Rethinking Heavy Equipment Sales in the Digital Age

Podcast Transcript

Steven Rossi  

Hello there and welcome to the Construction Revolution podcast. My name is Steven Rossi and here on the show we explore the latest trends, technologies, people and organizations that are revolutionizing or disrupting the construction industry and are changing what the industry will look like tomorrow.  

Today we welcome Clément Cazalot, the CEO and co-founder of Machinery Partner. Clem has combined his family background in construction with his experience working in tech and venture capital to develop technology to help ease the trade process within the heavy machinery industry. Join us as we explore how Machinery Partner’s creating solutions to revolutionize how people buy and sell heavy equipment with technology and financing tools made for contractors of all sizes.  

Hi Clem, welcome to the Construction Revolution podcast. How are you doing today? 

Clement Cazalot  

I’m doing great, ready for the revolution. 

Steven Rossi  

That’s great to hear. I’m excited to learn about how you guys are revolutionizing how people are buying equipment. So why don’t we jump right in, and can you tell us about how you founded Machinery Partner and what inspired the idea for the company? 

Clement Cazalot  

Sure, I mean, as any good French person, I’m always up for a revolution. That’s the baseline. So, I was born on that. And the reality is… and thanks for inviting me. Machinery Partner is here to build a backbone for the machinery economy. That’s what we do. We provide the tools for brands of equipment that have innovations that they want to bring up into new geographies or new type of customers. 

And so that’s what we do, we’re focused on the US market where we partner with brands in Europe, in Korea, or in Canada, in the US that have a specific story to tell because they are specialized on light mining, recycling in the aggregate world, in specific like dry batch plants that have like so much potential in some part of the countries in the US or in Canada. They are like, we focus with manufacturers who have a specific innovation to tell to the markets that are not carried by traditional dealers. And we create the logistics supply, the financing, but also like the network of service support across the nation with now a north of 150 trucks across the nation that supports our clients to help them be successful.  

So that’s what Machinery Partner is. And on top of that, we help clients understand what’s available to them in 2025 and what are all the innovations that they could buy because there is truly a construction revolution right now with new technologies coming to market and new opportunities that most contractors of all sizes and most builders didn’t have like just even 10 years ago. So that’s what Machinery Partner is. We help 200 factories across the US now procure and buy equipment differently. 

And I started the business with a friend of mine, actually, who was from Ireland, who actually, so when COVID started. So, when COVID started, I became a father. I had a child, and I put my life in perspective and I come from a family of builders, but then I went into technology, investment, and I realized having a kid forces you to look up and put your life in perspective. And I wanted to have an impact in the world I came from. And at the same time, when COVID happened, all the supply chains in the world got disrupted. It was impossible to buy anything, especially on the concrete side. It was just like everything was disrupted. You couldn’t buy new batch plants. You couldn’t buy anything. And so we decided to become specialty importers in the US using technology to enable people to better find, fund and fix their equipment.  

We started in the aggregate world and over the past few years expanded to the concrete ecosystem and to the environmental world. So, what inspired me is to see that people settle for what they can buy locally instead of settling for what’s best. With Giatec, you are the forefront of that, like there are countless innovations in the physical world that are not considered, not because they are not good, it’s just because they are just not known in the market when the decision needs to happen. And so that’s what inspired me.  

I kept coming back to France, seeing my family that is in the build world, just doing the same stuff years after years, decades after decades, buying the same equipment, buying the same, like in my case, like in the roofing world, like just doing the same stuff every year, not knowing that like a hundred miles away in Spain, in Poland, which is more than a hundred miles away, or in the US, like things are done massively, more efficiently because all the suppliers are on the market. So that’s a little bit of what Machinery Partner is. We want to be the backbone of the machinery economy, enabling innovation to be distributed faster. 

Steven Rossi  

Nice. Yeah, that’s great. It’s a great story and an excellent mission as well. So, can you maybe give us for someone like me who’s not super familiar with buying heavy machinery, what did sort of the traditional process, what does that traditional process look like? And then how has machinery partner revolutionized it? And what does it look like with you guys? 

Clement Cazalot  

Sure, totally. The average price of a piece of construction equipment is around 220 grand. So, to put in perspective, that’s a price of a Ferrari, that’s a price of a house in most of the US and Canada. And yet it is purchased through paper and handshake. You’re going to drive down to a dealership, you might go to take a flight, drive to a trade show, you will put in a deposit, you’ll get it at some point. 

And once you have it, you actually give it to someone who might or might not have the training to use and give the keys and like go at it. Please use this asphalt paver the right way. Use this batch plant the right way. Please don’t wreck it. And it’s crazy. You don’t buy a house and give your keys to someone like after buying like your house and give it to someone being like, I hope you won’t wreck it when you use it. That’s not how the rest of the world does. But it just happens that in the heavy equipment world, that’s how we do it. 

And so, the way machinery partner revolutionizes that process is by bringing transparency at the forefront. We help people find the right equipment and the right supply chain for them. What you’re going to buy in Quebec, in Ontario, is different from what you’re going to buy in Nebraska, in Wisconsin, or in California, because your supply chain, you have access for parts, service, support, is different. So, we help people find what are the right partners for them. We help people fund. 

If you’re a large company or a small company, you have different types of purchasing retail options, but also from the supplier standpoint, if you’re going to sell something in 30 days because you’re in the US or 120 days, 180 days out, you have different needs of financing in order for that transaction to happen. And so, we are the merchant of record preventing fraud, which is rampant in the heavy equipment world. And ultimately, it’s all about uptime.  

So, we provide actually for the first time one place where you can call for all your issues. DSL, hydraulic, electrical, and who actually rides out to the right partners locally. Some people, that’s our trucks coming here locally, and sometimes that’s like some local partners that we certified come to your place. So, we revolutionize that by bringing transparency through everything from selection to pricing to lead time to ultimately the uptime and support you’re going to have. Local dealers already do that, but they do that for one brand, two brands, the brands they represent, and we do that for dozens and dozens of brands that trust us to build a backbone for them. 

Steven Rossi  

Nice. Yeah, that’s great. So yeah, being able to use the scale to your advantage and also keeping it local, I think that’s important. Like you’re not trying to give anyone those just because they want the big fancy machine if they can’t be supported in that area that you’re not going to give it. 

Clement Cazalot  

Exactly, the reality in 2025 is that there are so many options available, so many partners available for you to trade and support. It’s like giving the perspective for someone to say like, who’s the right machinery partner? That’s why the name. For your, for the local needs of your business. We have everyone from small contractors to the US Space Force as clients because we were able to match their needs and create a custom solution. The reality of heavy equipment is its job dependent, it’s construction project dependent and so as a result you need to match that level of complexity. 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, absolutely. So, as we’re getting into summer and warmer weather and construction season, essentially in North America, during this busy season, a lot of times we see shortages in materials and equipment, delivery delays. How does Machinery Partner ensure that equipment is always readily available and also in terms of uptime, making sure that there’s no delays in parts or support or on demand? 

Clement Cazalot  

Yeah, that’s like, there are no vacations right now until October. Like that, like all hands-on deck. So, what’s interesting in the construction world is we are all like elements on the broader supply chain. Everyone needs to do their job so that there is a waterfall for the project and equipment is a core of it. So, it’s all about the transparency and where local dealers are fantastic is because they can be on a specific type of equipment, come and dispatch and have someone in a short amount of time to at least be present.  

The main topic for us, dispatching specialty equipment like mobile batch plant and rock crusher screeners or shredders, the piece is forced to be transparent on the supply chain. Right now, January 1st, the transportation hasn’t been more messed up. It’s been as messed up as it gets. Europe is bordering a recession right now, which means factories in Europe are slower and slower because they see the demand weakening and going down. So right now, to be honest, we are ahead of schedule on some, we are behind schedule on others. There is a tariff also. People are withholding shipping until there is greater visibility on the tariff because that can actually impact everything.  

So right now, that’s why we’re a technology first company that actually puts transparency of information at the forefront of it. We screw up at times like everyone. The main topic however is can you understand and share on the other side what that means in construction season. If you screw up an equipment delivery that means there is probably two, three, five, eight, twenty people that will be impacted, all the contractors or the contractors themselves to do it. So that’s why we try to be as transparent as possible. The reality is because of this equipment shortage and this material shortage, most of our clients become clients because they want to verticalize their supply chain to regain control of this lead time producing their own concrete. When they do like a massive warehouse project or produce their own aggregate, when they do road base and our pavers or shredding, like when they, like when they need to do specific fields. 

So actually, most of our clients are actually coming to us in order to own their supply chain and move from being traditional builders to builders plus material producers for the pieces that have the most shortage or inflation in their local market. And I’m expecting that to be a continuous trend over the years to come. The same thing that we saw in Europe where the market has much less fat in terms of margins in projects. As a result, a lot of contractors and builders are actually verticalizing their supply chain in order to own their costs and control their profits at a greater level. 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, I think that’s definitely an interesting trend that we’re seeing in those mass projects of people making their own, producing their own concrete and even materials like you mentioned. Yeah, it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. I think as those massive projects continue. 

Clement Cazalot  

You cannot be competitive right now on the data center project if you’re not producing your concrete on site because of two reasons. First, usually there are remote locations, like the easy locations were already built. So now there are remote locations that have a unique access to power. Usually, these power plants might be in remote areas themselves. You literally have a combination of remote and then you have a competition of price pressure. 

So as a result, you actually need to have your own equipment on site, on concrete, like you have a mobile batch plant on site, in order to be able to compete. So that’s where we shine as Machinery Partners, to create a platform for the buyers and the partnerships so that they can buy new brands or new technologies that were not readily available to them before. 

Steven Rossi  

Nice. And you touched on this, the tariffs and everything that’s going on, especially as an importer and someone who’s focused on the American market. How are you dealing with that? What do you sort of see in the future of how that can affect the construction industry? 

Clement Cazalot  

So, I’m not a micro economist, but I know that I import about 5 to 6 million dollars of equipment every single quarter. And it’s like we’re doubling that amount every single year. And so right now, the reality is the volatility is affecting everyone on the market. So, it’s painful for everybody because you don’t know your margins, so you don’t know how much you can invest on every client in order to help them be successful. 

However, that is creating a massive tailwind, speaking about a revolution, as a result, because everyone is impacted. Everyone is trying to get smarter and understand better their supply chain, their equipment providers, understanding what are the risks of the local dealers they partner with. Thus, they go online, they research more, they use like, chat GPT and others to have brief and research on what is happening.  

And as a company that decided since day one to operate on transparency, price transparency, lead time transparency, engineering capacity and transparency. We happen to be at the forefront of a lot of these discussions, what needs to be considered in a lot of these conversations so we can help the overall ecosystem be better. And this is why I created this company, like why we created this company is because we want the market to understand or to understand all the options out there and not do something out of legacy and because this is how it’s always been done in that specific state or county. 

Steven Rossi  

Nice. Yeah, that makes sense. Machinery Partner have recently announced an AI powered financing solution, which is Machinery Partner Capital Solutions, I believe. How does that innovate and simplify the procurement and buying process for your clients and the contractors? 

Clement Cazalot  

So as a contractor, when I go around something with here, with United, with whomever, I have an account and I know what is my budget, what I’ve been approved for, what I’m financed for. Like same on every project, like the construction world is actually one of the most financially savvy world to me because we actually operate on thin margins. And as a result, we need to understand our budgets and there are countless tools left and right for that. 

At Machinery Partner, however, the equipment buying side, unless you work with your local credit union, you reach a size to have your ongoing credit lines, the reality of your budget is usually left at the 11th hour when you make the purchase to understand what’s my true capital rate on that, what is my true investment that I’m going to do, what is the subsidies that the dealer is going to provide. It’s always fairly opaque. So, we decided to flip that up on it’s head and help every builder have upfront the financing options that they have.  

It turned out on the consumer market, before going to buy a house, you get a letter of pre-approval. Well, turned out in the construction market, you first select your equipment, you work with your project, you go through the whole piece to then understand, am I able to afford the 750, the million, the million and five, and I’m reverse engineering this capex cost into my monthly cost and what’s coming behind it. And so, we decided to put that up front.  

And so, we’re leveraging about 40 different data sources, some that are publicly available, some that are private to us, to actually provide to every builder working with us or in our ecosystem the ability to understand better what are their options for financing and what are going to be the costs of that capital. And actually, we bring AI further, is actually right now we’re developing internal solutions that so that so concrete, concrete is about chemistry. It’s about chemistry at scale in order to create a specific material, the second largest commodity after water in the world to make sure that it stays in a certain level of compaction or it withstands certain stress when it’s being poured. That’s a lot of chemistry. Do you put some additives? Don’t you? What are like the mixes you’re going to do based on the specs you’re trying to reach? 

