Irontrax’s Joe Santora breaks down the diverging realities of today’s equipment market, offering a candid look at why cranes remain sticky while transportation assets continue to search for a bottom.

Equipment finance leaders don’t need a reminder that the market isn’t a monolith. In the current landscape, what’s happening to a crawler crane doesn’t look anything like what’s happening to a Class 8 sleeper. For those in the trenches of asset management, portfolio strategy gets complicated fast when those curves start diverging.

I recently sat down with Joe Santora, president at Irontrax and an Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA). We talked about various asset classes, including the harsh reality of the EV secondary market. Through the lens of his deep auction and appraisal experience, a few clear themes emerged: certain asset classes are being propped up by replacement costs and supply constraints, while others are stuck in a buyer’s market with too much supply and too little financing support.

Here is an overview of the trends that matter most right now across key equipment and transportation categories, based on our conversation.

Heavy Lift is Staying Strong

If you’re looking for an asset class with resilient values, Santora points first to cranes. In a market where many categories are softening, crane pricing has been supported by a simple, unavoidable reality: the cost to replace them has skyrocketed.

“The original equipment cost of a crane — whether it’s a crawler, all-terrain or rough-terrain — has gone upwards of 30% in probably the last three to four years,” Santora notes. When you layer a 15% tariff on anything coming into the U.S. (since most units are manufactured in Japan or Germany), you get a second layer of upward pressure.

Interestingly, the actual “tariff hit” the customer sees right now is closer to 7.5%. Santora says manufacturers are splitting the burden with customers just to keep orders moving. But even with that split, the psychological impact on the market is real. “Everybody hears 15%,” Santora says, “so they automatically think, ‘Oh, well, now it’s worth 15% more.’”

While it’s not quite a 15% jump in value, the combination of replacement-cost inflation and tariffs has effectively offset what would otherwise be normal depreciation. If you valued an asset last year and you’re valuing it again today, the numbers are likely flat. In today’s economy, “flat” is the new “strong.”

In crane-heavy portfolios, the depreciation story is less dramatic than historical tables suggest. The “floor” is being held up by today’s replacement economics, not necessarily an explosion in demand.

Transportation: Still Searching for a Bottom

If cranes are the stable story, transportation is the grinding one. The Class 8 truck market, especially sleepers, is currently in a “slide” that refuses to quit.

“Every single time we feel like we’ve hit the bottom in trucking, we slide a little farther,” Santora says. He views auction results as the cleanest real-time signal of this trend. When the market is flooded with options, buyers can afford to be selective. That makes liquidation slower and pricing more painful.

Two forces are compounding this pressure:
1. The Financing Gap: There is a notable pullback from banks willing to finance owner-operators. When the bottom of the buyer stack loses access to credit, the entire secondary market feels the squeeze.
2. The “Buyer’s Market” Trap: With so many transportation companies faltering, there is a glut of used items.

When I asked what advice he’d give a workout officer sitting on an underwater transportation portfolio, his response was characteristically blunt: “Pray or start drinking.”

While there isn’t a “magic pill,” Santora notes that asset managers must be tactical. You can spend money on cleaning or basic repairs to make a unit easier to sell, but don’t confuse that with spending to increase its fundamental value. At this stage, the goal is often just to make the asset “more appealing than the one next to it” so you can exit the position.

Construction: Softness You Can See From the Highway
Santora’s take on construction is visual: just drive down the freeway.

“All you have to do is look at dealer inventories. If the yard is full at the Caterpillar dealership, it’s a supply and demand issue,” he says. When manufacturers start offering 0% or highly competitive financing, it’s not out of generosity — it’s because they can’t move the iron.

There’s also been a shift in the “Trump Bump” narrative. While there was a rush of excitement and purchasing after the last administration change, many contractors are now “fleeted up.”

They bought what they needed, and the expected December surge — driven by bonus depreciation — didn’t quite materialize in 2025. Instead, Santora saw a “rush after the first of the year” as activity shifted into January.

For leaders, the takeaway is clear: Don’t rely on the “usual” seasonal demand curve. The timing of equipment sales is shifting, and disposition planning needs to be flexible enough to follow actual buyer behavior rather than the calendar.

