Good point-thats why you were looking at Texas. It

Good point-thats why you were looking at Texas. It costs a lot of money just to ship a car across the country so it would no doubt be worse for these behemoths. Do they have auctions for this stuff in California also-dont remember Calif in my quick run thru-but they did get the ripper bucket excavator from San Diego-been so long since I posted about it I unusually wasnt sure of its number-and wondered whether I had it right as CWRN's 43.5 ton haulers are Cat 740's.

Good stats in your cited article -I hadnt seen the Chinese PMI above ca 50.5 for a long time:

"According to the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing , the purchasing managers index (PMI) for China's steel industry rose to 52.7 in October, a 9.2% improvement from September 2012.

PMI measures activity within a sector and a figure over 50 represents expansionary conditions.

The most encouraging number was the new orders index which increased by 13.8% to 55.4, a significant rebound and a strong indication of a rapidly improving industry.

At the same time Data from the China Iron and Steel Association showed that daily steel products sales volume of 76 key steel enterprises reached 1.27 million tons between October 11 and October 20, up 12.1% from the previous ten days.

The steel production index stood at 57.1 in October, up a robust 17.4% from the previous month while the purchase quantity index showed a similar improvement.

The only negative news was a month-on-month increase in the measure for raw material inventories of 5.8%, although at the 46.8 level it does point to continuing reduction of stockpiles; only at a slower pace. "