That context, it takes like five to seven years for someone to be really, really good at concrete. It takes like a couple of years to be okay. And like, it’s a lifetime to be really good at concrete. We’re actually developing AIs that are actually going through every project we worked on, every project our OEM worked on, every project our own clients had to answer before, and actually get that contextual knowledge to help people ask the right question. 

On the selection of this innovation and on these machines, what do we need?  If you take a mobile batch plant, what do you need? What is going to be possible given your local team’s availability? So, we’re actually creating knowledge agents internally using our own proprietary data to help through the selection and more importantly, even the maintenance. So, we’ve recently been able to highlight the disparity for some of our clients depending on their operators on the return on investment and the abuse put on the machines.   

Everyone speaks about that, like how do you use telematics to know what’s working, what’s not. For the first time, we’re able to instrumentalize that across OEMs to help people understand better what’s happening on the field. So, I’m very bullish on the role of AI, not as a magic technology, like the beauty of the build world or where the last one we’re gonna be fired, through that revolution, but to actually add knowledge and add context in these extremely complex cycles of either operation or purchasing. 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, that’s really, really interesting. I see how that would be useful. Being able to see all that information upfront and use that in your decision-making criteria is definitely a game changer. So, moving a little bit away from just focusing on machinery partner, you’ve started, you have a long history of working and founding a variety of different companies, mostly in tech, in a variety of industries. So I’m wondering, how have you found the construction industry compared to those other like high tech and finance and different industries you’ve worked in before? 

Clement Cazalot  

Sure, I was born and raised in my parents like where my father was a GC building like building houses. My grandparents were like in the mining world and in the equipment distribution world for on the AGCO side with Massey Ferguson. So, I grew up in that world like many kids in this world when you’re around 15, you’re basically sat down and you’re like, hey, do you want to continue that world or do you want to go to do something else?  

I got a chance to have fantastic mentors, went to university, and did computer science. That was like massively evolved in the early 2000s and business school because apparently, I was not too bad at speaking. And so I got the chance to spend the past 17 years of my professional career always invest, either operating or investing in companies in between the physical and digital world. Whether that’s called insurances where you take the data from the physical world to predict the future of the physical world. 

Whether they are actually marketplaces in the medical tech world, whether they are mining companies on like material wearers and material science. So, it’s always like how do you use science and technology to bring the boundaries of the physical world a little further. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 17 years and for the past four years, I’ve been like decided to drop investing and just focus on machinery partner, because I truly believe there is a generational opportunity for all of us in the construction world to reshape how we operate in it. And so that’s why I decided to build this backbone of the machinery economy. The reality of the construction world is all about how do you use tools to enhance the humans that is used to guide, and project manage and operate those. So that’s what I did.  

And the beauty of the construction world, it’s actually one of the most pragmatic and clear industry where our project tend to be a few more, like the feedback loop from success to failure is extremely fast. Sometimes it’s extremely frustrating, but I find the construction world, I mean, you see that on the concrete side, it’s actually the feedback loop are so fast that it’s actually one of the most practical and actually fast adopting ecosystems is just. 

The dollars we move are so much bigger. It’s not about buying a gizmo at like 200 buck a month subscription. It’s truly like you have thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions on the line. If you screw up and you can actually damage like if something fails, like people might die. like the adoption of new technologies really fast. The implementation takes some time because you need to actually be properly educated. 

But at the end of the day, it’s down to the spreadsheet, like can you make the numbers work? And so I love the construction world so much. We’re at the intersection of construction, agriculture and manufacturing, depending on the focus we have, and all these industries are extremely pragmatic and it’s a pleasure. 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, guess I’m interested to sort of dig a little deeper on that because I think traditionally the construction industry has a reputation for being pretty slow to change and slow to adopt new technology and even resist to change with sort of being an older, more traditional industry. But it sounds like that might not be the experience you’ve had. 

Clement Cazalot  

I would respectfully disagree. I agree that implementing BIM, implementing, like pick the name of whatever, like a new project management tool, implementing a new technology on the site, like it takes time. But nobody wants to use pen and paper and handshake with everything. Nobody wants to play to feel to come to a site and have like a manual punch in punch out and card like everyone uses their phone. I actually, everyone is seeing, we all think through our personal lives, the pace of evolution that’s happening on the consumer side. So, the one thing, however, in the construction world that I think a lot of vendors are missing is you’re not, you’re selling risk when you sell innovation. And so, there is a need to be very pragmatic on what we are speaking about in order to lead to implementation.  

