01 — The Thesis
The most expensive assets
in construction are priced by rumor.
An excavator changes hands for $180,000 in Texas and $240,000 in Ohio, and neither buyer knows the other's number. Dealers quote from instinct. Auction results scatter across a dozen platforms. Fleet managers guess.
Every other mature asset class — equities, bonds, real estate, even used cars — converged on a single price benchmark. Heavy equipment never did. The data exists. It has simply never been assembled under one authoritative name.
"The company that defines how machinery is priced will be named, inevitably, like the thing it does."
