Buying used machinery safely
Used turf machinery is a market with real money in it and very little standardisation. Most of it is honest. The rest is avoidable with a handful of habits.
Who can sell here
Only UK businesses, and only once we've approved them. Private sellers can't list here at all. How approval works.
Read the hours against the year
A 2015 fairway mower with 700 hours has either been barely used or had its meter replaced. Ask which. Greens mowers typically do 150-300 hours a year on a busy course; a figure far outside that deserves an explanation, not an assumption.
Ask for the service history
Dealers who service their own stock can usually produce records. Ask what has been replaced (cylinders and bedknives, hydraulic hoses, batteries on electric units) and when. A machine with no history isn't necessarily bad, but it should be priced as one.
See it run, or send someone who can
Cold-start it yourself. Listen to the hydraulics under load, check for weeping seals, look at the cylinder-to-bedknife contact. If you can't travel, most dealers will video a walk-around and a cold start on request, and one who won't has told you something.
Never pay a deposit to hold a machine unseen
This is the single most common way people lose money in this market. Groundcare Machinery For Sale never asks a buyer for payment and never holds funds. If anyone claiming to be from us asks you for money, it is not us. Tell us.
Warning signs
- A price well under the going rate, with a reason to hurry.
- A seller who will only communicate by message and won't take a call.
- Payment requested to a personal account, or by any method with no recourse.
- A machine that can't be viewed because it's “in transit”.
- Anyone claiming to hold your payment on our behalf. We never do this.
Seen something wrong on a listing here? Use Report a problem on the listing, or tell us, and we'll take it down while we look into it.