Investment in plant and machinery more often than not represents a huge proportion of outlay undertaken by most farmers and contractors. Any possibilities of cutting plant and machinery costs are of course met with delight.

There are three primary reasons why cost savings are so valued. The first simply being that cost savings have a beneficial effect on the bottom line which is good news for any purchaser. The second is that any savings can be reallocated to the purchase of additional equipment and potentially improve efficiency. The third is that higher quality, more effective and efficient used machinery can now be brought in for no additional overall expenditure.

Traditionally, used machinery has largely been bought and sold through local auctions and sales. New machinery and used machinery is sometimes surplus to requirements, sometimes available through insolvency.

In recent years a vast new market in used machinery has evolved driven by the Internet, including numerous industry related sites offering huge data bases of equipment much of it with detailed specifications and images and sophisticated search options to help you find the specific machine to suit your needs. Products from a range of well known manufactures such as Bobcat equipments, Case IH, Caterpillar, Claas, Fiat-Hitachi, Fendt, Ford, Hitachi equipments, Ingersoll Rand, JCB, John Deere, Komatsu, Leibherr, Link-Belt, Massey Ferguson, Steyr, Valtra, and Volvo are all readily available.

The usual advantages of buying online can all be seen to apply to machinery:

1. Price: items are usually cheaper on the Web because of online competition. Storage, staff costs and overheads in general tend to be lower.

2. Convenience: purchasing can be much easier on the Internet. It can be done at home, at a convenient time and be very quick.

3. Breadth of choice: Internet shopping allows you access to a wide range of suppliers all around the world. Online suppliers can also carry a much larger stock by aggregating products from a range of smaller suppliers or acting as a dealer portal.

4. Quick delivery: most Internet sites are able to deliver within a few days.

Of course there are sensible precautions that it would be wise to take before investing hard earned money in used machinery. You’ll ideally want to personally inspect and test any equipment and take delivery of logbooks, certificates and warranties. You may even wish to have a certified third party inspect the equipment. You may have to pay a little extra to get hold of it but clean, good conditioned low use kit will likely save you time and money in the long run.