What hours actually tell you on a used excavator

A 6,000-hour machine can be in better shape than a 3,000-hour one. Hours are a starting point, not a verdict — here is what to read alongside them.

Hours are the odometer of the machinery world, and they get treated with the same misplaced confidence. Two 20-tonne excavators of the same year and model, one at 3,000 hours and one at 6,000, are not reliably ranked by that number alone.

What the hours do not tell you

• What the work was. Six thousand hours of bulk earthworks on soft ground is gentler than three thousand hours of rock breaking.
• Whether the hour meter is original. It happens.
• How it was serviced. A machine on a dealer service contract with every interval documented is a different asset to one with a shoebox of receipts.
• Idle time. Many machines log hours idling, which adds engine hours without adding wear to the tracks, pins and bushes.

What to look at instead

Undercarriage condition on a tracked machine is the biggest single cost item and the hardest to fake — track chains, idlers, rollers and sprockets tell you the real story. Pin and bushing wear in the boom and stick shows you how hard it has worked. Fresh paint in the wrong places is worth a second look.

Ask for the service history and the last oil sample analysis. A seller who has them will produce them immediately; a seller who does not is telling you something.

And on price

Hours drive the asking price more than they should, which is exactly where a well-maintained higher-hour machine becomes good buying. Our listings show the comparable asking prices for the same make and year, so you can see where a particular machine sits against the market rather than guessing.