35CONEXPO PHOTOGRAPHS BY AARON WOJACK FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK
▲ Judges at the
Caterpillar Global
Operator Challenge
measure a trenchtrades, held a networking mixer for 250 on the
night of March 10. Half of the 20 volunteers
expected to help at the event couldn’t make it after
their employers restricted travel, says Michelle
Kirk, a spokesperson for the group. The ones who
came were taking precautions, including frequent
hand-washing. “We’re glad we could be here to
spread the word, and we don’t want to bring any-
thing back home,” Kirk says.
Dana Wuesthoff, vice president for exhibitions
and events services at ConExpo, is working hard
to make sure that doesn’t happen. Wuesthoff,
who works for the Association of Equipment
Manufacturers, which puts on the convention, says
the organizers rented large sanitizing stations to be
placed throughout the show, especially in outdoor
areas that display cranes and other large equip-
ment, which don’t have an obvious table where
containers of hand sanitizer could be placed. She
also increased the frequency of scheduled clean-
ing services and replaced cleaning chemicals with
more appropriate germ-killing options. The AEM is
also handing out the no-handshake buttons, which
say “No Offense, Just Makes Sense.”
Some attendees are stoic about the dan-
ger. Roland Karbaum, who owns a gravel pit in
Maryland, was one of the few attendees who wore
a mask during the show’s first day—though he kept it
hanging off his show badge rather than on his face.
“If I’m looking at a machine and somebody gets in
close, I might put it on,” he says.
ConExpo organizers say exhibitors representing
less than 3% of the show’s 2.7 million square feet ofspace canceled, and one-fifth of those booths were
resold to other attendees. By midweek, attendance
was trending above the 2017 show, they say.
On the exhibition floor, though, Henry Boschen,
a sales manager at VMI Inc., says the number of
attendees appears to be down, pointing out that
most of his major parts suppliers canceled. He pulls
out his phone to show vacant hotel rooms going for
$65 to $85 a night on booking sites that normally
have nothing to offer during the huge event. “It’s
nothing to laugh or sneer at,” Boschen says about
coronavirus, and he admits that he’s unsure how
it will play out in the U.S. “But you can get a room
at Golden Nugget for $87, which tells you they got a
whole lot of vacancies.”
But business is still taking place. Caterpillar’s
Umpleby says he has dinners scheduled for all five
nights of the expo, and he expects they’ll commence
as normal. He’ll take precautions—elbow-bumping,
washing his hands frequently, and not touching his
face—but he’s not going to sit farther away from cli-
ents at restaurants. After ConExpo, he says he’s not
going to self-quarantine. “I’m going on to the next
thing,” Umpleby says. “I have a couple daughters at
home, and they’re in high school. And I’m going to
go home.”
Bobcat’s Ballweber says he and his staff had a
discussion about whether to self-quarantine after
the event. “We haven’t made that decision yet, but
it is something we have absolutely talked about,”
he says. “When I got this job no one gave me the
playbook on how to handle a potential pandemic.”
�Joe Deaux and Christopher Palmeri