Red Flags when Buying Equipment

Neil from Messick's here to talk to you today about some red flags that you might want to watch out for if you are shopping for a piece of equipment. There are some definite trends out there when it comes to brands that are a little bit more sketchy, a little bit more questionable in terms of what they're selling. We're going to talk today about some of those things that you may want to keep an eye out for.
Today's video is actually inspired by real-life events. We recently had a customer come into the store with a Kobota mower, Kobota being misspelled with an O. It's amazing how many people misspelled Kubota, but this misspelling was done intentionally and somebody was duped into buying a mower they thought was legitimately made by Kubota. Came into our parts department with their model number, expecting to lick up some parts that they needed for it because it had broken and here we find out that the thing is a knocked-off Chinese import using the name misspelled from Kubota. One thing you're going to want to stop and look at with this equipment when you're shopping for a piece of machinery are these poor misspellings or poor translations.
A lot of time when you have a company bringing stuff in from overseas with not a lot of domestic support, you're going to find some of these things like poor translations and stuff. When you go read through those item descriptions, then they're going to tell you this is probably not a genuine product from a company who's thoughtfully manufacturing things. Now, the hallmark of equipment like this is usually an abnormally cheap price. We all like to have a deal from time to time, and even us as a dealership, we are out there seeking out brands that are selling us good quality equipment at really good prices in order to offer to you, right?
It's what makes the products that we sell attractive, but there are some things that we look for in the quality construction of that implement to know when we're getting good stuff. A lot of things can be picked out in the hydraulic system of a machine, like this Paladin Sweeper Pick-up Broom that I have here. You're going to see that this has got Gates hoses on it. It has a Parker motor, it has flat face hydraulic couplers on it. These are all name brand and quality parts, not necessarily the cheapest stuff that you can pull off the shelf, because we know that it builds a quality implement that's going to last over time.
While you're looking at the parts and looking for some of those kind of recognizable domestic names that you're used to seeing on quality equipment, you'll also want to take a moment and ask about what the parts support for that implement looks like. Implements are your working attachment, right? They take wear and tear. There's a very high likelihood over the life of that implement that you're going to break something and that you're going to need service. Take a minute and ask about a manufacturer's parts support. One thing that is always a red flag to me is that when somebody refers to the parts as being generic or commodity items that you'll be able to find anywhere. Our parts department will tell you that there is nothing generic about just about any part on any implement.
They are very specific, and unless you come in with a model number that has a diagram that we know we can get you the right item, it's extremely difficult to just pluck something off the shelf and drop it on any kind of implement tractor or attachment. There's nothing generic about the way that machinery is made. If you look here at these grapples, you'll see they have very specific hydraulic cylinders, right? Even something as simple as that we're just, gosh, we've probably got tens of thousands of them in the building here, but we need this specific one with the right geometry, the right construction in order to drop onto this grapple. Take a minute, ask the questions about the parts. What does their parts support look like?
Do they have parts sitting in the warehouse? Are they committed to that parts support for decades to come? Another great follow-up question to ask is, "Who is building this equipment?" In the case of our Kobota mower here, obviously it's not Kubota who is building that mower, but these kinds of relationships get really funny. A lot of the big equipment companies do source machinery, attachments and other items from third-party companies. Now, some of those are good longstanding relationships that aren't anything that you need to be concerned about, but some are not that. Some of them can be very short-term supplier relationships, where you'll see significant name brand and companies jumping from one supplier to the next, finding the cheapest things that they can find.
You'll also see supplier arrangements for complete tractors where that company has nothing to do with that tractor other than a sticker on the side of the hood. Those are never great machines to be involved with for resale value or parts support reasons. Asking whether a company is actually building the piece of equipment that they're selling, or inquiring a little bit about the manufacturer relationship, how long have they been sourcing this thing, is going to help a little bit what the long-term support of that piece is going to look like.
