While the Boise, Idaho-based company doesn't build fuel surcharges into contracts, it may be able to pass along some costs, Cotterell told analysts on a March 2 conference call.
Job Growth
Recent indicators suggest that the economy has been strong enough to handle the march toward $100 oil that began last month. The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index, formerly the ABC News U.S. Weekly Consumer Comfort Index, was minus 39.3 in the period to Feb. 27, little changed from the minus 39.2 reading the prior week that was the highest in almost three years.
Joblessness fell to 8.9% last month, and employment climbed by 192,000, the Labor Department reported on March 4.
Growth in payrolls and income should shield the nonfuel spending crucial to the economy, said Frank Badillo, a Columbus, Ohio-based senior economist for Kantar Retail.
"We won't see a falloff in nonfuel spending," Badillo said in an interview. "It will be affected, but it's not like we are going to see huge declines. They are going to continue to spend more, it just may not be as much more."
'Blip Up'
Oil supplies in Saudi Arabia also are sufficient to ensure that oil at $120 or even $150 a barrel from disruptions elsewhere in the Middle East would only be a "blip up" that wouldn't last long, said Nayantara Hensel, the U.S. Navy's chief economist.
"Oil prices would need to exceed $125 per barrel for more than four years to substantively limit economic growth," she said in an interview.
Like Deere, manufacturers such as Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest maker of construction equipment, haven't made any changes yet to investment decisions in response to the jump in crude.