So that’s more what people have seen. It’s like a lot of innovation has been rolled out. The tier one companies, I live in Boston, where Suffolk Construction is. One of the most well-run construction companies in the US, if not in the world. Well, they are adopting all these tools and technologies, but they are adopting it in a very thoughtful and programmatic manner. 

And that’s like, I think it’s, but once they adopt it, they don’t churn. I think a lot of the rest of the industry is adopting a lot of software, but might actually straight away really fast, or is adopting new technologies might straight away really fast. Our industry, we move so much money, so much risk that de facto we implement slower, but the ability to have the conversation is much faster than any other industry I’ve seen. 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, that’s an interesting perspective. I think that’s it’s great to see that the industry is shifting towards being more advanced. 

Clement Cazalot 

I’ll get you another one. I’m baffled by the number of people who try to sell to a tier one contractor, I won’t name names, and try to meet with the CEO, the Executive Committee, all that. If you try to do that, you do not understand how the construction world works. The construction world works as a collection of small businesses that are in charge of specific projects, specific regions, where all of us have our neck on the line in order to make that region working.  

So, if you approach this region, do the ground work to work with the local branch, local managers, and build the case that makes sense. Yes, and actually there is a revolution and evolution. Revolution implies risk and throwing everything away. The people who’ve been successful in my experience are people who’ve provided evolutions of the local market. I mean, with GIATEC, you saw that in so many ways. 

The evolution leads you to being successful and working with local players usually leads you to be successful. I see a lot of innovative companies being in corporate in Boston, in Chicago, in so many other places where people want a revolution and change, you’re selling too much risk when you do that in this industry. There is also a bias to who is speaking out loud and that’s like the construction revolution. 

Either saying the reality is much more of an evolution and adoption of the key technologies that make sense, and you need to adopt them at the right level, which is usually the branch level or the site level. And sometimes it’s in parallel or in conjunction with the existing solutions that are there. 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s something we see all the time. There people sort of they need to see it for themselves, and it needs to be proven. As you mentioned, the risk on these projects is massive so if something goes wrong. So, you have got to be confident in what you’re putting into whatever you’re building. 

Clement Cazalot  

I was yesterday on the phone with one of the largest concrete producers in the US. And so, we have two discussions with them, one at a national level, but one at a few branch levels. And so, in this territory, we are literally like starting. It’s not like we’re not going to sell you a new concrete batch and concrete plant like for $20 million. Like I couldn’t even fulfill that if I wanted. However, let’s walk back from your number one pains. Number one pains, uptime, fixing electrical issues.  

Great. Let’s start here, like we can be the tier one for you. Let’s start there and little by little build the solution so that ultimately, we’ll help you buy some of some technologies that like will blow your mind out once we’ve been proven, once we’ve been proving ourselves into it. So, I think too many companies in the construction tech world try to sell a revolution instead of walking back from the customers and what can they adopt on the short term and do a crawl walk front. 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, for sure. So, moving to sort of even broader, like I’m sure as you bring on suppliers from Machinery Partner, you must be exposed to all kinds of innovation in the industry, specifically in heavy equipment. I’m curious, what innovations have you seen that excite you the most? And how do you sort of ensure that with all the new technology, you’re looking at you’re sort of being exposed to all the new technology and keeping up with it. 

Clement Cazalot  

Great question. It’s exceptional. I’ll start with the most far-fetched. Robotics is really starting to bleed in our ecosystem. I was literally with someone about like some Komatsu underground, underwater dozers, like for some underwater project. I’m like, this is exceptional. We aren’t touching that. That is actually a fragment of the market that needs to have access to it. But there are more innovations than the world is ready to digest right now. So that is truly a reality. Then there are three layers of innovation. Actually, I’ll show a few facts for you. Do you know how many new equipment manufacturers were created in the past five years? 

Steven Rossi  

Hundreds, I would guess. 

