Red flags when buying new equipment
"Maximum cut 600 mm"
Ask:
- softwood or hardwood?
- single cut?
- recommended production diameter?
- pressure?
- flow?
"Fits 20 tonne excavators"
Ask:
- which exact models?
- at what boom configuration?
- with which coupler?
- required counterweight?
- lift chart checked?
"High flow"
Ask for actual:
L/min
bar
return pressureand whether that flow is continuous or peak.
"Australian support"
Ask:
- where are the technicians?
- where are the parts?
- what is held locally?
None of these questions are adversarial. A supplier with genuine answers will give them immediately, and a supplier without them has just told you something important.
Red flags when buying used
- no service history
- recently painted boom
- undocumented welding
- mixed hour readings
- head hours unknown
- hydraulic oil smells burnt
- metal in hydraulic filters
- excessive articulation play
- excessive rotator play
- repeated hose failures
- overheating history
- fire damage
- replacement electronics with no records
A freshly painted boom is not automatically a problem. A freshly painted boom with no explanation is.
Questions for a used-machine seller
- Original purchase date?
- Original owner?
- Total machine hours?
- Idle hours?
- Head hours?
- Major engine rebuild?
- Hydraulic pumps replaced?
- Travel motors replaced?
- Boom rebuilt?
- Rotator rebuilt?
- Transmission work?
- Axle or bogie rebuild?
- Fire history?
- Oil-analysis records?
- Telematics history?
- Why is it being sold?
- What production was it doing?
- Which species?
- Which attachment?
- Can it be tested under load?
Question 20 is the one that matters most. A seller who will not allow a machine to be tested under load has answered every other question at once.
Red flags in the sales conversation
A production figure that cannot be witnessed. Quoted stems per hour, tonnes per hour or hectares per day should be demonstrable on material like yours. A supplier who can produce the number but not the demonstration is quoting a brochure, and brochure figures are derived from favourable conditions by definition.
Reluctance to put support commitments in writing. Parts holdings, response times and loan-machine policy are either commitments or they are not. A supplier confident in their arrangement will write it down.
Pressure tied to a deadline rather than to the machine. End-of-quarter urgency is the supplier's problem. A machine that is right this week is right next month, and a decision made against someone else's calendar is a decision made badly.
Specification answers that change. If continuous flow, lift chart figures or head configuration details shift between conversations, the supplier does not know the machine well enough to support it.
"It'll be fine on that carrier." Compatibility is four separate calculations — power, cooling, plumbing and lift chart. An assurance is not any of them.
Red flags in the machine itself
Repairs that have been repaired. Weld work at the boom, stick, frame or turret is a finding. Weld work over previous weld work is a machine that has been failing in the same place, and structural repair history is the least recoverable defect a used machine can carry.
Paint that differs in age from its surroundings. Fresh paint on a used machine is either presentation or concealment, and it is worth establishing which before the inspection goes further.
A hydraulic demonstration at idle. Cycle times, drift on held loads and heat build-up only reveal themselves under working load at operating temperature. A seller who will not run the machine long enough to get it hot is avoiding something.
Recurring unexplained fault codes. A machine with a diagnostic history of the same fault reappearing is a machine with a problem that has not been found. The fault will come with the purchase.
Missing or clustered service records. Regular intervals indicate a maintenance programme. Clusters of work following failures indicate a machine run to breakage. Gaps indicate nothing was recorded, which is not the same as nothing being wrong.
Wear parts recently replaced without explanation. New teeth, new chains or a new blade on a used machine may be good practice or may be hiding how fast they were being consumed. Ask what the replacement interval had been.
Red flags in your own reasoning
The most expensive failures in this industry are not supplier failures. They are buyers talking themselves into a machine.
Utilisation that depends on work not yet contracted. If the machine only works at the optimistic hours figure, the purchase only works at the optimistic hours figure. That is the finding, and it is worth having before the finance documents.
Buying to the largest job rather than the typical one. Capacity for the exceptional case is carried on every ordinary one — in capital, transport, fuel and, in access-constrained work, in the jobs the machine is too large to reach.
Specification comparison that has skipped the bottleneck. Adding capacity anywhere but the constraint changes costs and not output. If you cannot say which stage currently limits your production, the specification comparison is premature.
A residual value nobody has verified. It is the input buyers most want to flatter, and it moves the largest cost on the machine. One phone call to a dealer about a recent comparable sale is worth more than any assumption.
