Buying a mini excavator in France

Property & Home
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Not sure if this is in the correct category or not?

I just bought a used mini excavator in France.

What a drama trying to find a decent used digger, is it hard in the UK to find a decent digger at a reasonable price?

If anyone’s interested about the cost here in France, I bought a 2.5 ton Bobcat, year 2000, three buckets, 11k Euros delivered tax incl.

It’s going to need the filters and all oils changed inc drives, has new tracks, no smoke, no engine leaks, minor weep on main ram, bushes and pins are acceptable. It was a trade in at a dealership, sold as seen by the dealership with no warranty.

Delivery is in around ten days time, once I get the digger I will service it and give it a work out, then report back here on the company that I bought it from and if I’d buy from them again.

I joined this forum to get advice and hear other peoples experiences of how they got things done in France - I had a lot of trouble finding a digger, thought someone else might get something out of my experience of searching for one and buying one.

Huge warning to all, there are A LOT of scams on leboncoin and also machinaryzone regarding diggers. Overnight heaps of adverts come on both sites from one “company”, all machines they advertise do not exist. The “company” alters each time, usually it claims it’s a Spanish company, provides a company number, and sometimes a website, but when checked it never matches up, the address never matches the registered business address, the website domain name was registered a week before. They will say things like its a repossessed finance machine and they have their own delivery trucks, so they can ship a machine from Spain, they will try every trick in the book.

So you’ve been warned - decent used diggers are not easy to find, if you see one advertised at a price that looks too good to be true - correct, it’s not true…

I’ll update this thread once (fingers crossed, please please arrive ha ha ha) my digger turns up.

Henri

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@james - who likes a digger…!

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I have a Rental company just about around the corner, where I can rent a machine and when I do not need it any longer, it goes back. This way I do not have too much machinery standing around!

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Hi @Annie2

“Just around the corner” Ah those days are long gone for us, the only thing just around the corner from us is wide open spaces, as far as the eye can see and then some.

Here we don’t use Kilometres to measure distances, we use the old Queensland gauge of bits and whiles.

“could you tell me the way to X please?”

"sure, you go along here for a bit, you’ll come to a T junction, turn left for a while until you reach the big old split tree, you can’t miss it, then turn right for a bit…

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When your digger shows up could you give us an update on how you purchased it?
Did you use Lebon Coin or a dealer site?
I am in the market for both a digger (we call them a track-hoe or mini-x in the States) and also a cherry picker.

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Hi @FireinFrance

No worries, I will come back with a full update on the dealer I purchased the track-hoe (mini excavator) from, how I found their purchase process, if they provided full and honest information about the machines mechanical state and history, and after I have serviced and tested the machine out I’ll let you know what I think about the machine.

I will not provide details of the dealer I purchased from until after I can give a full and honest account of them, as I’ve never purchased from them before so let’s see what they are like first.

I tried leboncoin and machineryzone for a long time, plus toured dealers trying to find something reasonably priced that was still serviceable. I cannot recommend leboncoin or machinerzone for buying a used track-hoe (mini digger). My experience with them both was there are a vast number of scams that try and use both sites to attract buyers (suckers) into their scammy web. Be careful using both sites is my advice.

I’m buying a machine for drainage work (house drains and french drains in fields and also to tidy up and rejuvenate some ponds, I need to dig out some foundation base excavations, digging a new fosse pit and digging out the old fosse once the new one’s working and approved.

I bought a 2.5 ton track-hoe as it’s about the heaviest machine I can tow on my trailer, the trailer weighs 750 Kg, and with the machine and buckets loaded its close to the 3500 kg limit for towing. I tow with a land rover disco 3. I need to move the machine around as it’s just too slow track walking the machine from place to place, so I road trip it to the far end and wanted to be road legal.

I would have preferred to buy a 5 ton machine because of the extra reach and digging power, but then it’s a hassle trying to move it by road due to it’s weight. A 2.5 ton machine will do the work I need if I’m steady and don’t over-stress the machine - the only potential issue might be digging the fosse pit, it may be that the digger doesn’t have enough reach to dig down far enough for the required pit depth, it’s hard to know at this stage for a number of reasons. However, if the digger will not have enough reach for the depth I can always dig one side of the fosse pit as a slope and drive the digger into the pit and drag the material out - it’s not ideal, but it works if needed. Let’s see as we progress with the earth works.

This is the machine I’ve agreed to purchase, it’s a year 2000 Bobcat 325, unknown hours as the clocks broken.

Bobcat 325
Bobcat 3251600×1200 308 KB

If you have any questions just let me know. Remember I don’t take delivery of the machine for another 10 days or so, I will come back and update the thread once I have it.

It’s an old machine, but old dogs can still hunt, they just need careful looking after.

Henri

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Delivery update - Good communication with the dealer so far - They have staff fluent in English and obviously in French.

Machine booked to be delivered next week, I’ve told them I’m flexible and any day and time next week is fine, I’m doing my bit to try and make everything go smoothly from my side of things.

Payment’s was made and confirmation sent to them - 5 mins after payment a receipt was emailed to me, full tax invoice so I could claim the tax back if I was registered.

Fingers crossed about delivery, I will update the thread next week.

Henri

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Hopefully you have been busy digging holes all over your property!
Any updates on this for us?

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So, digger or no digger?

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Suspended or not suspended?

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I think he’s dug himself into a hole :wink:

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:joy::joy::joy::joy::joy:

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The only non-shop person I know who trades diggers etc in Spain/France is a crook* so good luck.
*With fingers in many pies, dodgy diggers are just one.

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Schrödinger’s member? :wink: