Caterpillar: The Canary in the Coal Mine

At Holt Cat in San Antonio, Texas, the largest Caterpillar dealer in the U.S., "We're still way over where we want to be in terms of inventory," said Howard Hicks, Holt's vice president of marketing. With as much as $75 million worth of excess inventory on its lots, Hicks said it will likely take "close to another year" to work through that equipment and return to selling machines for "any kind of profit. Right now we're just breaking even on it. And some not even that."

There are some bright spots. The mining industry, unlike construction, appears to be on the verge of some capital spending. At Wheeler, in Utah, which derives 20% of its sales from mining equipment, several copper and gold producers have recently given the dealer requests for quotes. Actual new-machine purchases are expected soon.

"But when you look at housing and commercial construction, there's just nothing going on," said Wheeler's Campbell. He added that the company closely follows the flow of building permits in the regions where it does business (Utah and bits of Wyoming and Nevada). Based on this, he said, Wheeler expects construction activity in 2010 to worsen even from 2009 levels. "We don't see anything getting better until 2011," he said.

A little more than 1,300 miles to the east, on the shores of Peoria Lake in central Illinois, the future, however, looks brighter.

-- Written by Scott Eden in New York

Follow TheStreet.com on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints