Who this is · and what it is not
An inspection desk, not a dealer
MACHINEGRADE exists to be paid for telling you the truth about one specific machine. Everything about how it is built follows from protecting that.
01 · The position
Three facts that make an independent grade possible
Almost everyone who will tell you about a used machine has a reason to want the deal done. The dealer wants the trade-in gone. The broker is paid on completion. The seller's mechanic is the seller's mechanic. None of them are dishonest — they are simply not neutral, and neutral is what you actually need.
- We hold no stock and take no title. There is never a machine we would rather you bought.
- We are paid before the work, not on completion. The fee arrives whether you buy or walk away.
- We disclose any interest on the other side, in writing, before the inspection. If we are brokering the machine, you are told before you pay, not after.
None of that makes us right about a machine. It removes the reason to be wrong on purpose, which is a different and more important thing.
What we are
- An independent condition-inspection desk for business-owned machinery
- A brokerage that takes no title and charges nothing upfront
- A parts supplier that buys to order and names the tier
What we are not
- A dealer, or a yard with machines standing on it
- A marketplace or a listings site
- A certification body — nobody in this trade is one
- A valuer for statutory purposes, unless engaged specifically for it
02 · The inspectors
The mechanics are the business
A report is only as good as the person who walked around the machine. So the whole operation is built around keeping good ones.
Our inspectors are experienced machine mechanics — dealer service engineers, many of them retired from workshops in this district, people who have spent twenty years listening to these engines and know what a tired pump sounds like before a gauge would show it.
They are paid the same day, in full, every time. Their name goes on the report, because a person is accountable and a logo is not. And their engagement gives them the explicit written right to refuse us — if the mechanic says the machine is a D, it goes out as a D, and there is no conversation about it.
A category opens when its inspector is found
A hydraulic excavator mechanic cannot competently grade a mobile crane, and pretending otherwise is how a firm produces the one false report it does not survive.
So excavators and backhoe loaders today. Road equipment, concrete plant, cranes and crushing open the week the right inspector joins — and the site says which is which rather than implying we cover everything.
What we can grade today03 · Operating rules
Published, so we can be held to them
These are the rules the desk runs on. They are on the website rather than in a drawer because a rule you can be held to in public is worth considerably more than one you cannot.
Money before work, paper before money
The fee is paid in advance, every time, by everybody. It is what lets us be genuinely indifferent to whether you buy the machine.
The grade is never negotiable
Not by the seller, not by the buyer, not by us. Our inspectors have the written right to refuse us — if a mechanic says D, it goes out as D.
The overall grade is the worst system
Never the average. A machine with an A engine and a D undercarriage is a D.
We never certify
We inspect and grade. The report states what was checked and what could not be, and where we cannot tell, it says we cannot tell.
We never advise the purchase
We state condition and cost. Whether to buy is your decision and it must stay yours.
The owner's operator runs the machine
Never our inspector. It is your machine and your operator knows it, and it removes any argument about what happened while we were there.
Inspectors are paid the same day, in full
The mechanics are the business. A desk that is slow to pay them ends up with the ones nobody else wants.
Every machine we touch enters the record
Especially the ones that did not sell. Six weeks later we ask what happened, because the outcome is the part nobody else bothers to write down.
04 · Who runs it
Rahul Govindu
MACHINEGRADE is owner-run from Hyderabad. That means you are dealing with the person accountable for the report, not a call centre — and when something goes wrong there is nobody to pass you to.
It also means we are small, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. What we can promise is that the method is fixed, the grade is not for sale, and the mechanic who inspects your machine is named on the document.
If you are a machine mechanic
We are always looking for experienced hands for per-job inspection work — dealer service engineers, retired workshop staff, people who know one make properly rather than all of them vaguely.
Paid per inspection, same day, in full. Your name goes on the report. Two or three days a month to start.
Get in touch