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Australian Forestry Equipment

Checklist

Commercial procurement checklist

The complete set of facts to assemble before purchasing any industrial forestry machine. If a line cannot be answered, that gap is the commercial risk.

Use it: Before requesting quotes, and again before signing.

This is the full set of facts a commercial forestry machine purchase rests on. It exists because the most expensive mistakes in this market are not made at the negotiation — they are made earlier, when a buyer commits without establishing what the machine actually has to do.

Work through it before requesting quotes, and again before signing. Any line you cannot answer is not a gap in the paperwork; it is where your commercial risk sits, and it will surface later as a machine that does not suit the work, a rate that does not cover costs, or a residual value that does not materialise.

The Work section comes first deliberately. Available work, contract duration and required output determine the production system, which determines the carrier, which determines the attachment. Reversing that order — choosing a machine and then looking for work — is the single most reliable way to end up with expensive idle capital.

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Work

Material

Site

Machine

Attachment

Commercial

Support

Interpreting the answers

What a good answer looks like

Ticking a box is not the same as being satisfied with the answer. These are the lines where the response itself tells you something.

What you askedA good answerA answer that should worry you
Expected annual hoursA contracted figure, with the contract term compared against the finance term.A forecast based on work you hope to win. Treat uncontracted hours as zero when modelling.
Average and maximum DBHMeasured from your own stands, with a 90th-percentile figure alongside the average.An estimate, or the maximum quoted without the distribution behind it.
Estimated residual valueBased on observed sale prices for comparable machines in your region, with time-to-sell considered.A dealer's figure accepted without checking the depth of the local resale market.
Nearest technician and local spare partsA named location, with a list of what is actually held for your machine and head."We have national coverage." That is a marketing claim, not a lead time.

Working through it

How to use this checklist

  • Complete the Work, Material and Site sections before contacting any supplier — they determine everything downstream
  • Take the Machine and Attachment sections into the supplier meeting and fill them in together
  • Complete the Commercial section from the written quotation, not from conversation
  • Treat the Support section as part of the machine specification rather than as after-sales detail
  • Revisit the whole list before signing, because answers change between first quote and final contract

Common questions

Frequently asked questions

How long before a purchase should I start this checklist?

Before you request quotes. The Work, Material and Site sections determine which machine is appropriate, and filling them in afterwards means you are validating a decision rather than making one. Suppliers also give better answers when a buyer arrives with stand data rather than a tonnage class.

What if I genuinely cannot answer some lines?

Then you have found the risk, which is the point. An unanswerable line is not a reason to stop — it is a reason to either get the information, or to price the uncertainty into the decision explicitly. The lines most often left blank are annual contracted hours, residual value and local parts holding, and those are also the three that most often sink a purchase.

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