Oshkosh Corp's access equipment segment - primarily JLG products - increased third quarter sales to external customers by 77% compared to last year's period.

Its access equipment sales increased in all major markets, with the largest dollar increases in North America and Latin America, Oshkosh says in its regulatory filing for the quarter ended 30 June.

The comparable-quarterly improvement to USD373.9 million from USD211.2 million, however, remains far below the segment's sales of USD920.2 million to external customers for the third quarter ended 30 June 2008.

"While North American sales remain significantly lower than historical levels due to weak construction markets and tight credit, sales have begun to recover from historic lows," the company says. "Third quarter fiscal 2010 access equipment segment sales also included USD316.0 million of intersegment M-ATV-related sales to the defence segment as the company continued to leverage underutilised facilities in the access equipment segment to meet defence production requirements." An M-ATV is a mine-resistant ambush-protected all-terrain vehicle.

The access equipment segment reported operating income of USD31.6 million, or 4.6% of sales, for the recent quarter compared with an operating loss of USD71.2 million, or 33.7% of sales, in the prior year period. Operating results benefited from lower allowances for credit losses, intersegment M-ATV sales at high single-digit margins, higher volume of sales to external customers and lower material costs.

"This quarter, we commenced low-rate production of access equipment in our newly constructed Tianjin, China facility," notes Robert G Bohn, chairman and chief executive officer of the Oshkosh-based firm. "We expect to gradually ramp up production in this facility over the next 12 months to serve Asian markets as access equipment becomes accepted as a productivity and safety tool for construction and industrial markets in this region."

Effective 1 July, Wilson R Jones became president of Oshkosh's access equipment segment, succeeding Craig Paylor, who retired Forkliftaction.com News #464).

For all operations, the publicly traded corporation had quarterly profit of USD211.2 million on sales of USD2.44 billion.