Treating the balance of a quote as the price. Delivery, commissioning, attachments, couplers, training, initial spares and the first service are all real costs. A quote that excludes them is not cheaper; it is less complete.
Deciding before the cost model. Converting the machine into cost per cubic metre, tonne, hectare or stump takes an hour and answers the only question that matters. Doing it after the decision makes it a justification rather than a test.
Run the cost model first, and work through the used machine inspection checklist and dealer quote checklist before committing.
Red flags in the contract behind the machine
The machine is usually sound and the contract is where the risk sits. These are worth reading for before signing anything on the equipment side.
A rate with no committed volume. A schedule of rates grants access to work, not work. If the client can release as much or as little as it chooses, you carry the volume risk and the capital level should reflect that rather than the rate.
Term shorter than the finance. The most common route from a profitable contractor to an insolvent one. If the term cannot be extended, match the capital to what the business could carry through an idle period.
Site conditions assumed rather than specified. On lump-sum clearing and mulching work, stem density, stump content, soil abrasiveness and residue volume decide the cost. A contract silent on them has allocated that risk to you by default.
Residue and disposal unaddressed. Cleared material has to go somewhere. A scope covering the felling and silent on the material is a scope missing a cost base.
Damage thresholds without a measurement method. A residual-damage or ground-condition threshold with no stated assessment method is a dispute waiting to happen, and disputes are resolved against whoever cannot evidence their position.
Variation mechanisms that require agreement rather than triggering. A variation clause that depends on the client agreeing conditions have changed is not protection.
Red flags in the financing
Monthly payment quoted instead of total cost. Term length, balloon and deposit all move the monthly figure without changing what the machine costs. Ask for total cost over the term, every time.
A balloon you have not stress-tested. A balloon lowers the payment and concentrates risk at the end of the term, exactly when the machine's condition and a thin resale market decide whether it can be cleared. Model what happens if the residual comes in low.
Finance arranged before the cost model. If the numbers have not been converted into cost per unit at your contracted hours, the finance is funding a decision that has not been made yet.
Cross-collateralisation you did not notice. Where one machine's finance is secured against others, a problem with one asset becomes a problem with the fleet.
Red flags in the fleet you already have
The purchase is often the wrong place to look. These are signals that the problem is elsewhere.
Material accumulating at one point. Roadside stock building, or a landing that fills, means the constraint is downstream — and adding capacity upstream will make the accumulation worse, not better.
A machine with high engine hours and low productive hours. Something is consuming the difference: travel, waiting, breakdown or setup. Buying a faster machine does not address any of them.
Consumable cost per unit drifting upward. Teeth per hectare or chain per cubic metre climbing is a technique, material or maintenance signal. It is diagnostic information, and it is invisible if consumables are tracked per hour.
Repeat failures in the same system. A component failing repeatedly has a cause that has not been found. Replacing it again is paying for the same fault twice.
Overtime covering a capacity gap. Sustained overtime is capacity being bought at a premium. It is sometimes correct and it should be a decision, not a default.
Red flags in a demonstration
A demonstration is evidence, and most are arranged to be flattering rather than informative. Four things separate one from the other.
Whose material is it? A machine working the supplier's chosen site, on favourable stems, tells you the ceiling. Ask to see it on your material, or on a site materially like yours. A refusal is informative.
Whose operator is it? The supplier's best operator establishes what the machine can do; your operator establishes what it will do. Both are worth seeing, and the gap between them is the training cost you should be budgeting for.
How long does it run? Hydraulic behaviour, cooling and heat-related derating only appear once the machine has been working long enough to reach operating temperature. A demonstration that ends before that has not tested the things most likely to disappoint later.
What was measured? "It felt quick" is not a figure. Record stems or tonnes or hectares per hour, fuel over the period, and what the machine was waiting on. A demonstration nobody measured produces an impression, and impressions are what suppliers are selling.
What to do when you find one
A red flag is information, not a verdict. The useful response is almost never to walk away immediately — it is to price it.
A structural repair, a component due, a support commitment that stays verbal, a contract silent on site conditions: each of these has a cost or a risk attached, and naming that number does two things. It tells you whether the issue is material, and it gives you a specific, documented negotiating position rather than a general request for a discount.
The flags worth walking away from without negotiation are narrower than they first appear: undisclosed structural repair history, outstanding finance the seller will not clear, and a supplier who will not answer a direct question in writing. Everything else is a number.