Read on to learn about my time this week at BAUMA 2022 in Munich, Germany!
Weekly Update
I'm writing this week's update from Salzburg, Austria!
The world's biggest trade show, BAUMA, took place this week in Munich, Germany, and since it features the latest and greatest in construction and mining equipment, I HAD to go…
Once every three years, I thought about attending in 2019, but being only in my second year of business, I didn't have the time or money to make it happen. I still don't, but oh well.
To provide a sense of scale, the show is 3X larger than CONEXPO, and 650,000 people from around the world attended the last one. To visit every exhibitor over an entire week, you'd have 90 seconds at every booth.
While the machines were spectacular, my favorite part of our four days at BAUMA was the people. People make the Dirt World great! Thanks to our social media reach, we connected with people familiar with BuildWitt from Australia, Egypt, Canada, Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Iceland, and Germany.
We were spoiled when it came to unique experiences. Zeppelin, Germany's Cat dealer, hosted us and provided us with exhibitor passes, meaning we could tour the show before it opened. Liebherr let us stay in the cab of their 9300 mining excavator during a demonstration, Komatsu let us set up a photo with a mini excavator and mining shovel, and Wirtgen/Deere hosted us for dinner at the legendary Ratskeller.
An overwhelming trend was electrification and alternative fuels. Pressure from institutional investors and countries in the EU is driving equipment manufacturers to consider life without diesel fuel. Some applications make perfect sense for this technology — trailing cables to mining shovels or electric machines for indoor use are great examples.
Beyond some specific use cases, I have enormous doubts about heavy equipment moving away from diesel. Everyone only speaks of the negatives of diesel while ignoring the vast positives…
If you want to see more about our experience at BAUMA, we'll have a few vlogs on YouTube coming soon!
Business Lesson Learned
I couldn’t attend BAUMA in 2019 because I didn’t have a support system at the company. I was in year two of business and had hired a few others to help, but the world of BuildWitt almost entirely revolved around me.
Three years later and the dynamic is entirely different. We have a phenomenal team of eighty humans and a strong leadership team to guide them. I run an increasingly smaller percentage of the business as Dan Briscoe, Jason Richmond, and Randy Blount all support BuildWitt in their respective areas of strength.
With this support, I can fly to places like Europe to grow BuildWitt’s influence without worrying about the business unraveling as I’m away.
People are the best investment a business can make. Thanks to our investing in great humans, I can stay in my lane and have experiences I wouldn’t otherwise afford to have.
Podcast
This week on Dirt Talk, Aron Nick from Strack Inc stopped by to talk about his wild career in the industry and what he’s now doing at Strack to help develop the next generation. Our conversation surprised me in the best of ways, and he’s had one hell of an adventure working in the Dirt World!
Vlog
We finally concluded the Canadian vlog series this week with our vlog featuring Finning Cat in Fort Mackay, Alberta. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to assemble one of the world’s biggest machines, this video won’t disappoint.
