2025 In Review
By Renée Lauzon-Martin - General Manager, HDD Broker LLC - December 22, 2025
This is our much anticipated 2025 Year End Recap.
It was a good year, steady and stable, with some amazing, exciting new drill drops, and we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel for BEAD.
In terms of used equipment, we've seen more normalized inventory. We had about an average of 400 drills for sale throughout the year. That's what it was pre-pandemic. And the pricing has also normalized, coming off from those crazy high levels to something that matches more with supply and demand. Actually, in fact, this year we saw a small bump in average drill prices, about 10%. Our most popular drill sizes fell in that 20 and 30,000 pound category. So JT 20s, 24x40s, and the 20x22s, all of those are the perpetual best sellers, just a reflection of what's happening right now in the market.
So this year was an awesome year of trade shows. HDD Broker was at UIC, Bauma in Germany and Utility Expo. We saw the beautiful Ditch Witch JT21, the stunning Vermeer D24, and Universal dropped a couple of compact drills and an incredible pipe thruster machine. In Bauma in Germany, we saw the AT70 from Ditch Witch that was being manufactured for the European market. Vermeer is very much leaning into the electric market, and they had just a gorgeous D120E, that's 120 ton pullback, making it a maxi drill. Vermeer also had a D20x22 electric drill. It was electric up to the hydraulics, and several of those are already operating in the European market. But it wasn't just the major OEMs that were releasing new products, we saw a huge drill drop from Wolf Machinery and Supply, releasing their Gladiator G30 and planning on doing a G10 later this year.
Utility Expo was probably the busiest we've ever seen it. There was just so much positivity and optimism from contractors, from vendors, and from manufacturers about what's coming up in 2026.
It feels like BEAD's been hanging over us for the last couple of years. But finally, at least 19 states have the funding at this point. More to come in the first half of 2026. And we'll probably still see the bulk of that work hit at the end of 2026. But on top of that, we have all kinds of private equity money and those data centers.
We are so excited for 2026 and love that our customers will play such a large role in upcoming projects around the country.
As always, "There's No Crying In Drilling!"
Thanks everyone.
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