Buying · 6 min
Twelve questions to ask before you drive out to see a machine
What should I ask a seller before going to see a used machine?
Ask whether there is a loan on it and whether the financier's NOC can be obtained, who the registered owner is, the hour reading and whether the meter has ever been replaced, how long it has been for sale, why it is being sold, what work it has done, what has been replaced and when, whether it will be cold when you arrive, and whether you may bring your own inspector. Four minutes on the phone removes most wasted journeys — and how a seller answers tells you as much as what he answers.
Most wasted days in this trade are decided before anyone gets in a car.
You drive ninety minutes, spend three hours with a machine, and discover something that a four-minute phone call would have surfaced — a loan nobody can close, a seller who is not the owner, a meter that was replaced two years ago and never mentioned.
Ask these first. Write the answers down; you will want them later, and the act of writing them down changes how carefully people answer.
The paperwork four — ask these before anything else
1. Is there a loan on the machine? If yes: which financier, which branch holds the file, and is the account current? If they say it is cleared: when, and was the NOC collected at the time? A closed loan with an uncollected NOC is a common and genuinely slow problem.
2. Are you the registered owner? If not, who is, and will that person be present? A great many deals involve somebody selling on behalf of somebody else, and that is fine — as long as you know it now rather than at the point of transfer.
3. Will the chassis and engine numbers match the paperwork? An odd question to ask on the phone, which is exactly why it is informative. You are going to check the stamping anyway. Saying so in advance changes what happens next.
4. Can I have the RC and invoice details in advance? A seller with clean paperwork sends them. A seller who says “come and see, we will sort all that” has told you where the friction is.
The history four
5. What is the hour reading — and has the meter ever been replaced? Ask both parts in one breath. A replaced cluster is not necessarily a problem; an undisclosed one is. A seller who volunteers “the cluster went in 2022, it has done about fourteen thousand” is being straight with you, and that is worth a great deal.
6. What work has it done? Quarry work, road, general contracting, rental fleet? Quarry hours are hard hours. Rental machines get used by many hands and serviced on a schedule — that cuts both ways.
7. What has been replaced, and when? Undercarriage, pump, cylinders, transmission on a backhoe. If a major component has been replaced, ask who did it and whether there is a bill. A rebuilt pump with paperwork is an asset. A rebuilt pump without paperwork is a question.
8. Why are you selling it? Not a trick question, and not one to over-read. But “we have moved to bigger machines” and “it has been sitting for eight months” describe different situations, and people usually answer honestly because they do not expect the question to matter.
The two that predict the price
9. How long has it been for sale? The single most useful commercial question on this list. A machine that has been advertised for four months at a given price is telling you something about that price that no amount of negotiation theory will.
10. Has anyone else inspected it? What did they find? Sometimes you get a straight and very useful answer. Occasionally you learn a deal fell through, and why.
The two that decide whether it is worth going
11. Can the machine be cold when I arrive — nothing run that morning?
This is the one worth being firm about. A pre-warmed engine hides hard starting, start smoke, crankcase blowby and injector behaviour, which is precisely why sellers warm them.
You are not accusing anybody. You are asking for the one condition under which the engine can actually be assessed. A seller who agrees readily has told you something good. A seller who explains why that is difficult has told you something too — and you have learned it before spending the day rather than after.
12. May I bring my own inspector?
The answer to this question is, on its own, worth the call.
A machine with nothing to hide gets a shrug and a yes. Reluctance is not proof of anything, but combined with a warm engine and vague paperwork it is a pattern — and patterns are what you are actually screening for.
What you are really listening for
You are not going to catch anyone out on the phone, and you should not try. What twelve questions give you is a texture: whether the answers are specific or vague, whether the paperwork is to hand or somewhere, whether the difficult questions get a straight answer or a change of subject.
A seller who answers all twelve plainly is worth driving to see even if the machine turns out to be ordinary. A seller who is evasive on three of them is telling you about the whole transaction, not just those three.
And when you do go, go in the right order: documents before anything mechanical, because that is the part that can end the visit — and because you will be much less willing to walk away from a paperwork problem at four in the afternoon than you were at nine in the morning.
If the answers are good and you want the machine measured properly rather than looked at, that is what we do — ₹6,000, report in two days. And if you are not there yet, six photographs get you a grade band for nothing.