus listings via email in 2019 represented 25% of the total demand registered last year and we’ve seen a 3% gain compared to previous year. In addition, 58% clicks to reveal the seller’s phone number from interested buyers accessing Mascus via desktop, and 17% direct phone calls from mobile users account for the other two indicators of buying intention. As mobile traffic continued to grow throughout 2019, the total number of direct calls from mobile has also increased by 5% since previous year.

The following graphs are based on email contact requests values in 2019.

7 out of the 10 most requested machine types on Mascus overall belonged to used construction equipment, which also validates the high percentage of used constructions listings present on Mascus accounting for almost half of the used equipment offer on our site in 2019.

An interesting fact is that dozers have dropped from this top 10 most requested machine types and been replaced on the last position by forestry forwarders in 2019.

Further in our report, we look into more detail at most requested used equipment machine types and brands per sector in 2019 on Mascus.

Caterpillar held comfortably the top spot in the buyers’ interest for construction equipment brands, followed by Volvo and JCB, while the majority of contact requests received by used construction equipment dealers were for crawler excavators and wheel loaders.

“Most requested used machines in the agriculture sector in 2019 were the tractors, specifically John Deere models.”

Most buying requests in the transportation sector were for tractor trucks, while Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Scania remained the most preferred brands of trucks during 2019.

According to contact request numbers, the highest demand in used forklifts was for Diesel forklift trucks, three times higher compared to the interest raised by electric forklift trucks. Linde, Toyota  and Hyster were the most requested brands in material handling.

In the forestry sector, most buyers were interested in John Deere equipment and usually looking to buy used forwarders, harvesters and wood chippers.

Most email request from buyers came from the following countries (we refer to this as origin of demand):

Overall, United Kingdom sent out most email contact requests for used equipment in all sectors representing 11% of the total demand, followed by Germany (7%), USA (7%), Spain (6%), Poland (5%) and France (5%) in our top of countries sending most email contact requests in 2019 to sellers advertising their stock on Mascus.

If we look specifically into used construction equipment, that’s where two thirds of the contact requests from United Kingdom were aimed at in 2019. Compared to previous year, we’ve seen increased interest in buying requests for construction equipment coming from France (increase by 34%), as well as from Germany (increase by 15%).

For used agricultural equipment, the buying request has increased most in the following countries compared to previous year: France (50%), United Kingdom (19%), and Sweden (17%).

Conclusion

To wrap up this report on the used heavy machinery and truck market in 2019, as reflected by traffic, offer and demand statistics registered on Mascus, here are a few conclusions:

• As the used equipment offer continuously grew in 2019, with the number of listings higher by 7% compared to previous year, the demand saw a more lax increase of 3% more email contact requests than in 2018.
• The dynamic of new and removed listings saw a 24% increase since previous year.
• Web traffic (direct and organic) in 2019 on Mascus grew by 3% compared to 2018, mobile traffic saw a substantial increase of 7% compared to 2018.
• The majority of used heavy equipment listed on Mascus was in the construction sector (about half of the total offer), however used trucks have increased their content share by 3% compared to 2018.
• USA, Germany and Poland had most used heavy equipment for sale on Mascus in 2019.
• Crawler excavators and tractors were once again the most sought after used machine types listed on Mascus, while Caterpillar and Volvo were the most popular brands of heavy machinery among potential buyers.