The boom that is: while not lending itself to a snappy label, the boom of '04, steel prices, supplier struggles and price increases made the most news

Whew. This has been a year to remember. When we have time to catch our collective breath.

Obviously, there have been booms in markets before 2004. There have been times when demand outstripped supply. There have also been times when material prices had a significant impact.

But rarely, if even have all three happened at once. As a result, the editorial board of Diem Progress has named the Price Increase Shortage Boom as the 2004 Newsmaker of the Year.

This is the eighth year that Diesel Progress has recognized the company, person, technology, market or subject that nude the most news in the industry during the year. The Price Increase Shortage Boom succeeds Caterpillar Inc. as our newsmaker.

We wish however, that we could have come up with a snappier tide for what happened in 2004: the Allocation Boom; the Higher Cost Shortage Boom; the Surprise Boom; the Wow This Was Better Than We All Thought But How About Those Steel Prices Boom; heck, call it Boom Shakalakalaka. It defies a simple, sound bite description.

Unlike last year, this was one of the easier decisions for our editorial board to make. While a lot of things happened in 2004, nothing made more news (hence the Newsmaker designation) than the boom of 2004 and the resulting pressures it put on the supply infrastructure, as well as pricing The size of the boom was something no one saw coming. Nobody came within in 20% of Forecasting the increases of 2004. It all resulted in suppliers throughout the industry hustling--not always successfully--to keep up with demand.

To the unexpectedly large increase in demand there were the huge increases in scrap and steel prices, which at one point caused many to wonder if it would put brakes on economic growth. All that resulted in the return of two words that were thought to have been banished from the industry lexicon forever: "price" and "increases."

By September, people weren't talking about if they should increase prices, but rather how much the market would bear. Talk about a total turnaround in market thinking.

In many ways, the 2004 Newsmaker of the Year was summed up by one mid-year comment from an equipment manufacturer. "We're having problems keeping up. One supplier every day, but rarely the same one twice, can't deliver on time and slows the line down. And now they all wanna charge us more!" (Expletives deleted.)

If you go back to late 2003, everyone was saying that 2004 would be a "better" year. The conventional wisdom guesstimate came in around 15 to 18%. It was a figure that turned out to be about halfway correct.

Late last fall, Caterpillar sent a notice around to suppliers to plan on a 25% increase for 2004 and "maybe higher." Supplier reaction was bemused and it was seen largely as a JIC (just-in-case) hedge. Instead, it was prescient and still off by 25%(ish).

Besides the words price and increase, the boom of 2004 also brought back old words like allocation, shortages and more capacity, as in "we need more capacity!" This from a market that 18 months before was still seen as having way too much square footage.

The now highly developed discipline of supply chain management, with JIT as a foundation, was stretched to the max and sometimes broke. Supply chain SWAT teams were dispatched around the industry by some OEMs to help suppliers keep up.

All of which falls under the "Never Seen Before" heading and as such was by far and away the easy choice For the 2004 Newsmaker of the Year.

But the Price Increase Shortage Boom wasn't the only thing of note that happened in 2004.

Emissions, of course, is, was, and always shall be in the news and in 2004 two emissions-related topics made major news. On April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court, by an 8-1 margin, ruled For the industry's engine manufacturers in Engine Manufacturers Ass. Et Al v. South Coast Air Quality Management District Et Al, a decision that reaffirmed the Federal government's primary role in clean air regulation.

This was a milestone for manufacturers in that it removed (hopefully) forever the possibility that any government or non-governmental group that felt like it could make its own clean air regulations, even under the guise of "purchasing guidelines."

Thus, the much feared possibility of 50 or 100 or 1000 different emissions regulations confronting engine manufacturers is now history. Maybe.

Also, U.S. off-highway Tier 4 diesel emissions regulations were finalized in May, giving that portion of the engine world its marching orders through 2013, 2014 or 2015 depending on the size of the engine.