The Infrastructure Mirage
We’ve all heard about the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, and many lenders expected that to translate into a “super-cycle” for roads, bridges and heavy civil work. Santora argues that the reality has been much more diluted.

“Infrastructure is a very wide net,” he explains. “It includes increasing Wi-Fi, broadband and EV charging stations. But the roads and bridges? We haven’t really seen a huge rush yet.”
The headline dollar number exists, but the equipment demand signal for “traditional” infrastructure has been slower and more uneven than the industry anticipated. If you’re justifying high residuals based on a “bridge-building boom,” you might want to double-check the actual letting activity in your region.
Auctions: The Shift from “Last Resort” to “Primary Channel”
One of the most structural shifts Santora described is the move to online, timed auctions. This isn’t just a tech trend; it’s a generational one.

The “old-school” auction — where you could smell the diesel and feel the rumble of the machine on the ramp — is being replaced by digital platforms. “I started in the auction business when I was 24, now I’m 53, so I guess that makes me an old-timer in this business,” Santora says. “I thought it would never work. But then COVID hit and forced the world online. And the results stayed.”

The new generation of fleet managers grew up on eBay. They don’t mind buying a six-figure asset online. In fact, they prefer it. They can have four auctions up on their screen at once, bidding across geographies simultaneously.

For finance leaders, this means auction data is no longer “liquidation data” — it is market data. If you aren’t monitoring timed auctions, you’re missing the most current read on where your collateral is valued.

Telematics: When “Too Much Data” Kills the Deal

We are all drowning in data, but Santora offers a balanced view on how much of it actually helps a transaction.

For sophisticated buyers, telematics data, including idle time and load patterns, removes uncertainty and builds confidence. For lenders, it’s a powerful tool to understand use patterns and adjust residuals for repeat lessees.

However, there’s a catch. “Sometimes too much data kills a deal,” Santora warns. In the secondary market, if a buyer isn’t asking for every load sensor log from the last three years, you don’t necessarily need to volunteer it. The goal is to provide enough transparency to prove the machine’s health without “spooking” a buyer with irrelevant noise.

The “Zero-Zero” Rule for Emerging Tech
When the conversation turned to electric vehicles (EVs) and alternative fuels, Santora didn’t mince words.

“Anything technology-based generally doesn’t have a high residual value,” he says. He draws a parallel to the CNG and LNG (natural gas) cycles. “The first buyer wants it for the press release — Pepsi spent more money on a Super Bowl ad than they did buying Tesla trucks. You can’t give that stuff away in the secondary market.”

His current mantra for the equipment finance C-suite? Zero emission equals zero residual. Until there is a secondary market cycle long enough to provide repeatable data, placing a high residual on an EV commercial asset is a gamble, not a strategy. While GenZ may never choose internal combustion engines, the infrastructure and secondary demand aren’t there yet to support bank-level risk.

Why “Boots on the Ground” Still Wins
Finally, in an age of AI and desktop valuations, Santora remains a staunch advocate for physical inspections.

Desktop valuations force appraisers to make assumptions about condition and average hours of use. “A physical inspection eliminates the guesswork,” Santora says. He’s seen desktop valuations on assets that turned out to be “parts machines” once someone actually looked under the hood.

Moreover, an inspection tells you about the character of the borrower. “If you walk into a yard and everything is clean, neat and tidy, that sticks in your head. It tells you they have pride in their equipment. If it’s a mess, that’s a red flag.”

The Bottom Line
As we look at the remainder of the year, the market is rewarding fundamentals. Interest rates may be stabilizing — which Santora believes will finally move private-sector projects off the “wait-and-see” sidelines — but the “magic pill” for asset values doesn’t exist.

Success in this environment comes from:
• Leaning on observable auction signals rather than outdated tables.
• Being realistic about the diluted impact of infrastructure spending.
• Treating emerging tech with extreme residual caution.
• Remembering that nothing replaces an inspection when the risk is high.
The market will continue to fluctuate, but as Santora’s insights suggest, the advantage goes to the leaders who see the dirt on the tires before they see the report on their desk.•

Rita E. Garwood is editor in chief of Monitor.