The Road to Recovery : Survey Finds Some Industries Rolling Along but Others Are Stalled : HEAVY MANUFACTURING

Charles R. Campbell has been reading the headlines about an economic recovery and waiting for it to embrace his tool and commercial sign businesses at Federal Signal Corp. of Chicago. Nothing yet.

“Everything I read in the papers says we should be seeing an improvement from the machine tool and vehicle people, but we haven’t seen any pop in orders,” said Campbell, chief financial officer. “And commercial construction continues to go sideways.”

Indeed, producers of the machinery and heavy equipment consumed by American industry report only the most preliminary signs of economic recovery.

Robert Wendt, manager of business planning at Bethlehem Steel, the nation’s No. 2 steel producer, said orders from the auto industry have begun to pick up, but the pace is still slow. “We’ve seen signs of improvement we can relate to a recovery, but I don’t think it’s time to get euphoric,” Wendt said.

Wendt and others voice familiar themes in heavy industry: Manufacturers have kept inventories low so that production should rise earlier than in past recoveries. And the renewed competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing continues to support healthy export sales that have cushioned the downturn.

Individual companies may seem bemused by all the recovery talk, but analysts in the industrial Midwest--where auto and truck output loom heavily over the economy--insist that their charts point the way.

“Auto production was so horribly low that the slight increases we see now are already having an impact,” said Diane Swonk, regional economist at First National Bank of Chicago.