Buying a Used Excavator: The 10-Minute Checklist That Saves You Thousands

Every week we see the same thing. Somebody spots a tidy-looking 8-tonner, likes the price, pays the deposit, and finds out three months later that the undercarriage is shot and the pins are hanging out of it. The machine was never a bargain. It just looked like one.

The good news is that most of the expensive surprises show themselves in about ten minutes if you know where to put your eyes. Here is what the trade actually checks.

1. Hours matter more than the year, but not on their own

A machine doing 1,000 to 1,500 hours a year is working normally. So a five-year-old digger on 6,000 hours has had a fair life, and one on 1,800 hours has either been sat about or has had the clock looked at.

Low hours are not automatically good news. A machine that sat in a yard for two years has seals that have dried out, hydraulic oil that has sat still, and rubber that has perished. A steadily worked machine with a full service history is usually the better buy.

What you want is hours that make sense next to the wear. If the hour meter says 2,000 but the pedals are worn smooth, the seat is collapsed and the cab handle is polished to bare metal, something is wrong with that story.

2. The undercarriage is where the money is

On a tracked machine this is the single biggest cost you can inherit, and it is commonly reckoned to account for something close to half of what you will spend maintaining the thing over its life. A full undercarriage on a mid-sized excavator can run into five figures.

Get down and look at:

• Track chain. Are the links and bushings worn, and are the pins weeping oil?
• Sprockets. Teeth should be blunt-nosed, not hooked or pointed. Sharp teeth mean it is due.
• Idlers and rollers. Look for oil leaks and flat spots. A dry, rusty roller has already seized.
• Track tension. Too slack and it will jump under load. Too tight and it eats itself.
• Pads. Even wear across the machine, or has it been worked on one slope its whole life?

If the seller will not let you walk both sides of the machine properly, that tells you something in itself.

3. Work the hydraulics cold, then work them hot

Start it from cold and listen. Then run it for twenty minutes and try everything again.

Slew the machine both ways and watch for drift. Curl the bucket, hold it, and see if it creeps down. Lift the boom to full height and leave it. Any drop over a minute or two points at cylinder seals or a tired valve block.

Check every ram for score marks on the chrome and for weeping around the gland. Look at the hose runs for rubbing, splits and bodged repairs. And check the pins and bushes at every joint by lifting the boom and watching for play. Slop in the pins is cheap to fix. Slop that has already ovalled the bores is not.

4. Emissions stage decides where it can work

This one catches people out, especially on machines bought purely on price.

Different sites and different cities have different requirements on non-road mobile machinery, and London in particular runs restrictions that a lot of older kit falls foul of. If you are chasing work in a regulated zone, or you subcontract to main contractors who audit their supply chain, check the emissions stage on the plate before you buy, not after you have won the job.

An older machine is not a problem if you are doing agricultural work, groundworks in the shires or your own yard. It becomes a very expensive problem if you buy it for a job it is not allowed on.

5. Hitches, attachments and what actually comes with it

Ask exactly what is included, in writing. “Comes with buckets” can mean three good ones or one bent ditching bucket with a hole in it.

Check the hitch type and whether your existing attachments will even fit. Quick hitches have been the subject of serious safety concern in the industry for years, so look at the condition of the mechanism, the pins and any safety pin arrangement, and make sure it locks positively every time.

If a machine comes with a breaker, ask when it was last serviced and whether the pipework and the auxiliary circuit are set up properly. A breaker circuit that was plumbed in by somebody’s mate is not a selling point.

6. Paperwork is worth real money

Ask for:

• Service history and recent invoices
• Any thorough examination or LOLER records if it lifts
• Proof of ownership and settlement of any outstanding finance
• The original import documents if it came in from Europe or further afield

That last one matters more than people think. An imported machine is not automatically worse, and some of the best-value kit on the market has come in from abroad, but you want to know its history rather than guess at it. A machine with no story behind it should be priced like a machine with no story behind it.

7. Where to look, and why “nearby” still counts

Plenty of people start by searching for excavators near me and there is sound logic in it. Being able to go and stand in front of a machine, start it yourself and walk the tracks beats any number of photographs. It also keeps transport costs down, and on a mid-sized machine haulage is not trivial.

That said, do not let geography make the decision for you. If the right machine at the right money is three counties away, the cost of a low loader is small next to buying the wrong digger locally. Widen the search, shortlist properly, then travel to view the best two or three.

Our full range of used excavators covers everything from micro diggers up to heavy tracked machines, listed by dealers and sellers across the UK and Ireland, so you can filter by what you actually need rather than what happens to be down the road.

8. Dealer, auction or private sale?

Auction can be the cheapest way in and the fastest way to get burned. Limited inspection, no comeback, and a room full of people bidding your margin away. Fine if you know exactly what you are looking at.

Private sale can throw up genuinely good machines from operators who have looked after their kit. It can also throw up outstanding finance, unclear ownership and a seller who is unreachable a fortnight later.

Established plant dealers cost a bit more, and the bit more usually buys you something. A machine that has been checked over, a warranty of some description, help with transport and finance, and somebody who has to still be trading next year. If a dealer has been in the same yard for fifteen years, their reputation is worth more to them than the margin on your machine.

Whichever route you take, get the price broken down. Is it plus VAT? What is included? Is it sold as seen or is anything being put right first? Get the answers before money changes hands.

For dealers: the other side of this page

Everything above describes a buyer doing their homework. Here is the part worth sitting with.

That buyer is doing all of it online, on their phone, usually before they ever pick up a phone to a dealer. They are searching, comparing, filtering and building a shortlist. By the time they ring you, they have already decided you are worth ringing, or they have already decided you are not.

Which means two things matter more than they used to.

Your stock has to be where buyers are looking. Listing your machines in front of an audience that is already searching for them costs a fraction of what most dealers spend on trade press. If you want to know what that looks like in practice, have a look at what is involved in advertising with us.

Your own site has to do its job. A lot of dealer websites in this trade are ten years old, do not work properly on a phone, and do not appear on Google for the machines sitting in the yard. If a buyer searches for exactly what you have in stock and finds three competitors before they find you, that machine sells slower and for less. It is a quiet cost, and most dealers never see it on a spreadsheet.

The short version

Walk the undercarriage. Run the hydraulics hot and cold. Make the hours agree with the wear. Get the paperwork. Check the emissions stage before you buy, not after. And do not let a two-hour drive stop you buying the right machine.

Ready to start looking? Browse the current used excavators on Plant And Tractor Trader, or get in touch if you want a hand working out what suits the work you are doing.