To build on the supplier sourced conversation, a common comment that I hear about that is that I can always go back to the original manufacturer of that piece in order to find those parts that I need. That can be surprisingly difficult and you'll find a lot of people having trouble with that. When you look back to tractors like the TYM source machines the Cabela's had been selling five and six years ago, you see a lot of these three- to five-year contractual relationships where tractors are sourced in, but then walking into another dealership who might sell another TYM-branded piece of equipment and thinking that you're going to cross parts back to that original Cabela's-built model can be extremely difficult.
Nobody carries around cross-reference charts in order to know how to make those connections. Very frequently, the company selling that machine is making modifications to the tractor. It might be using a different brand, another sourced brand for a lot of the implements that might be going on it, or swapping out things like seats or three-point hitch hardware that might make that different than the base models that are in the rest of that manufacturer's product catalog. I always get very concerned when we have to look at trade-ins and that kind of thing for models like this that have been orphaned, so keep an eye out for that.
One thing that I would always encourage you to do is to ask further questions about a piece of equipment before buying. Even if you're looking at some kind of listing on the internet and you think you've got everything kind of explained to you based upon what you see on the screen, ask some questions of the seller to gauge their knowledge of the piece of equipment and see if they're even aware of what it is that they're selling. Take this mower for example, right? I've got a hydraulic feed, hydraulic return, and a third line right here that's a case drain, right? Does the salesman know what the case drain is? Do they know how to hook it up to your piece of equipment?
Ask them maybe for a picture of another view of the implement that's not on the webpage right now. That can help you root out scammers that are selling a piece of equipment and trying to present something there that they don't even have possession of, or somebody who's, say, a dropshipper that's just shipping stuff out of a warehouse somewhere that they don't have any kind of possession or dealership experience to be able to know what it is that they're selling. Those guys are out there in mass. In addition to some sketchy equipment that might be out there, there is also some sketchy financing that's often offered as well. These are often expensive pieces, pieces that many times need to be financed. There is definite differences in the quality of the different financing companies that are out there.
If you're dealing with, say, a CNH Capital or a Kubota Credit or established big companies like that, you know who you're dealing with. You know the banking relationships that they have. You know that your dealer is able to step in on your behalf and help, but there are definitely other financing companies out there where you are paying in a lot of interest costs. Maybe the dealership is selling it to you, is making some money on the backside. Maybe the relationship with that company might be a little bit strained. If you need to, say, do a skip payment or a seasonal payment or something like that, that they don't know what they're doing because they're essentially high interest credit card companies that are being used in order to sell you on a piece of equipment.
Financing is often necessary, but you would not believe the amount of times that we can give better financing options to people who have come in here pre-approved from some of those high-interest, high-risk type finance companies. Another sometimes humorous step that you could take to vet some of these retailers is to look a little bit into their operations using something like Google Street View, where you can search for somebody's address and see what some of these facilities and buildings look like. If we take our Kobota mower here and we punch in the address that's here on the bottom of the serial number tag, you'll find that it's a multi-story commercial building in the middle of Austin, Texas.
Something tells me that they're not selling mowers out of this facility. If we take the URL for their website here and go to that site, you'll see it's a website that has very little to do with this exact mower and deals with, obviously, a whole lot of kind of sketchy-looking stuff. We've got pictures and a website on this one as well with buildings that certainly don't look right. If we search them on Street View for the address for this company now, it's completely different than the one on the serial number tag and is actually an abandoned building in the middle of a business park somewhere. You'll actually find this a lot.
When you start searching for the addresses of the companies that are importing these things, many times it's you're going to find properties that don't look like they're probably doing any kind of normal retail business. Sometimes it's dropshippers out of a business park. They can often be huge red flags of the kind of business that this company is actually doing. Doing quality business takes an investment in facilities, in parts inventory, in people, in customer service. All of these things are big factors in your ultimate satisfaction with any kind of implement or equipment purchase that you might make. That's when guys like me at a dealership come in, right?
It's what we're here to do, is to cover that kind of customer service side of things and make sure that you're happy with what you're buying. If we can help with any equipment that you've already got, if you're considering a parts or service purchase, or looking for a piece of equipment, give us a call here at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.