Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Our first question comes from Jack Kasprzak from French Bank [ph]. Please pose your question.
McKamy Hall
Good morning Jack.
Jack Kasprzak – BB&T Capital Markets
BB&T of course. With regard to the next Highway Bill and your comments in the press release and on the call here, did you guys sense or get during the quarter the last few months that customers were disappointed that there wasn't any Highway Bill, that maybe there were orders ready to go and some sense of optimism that was stimulus and perhaps new Highway Bill we could kind of glide right through this, but it didn't happen and so it is a bit of a downshift in sentiment and orders in the quarter.
Don Brock
Yes Jack, I think that pretty well sums it up. I don't have any customers I have talked to said we need to do something, but we're just going to wait to see what happens. The proposed Highway Bill, that is out there probably would be pretty darn good bill for asphalt. It is not a good bill for the country. It has no new capacity, but it is all for maintenance. It shifts more to transit, more percentage-wise like 18% to 22%, and I guess while they are talking about a pretty good increase, there is still a real worry about where they are going to get it, nobody wants to increase the gas tax, and right now that is about the only way that they will be able to fund it.
So as the result of all of that it makes our customers very cautious. They instead of buying new plants are doing partial upgrades on mobile equipment. They are buying it just when they need it. I will say in general the amount of work next year will probably be similar to this year, but they dislike the optimism. I think you pretty well hit on that.
We seem to go through this every six-year Highway Bill. We will pass through it and it does lead to a little pent-up demand when it is all over, but there is a lot of cautiousness right now. I think also the potential tax increases in all these other bills, just everything altogether going on in Washington makes more business people nervous.
Jack Kasprzak – BB&T Capital Markets
Sure. Secondly, and McKamy you mentioned the inventory and that most of the increase was from the effect of an acquisition, but are the inventory levels at a point where it might be -- it is a little more difficult to continue to build them and you might have to consider taking some further downtime idling capacity, some measures like that in the face of this uncertainty.
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