I love attending the annual Material Handling Equipment Dealers Association (MHEDA) convention because the speakers and breakout sessions are so relevant and productive. This year’s convention was no exception. Both Brian Beaulieu, a renowned economist, and Ken Gronbach, a demographer and human analytics researcher, were incredibly optimistic about the current and short-term economy and had some great insight on where there is potential growth in businesses in North America and how to fill the vacant positions that the growth will create.

Ken pointed out the material handling industry is white and male dominated. As a female business owner who provides business management software in the equipment dealer industry, this obviously did not come as a shock to me (or anyone else at the session).

My MHEDA-NET Women in Industry group focuses on how to further women in the industry. In our first post-convention MHEDA-NET call this week, we discussed what the material handling industry can do to try to attract other under-represented workers into the industry. One of the core challenges I hear about at every industry event we attend is attracting and recruiting technicians. With the continued strong economy, attracting and retaining any job role is an issue. The numbers don’t lie – the material handling industry needs to be more creative at creating opportunities to interact with under-represented groups, like millennials, women, veterans, Latinos, and others.

The experts are bullish about the economy at least until 2030. We are in the longest economic growth cycle in the last 100 years. I’m excited to see how dealers and distributors act on what they learned at this year’s convention.