Clement Cazalot  

200. In the past five years, there are 200 new manufacturers that are usually spins off employees of like of some of like existing factories that go on, take loans actually during COVID all that were like I can do that so much better. 200 new manufacturers all coming to the market with innovations in the past five years that are lacking the distribution network for it. These innovations are usually structured around three things. One, a technological change around electrical. So, everything is moving from diesel, diesel hydraulic to diesel electric that is more efficient, that is more like a, so you have a lot on technology change that allows you to build extremely powerful equipment with a much more lightweight built or different type of build of materials. You have a lot on telematics that allows remote operations, that allows actually, so in the concrete world, to have much more complex batch plants deployed at local sites that in the past you wouldn’t be able to have this sophistication of a mix unless you have proven operators locally. But you can now have everything used from a central command and control that is with the manufacturers that actually are always local territory managers, that allows a much more complex operation locally.  

You have folks at Command Alkon and others that are leading the impact on the software side to enable this physical world to get more and more complex. So, you have new technology on the electric transition. You have more complex local operations enabled through telematics and now over the past five years through actually automation of the process, especially in concrete, but shredders are the same, or you can have so much more complexity in the chamber on how like the sequences you’re running and in order to process better.  

And the last piece is around the workforce. We have so much, such a lack/gap in the workforce side. So, I do actually see a lot of innovation on what is enabling training and support of the workforce, new parts supplies, new parts, new training and certification for. So, it’s around the machine, it’s not the machine itself, but these are like the three core innovations that you see. Technological change, more complex operations on the field, and actually very specific and intentional programs to train a workforce that is exposed to more and more complexity on the field because of new brands, technologies, and might not have been trained or might require more, a different way to operate on the field. 

Steven Rossi  

That’s awesome. So, in terms of looking even broader than heavy equipment, are there other innovations or trends in the industry that you think have the opportunity to revolutionize construction in the next five, let’s say five, 10 years or even sooner? 

Clement Cazalot  

That’s a great question. There is one, and that’s we launched Machinery Partner Capital Solutions, that is around finance. When you look back on the cost of the low margin ecosystem, which is a construction world, like we operate on razor-thin margins across everything, but we move so much volume that that’s ends up yielding the profit in our industry. There is a true topic on the cost of the asset. 

And so there is a lot of innovating finance, pay as you use all the type of financing product like seasonal, seasonal payments like when you use those you pay for your equipment only during the high season, and not when everything sits idle so all that actually used to be locked up in the bigger companies that have the sophistication to either create this product with their own banks or work move so much volume of equipment with an OEM, that the OEM is going to subsidize that. 

 But I see a democratization of this complex financial product, especially in North America, creating a rise of the access and ownership of specialty machines. Like, how do I afford to buy a million-dollar plant? Well, let’s walk back through what that means on your monthly balance sheet and the ramification for it. So that’s like one of the key innovations outside of the pure machinery part that I’m very excited about.  

Of course, the AI piece, I think there is a misconstrue, like, there’s a lot of discussion on like the demo effect of artificial intelligence, especially in a chat gpt context. The question is, what does that mean for my business daily? And actually, what I’m excited by. So, we have an entire team dedicated on support. And so actually the rise of the ability for them to search and access more of this context, this contextual knowledge around very complex task is actually what leads them to be able to perform better. Who in Wisconsin right now is our top expert on electrical? Have they been deployed in the past on that specific type of issues? And what are even the manuals or the training plans that I would have to do if I wanted to train someone on that specific topic?  

That’s why in all companies in the construction world, we have our old timers who are like the mentors that you call and be like, hey, I’ve never seen that, we screwed up massively on this project. How do you recover from it? The rise of AI as this assistant that can truly enhance us to do better and have access to a broader corpus of knowledge is a second piece that I see and I’m so excited. It’s going to take a few years for us to digest what to do effectively. There is a tsunami of innovation. The question of what goes into production, what can we adopt and implement back to your piece. 

Every single construction company I know is trying some level of AI systems. The people, however, who are truly implementing them are far and few in between, not because they don’t want, it’s because things tend to be too generalist to be implemented. So that’s the topic of it. So that’s the two main pieces. Like there is a outside of and on the technologies of robotics piece, some extremely like additive manufacturing, which is a massive topic, but has been forever but it feels like we’re the final innings of concrete printing and all that. So, so much, so much good things. 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, I think the AI one is the way you sort of phrase it, like construction obviously has an issue in terms of people and people are sort of aging out of it. So I think being able to train or and use models to instead of calling on that expert, being able to get support elsewhere is huge for the industry as it moves on. 

