Write the answers down
An answer you cannot write down is an assumption. The act of recording it is what separates a check that was made from a check that was intended, and twelve months later the record is the most useful document you have.
Most expensive equipment mistakes are not made at the negotiation. They are made earlier, when a buyer commits without establishing what the machine actually has to do — or later, when a used machine is inspected by walking around it rather than testing it.
These lists exist to close both gaps. They are working documents rather than reading material: print them, take them to the supplier meeting or the inspection, and treat any line you cannot answer as a priced risk rather than an administrative gap. Progress is saved in your browser as you tick items off.
Where each checklist belongs in the purchase
They are sequential rather than alternative — each one assumes the previous has been done.
The full set
Commercial procurement checklist
The complete set of facts to assemble before purchasing any industrial forestry machine. If a line cannot be answered, that gap is the commercial risk.
What a dealer quote should include
Request separate prices for every line below. Otherwise quotations from two suppliers may appear comparable when they are not.
Used machine inspection
Hours alone are not enough. A used machine with 12,000 hours may have a rebuilt engine, pumps, boom, rotator and head, while a 6,000-hour machine may have been badly maintained.
Used harvester inspection
Do not buy a harvester solely from an idle demonstration. Process actual timber under load.
Used harvester head inspection
The head contains a considerable percentage of the technology responsible for production — and usually the majority of unplanned downtime.
Used mulcher inspection
A forestry mulcher can hide a great deal of wear. Rock damage should receive particular attention — a replacement rotor can destroy the economics of an apparently cheap purchase.
Twenty questions for a used-machine seller
A structured interview that exposes most of the risk in a used forestry machine before an inspection is even booked.
Production data to record
Every serious forestry machine should generate commercial data. Without it, costing is guesswork and contract negotiation is unarmed.
Forestry machine tender specification
Do not ask a dealer to "quote a 25-tonne forestry excavator". Specify the complete operational requirement, and you will receive a meaningful commercial quotation.
These are working documents, kept deliberately short
A checklist used standing beside a machine, or across a table from a dealer, has to be short enough to actually work through. Every item earns its place by changing what you would do if the answer came back badly — anything that does not is noise on a page you are trying to read in a yard.
The reasoning behind each list sits on its own page, under the checklist itself: why the check matters, what a good and a bad answer look like, and what a bad answer costs. Read that once beforehand; take the list with you.
How to get value out of them
Ask before you inspect
Seller questions and production data should be requested ahead of a site visit, so the inspection can test what you were told rather than discover it. A seller who will not answer beforehand has told you something.
Treat a refusal as a finding
Gaps in service records, a demonstration that never reaches operating temperature, support commitments that stay verbal — none of these are neutral. They are the answer.
Price what you find
An inspection that identifies work to be done has produced a number, not a verdict. Add it to the asking price, add the components due within your ownership period, and run the result through the cost model.
Which list, and when
Used in order, each one narrows what the next has to establish.