Are you looking to sell surplus equipment? Whether you're upgrading machinery, downsizing operations, or simply looking to free up space in your facility, selling used industrial equipment can be a challenging endeavor.
In this article, we'll walk you through the process step-by-step and offer guidance on how to minimize your headache and maximize return when selling manufacturing machines and other heavy equipment.
How to Sell Used Equipment
There are a few steps that you’ll always need to follow in order to sell your machines.
- Assess your surplus: Begin by conducting a thorough inventory of your industrial equipment. Identify items that are no longer needed or underutilized. Critically, ensure that this process is done cross-functionally. You need finance’s perspective on the asset’s book value and leadership’s perspective on growth plans to be sure that you can move on from a piece of equipment. Align on your equipment for sale.
- Choose the right sales channel: Explore different sales channels to reach potential buyers effectively. Options include online marketplaces, auction houses, equipment buyers, and specialized industrial liquidators. Select the platform or method that best aligns with your objectives and target audience.
- Prepare your equipment: Clean, inspect, and if necessary, repair your equipment to ensure it's in optimal condition for sale. Properly documenting maintenance records and any upgrades can increase buyer confidence and help justify your asking price. Pictures of the machine and your facility go a long way to building trust with buyers – even a simple picture of a clean well-maintained facility suggests that you’ve kept the equipment up well.
- Fulfill purchases: Some buyers are happy to package and pick up their purchase themselves, while others will want you to do the work. Make sure you sort out that critical detail with your supply chain team before the purchase order.
Sell Heavy Equipment: Tips for Success
Selling heavy industrial equipment presents unique challenges due to its size, weight, and specialized nature.
To start, you’ll want to provide detailed specifications. Heavy equipment and machinery doesn’t generally come with a simple SKU number that a buyer can look up to grab all the necessary information. You’ll need to clearly communicate the specifications, capabilities, and any special features of your heavy equipment through your chosen sales channel to maximize sale speed and price. When you provide relevant specifications, you increase buyer trust and confidence.
In addition, you’ll need to factor transportation costs and logistics into your strategy, especially for large or oversized equipment. Liquidators that specialize in the heavy equipment that you’re selling should already have answers for your operational questions. If you work with a partner that is less familiar with what you’re selling, you might run into challenges when neither one of you has a good plan to pack and ship the machine.
Finally, carefully document the equipment’s maintenance history. Just like when you’re selling a car, sharing the maintenance history and service records of your heavy equipment can instill confidence in potential buyers and demonstrate its reliability and longevity.
Where to Sell Industrial Equipment: Exploring Your Options
There are several different channels to consider to sell used equipment. We go into more depth on these different options in our article about industrial liquidators.
- Liquidation Companies: These firms specialize in the complete or partial liquidation of industrial assets. They typically purchase assets outright from businesses or facilitate the sale of assets through various channels, such as auctions, private sales, or online marketplaces.
- Auction Houses: These entities facilitate liquidation auctions, either online or in-person, where surplus industrial assets are sold to the highest bidder.
- Asset Recovery Specialists: These professionals focus on recovering value from distressed or obsolete inventory. They tend to focus on high-value items like old manufacturing machines that still have decades of useful life.
- Equipment Dealers: These businesses buy and sell used industrial equipment and machinery. While they primarily function as sellers, they may also offer buyback or trade-in options for businesses looking to liquidate surplus assets.
Amplio: a new path for selling industrial equipment
At Amplio, we specialize in making the complex world of industrial liquidation simple for our clients. Just send us the details of your used equipment along with your business needs, and we’ll do the heavy lifting for you.
Need a quick buyout? We’ll canvas our network of over 50 specialized liquidators to surface the best offers and get you more for your equipment, fast. Want to maximize recovery? We’ll work with the right partner to take the time needed for more money. All the while, we will be your single, trusted point of contact.
What makes us unique? It’s our software and our network.
Our software collects and analyzes daily transaction data from leading marketplaces to adjust and determine the best reselling strategy. We can tell you what items you should scrap to immediately free up warehouse space, and which you should sell slowly to maximize recovery.
Then we execute the liquidation on your behalf, using our extensive network to ensure you get the most competitive offers for your inventory.