Clement Cazalot  

Not to sound like an old schmuck, but just to put things in perspective. When I grew up, we were already speaking 20 years ago, 30 years ago about not having enough workforce. So, nothing has changed. And I get the numbers and the trend and all that and people getting in and out of the workforce. Also, we’re not distributing wealth well. We’re not paying people well. So that’s normal. And so, I also see local captain-owned industries that have zero workforce issues because they are actually transferring the wealth properly to their local workers and treating people as partners on a project by project basis. And so, there is a true look in the mirror of how did we get there and what to do. The people who are truly successful in their workforce management are people who are involved in their community. And that’s the beauty. You asked me, what do I think about the construction work? I think this is the number one. If there is one industry that impacts the local economies, that the construction ecosystem. The reason why I started Machinery Partners is I strongly firmly believe that the more industrial equipment you distribute, the better the local communities are as a result of it. And they are better because then the employers, local employers can invest more in the local community to foster talent, foster the trade, help people access to extremely dignifying career but also extremely impactful for the local community. I’m a back product of it. I saw the more we had in our, in the in the construction world, like the better infrastructure of my city that became one of the fastest growing cities and part of Europe. So that’s the reality of it. And America has so much, and Canada have so much, opportunities. And that’s back to at a local level. Do we do enough to incentivize the local communities to be part of this fast-growing revolution? 

Steven Rossi  

Yeah, for sure. You hit it right on the head. As we wrap up here, in terms of the next, let’s say five, 10 years, the future of machinery partner, I’m sure there’s lots of things you’re working on as we’ve touched on some of them that have already come out. Is there anything that’s in the works that you can share of things you’re working on and how you see the company evolving? 

Clement Cazalot  

So, great question. Machinery Partner is building the backbone of the machinery economy. We’re enabling this whole ecosystem that is weighing more than a ton and that is worth more than a hundred grams. You have no FedEx, you have no Amazon dealing in that world helping you. And then once it’s delivered, it’s actually the least important part of the journey is the delivery. The most important part is the operation after.  

And so that’s what I’m maniacally obsessed about, in order for us to invest more and more in this network. It’s about the topic of volume and like as the equipment becomes more complex, more electrical, it’s like for us it’s a topic of going segment after segment. So, I’m so excited. We are like right now in the aggregate, concrete and environmental, which is a shredding wood, plastic world. Next step for us is actually the metal world. There are like so many adjacent markets where there are infinite level of opportunity and overlaps construction. We’re one of the largest consumers of metal in the whole industrial world because we have that in all our constructions. So as Machinery Partner evolved, it’s about for us expanding in all these segments that are plagued by fragmentation and opacity in terms of pricing, lead time, engineering options. 

And so that’s what I’m excited about. And the more we expand, the more we can invest on having a tier one infrastructure supporting sellers and buyers across the spectrum in North America. 

Steven Rossi  

That’s great. I’m excited to see sort of how you grow over in the upcoming years. So to wrap up here, if anyone is interested and is in the process, I guess, of looking for new equipment and wants to learn more and get started with Machinery Partner, where should they go and what does that process look like? 

Clement Cazalot  

Send an email to clement@machinerypartner.com and I’ll jump on it. Otherwise, go on machinerypartner.com. The reality is, if you’re buying a piece of specialty equipment, by specialty I mean stuff that Caterpillar doesn’t do, and stuff that you cannot rent at Sunbelt, like contact us we will help you navigate it, we will quote you and help you understand what are your options, where is this procurement network and nationwide dealerships that allows you to access the right equipment. So go on machinerypartner.com, give us a call or send me directly an email at clement@machinerypartner.com and say that the construction revolution sent you and I’ll take care of you.  

So, reality is there are so many options, whether you buy with us or not, like it’s not the topic is like we are that the construction world is one of the most collegial and supportive industries that there is out there. And so, my sole goal is to help make sure that you’re well set and working with the right partners and working with the right dealers locally or with the right manufacturers that will be able to take in consideration the specialty of your project. 

Steven Rossi  

All right, awesome. Thank you so much for the time today and for all your insight and it’s been great learning about machinery partner. 

Clement Cazalot  

Thanks for bringing that together, thanks for your 50 plus pod in the loop. It’s fantastic. I appreciate all the research you are doing to extract out of us all the specifics so we can be insightful to the audience. Thank You!