When it's time to move a machine on, most UK owners consider the same three routes: send it to auction, list it privately, or sell direct to a buyer. Each works, and each suits a different situation.
This guide is an honest comparison. We buy machines direct, so we have a position — but the useful thing here is the arithmetic, and that's the same whoever you sell to.
The Three Routes
Auction
You consign the machine to an auction house. They catalogue it, market it, and sell it on the day to the highest bidder. Euro Auctions, Ritchie Bros and Cheffins are the main names in UK plant.
Private sale
You advertise it yourself on Machinery Trader, Mascus, Plant Trader or Facebook, handle the enquiries, host the viewings, and negotiate directly with the end buyer.
Direct sale to a trade buyer
You get a price, accept or decline, and the buyer collects and pays. No listing, no viewings, no bidding.
What Auction Actually Costs
This is the part sellers most often underestimate, because the hammer price isn't what lands in your account.
Seller's commission — typically 5–10% of the hammer price, sometimes on a sliding scale by value.
Entry or listing fee — often £100–£300 per lot regardless of whether it sells.
Transport to site — you get the machine to the auction yard at your cost. A low loader move of a 20-tonne excavator across a couple of counties is £400–£900.
Storage — some auction houses charge if the machine sits on their yard beyond a set period before the sale.
Cleaning and presentation — optional, but machines that turn up filthy make less. Budget £100–£250 for a proper wash and tidy.
Unsold lot fee — if it doesn't meet reserve, you may pay a fee and still have to collect it.
Payment terms — typically 14–30 days after the sale once the buyer's funds clear.
Add it up on a machine that hammers at £40,000: 8% commission is £3,200, entry £200, transport £600, cleaning £150. You've lost around £4,150 — more than 10% — and you wait a month for the balance.
What Auction Is Genuinely Good For
It isn't all cost. Auction has real advantages in specific situations.
Multiple machines at once. Clearing a fleet, a liquidation, or a site closure. One consignment, one set of paperwork, everything gone on the same day.
Unusual or specialist kit. A machine with a narrow buyer pool — a drilling rig, a large crusher, an unusual attachment — benefits from being put in front of an international bidding audience. Auction finds buyers you'd never reach yourself.
A genuinely hot market. When a particular size class is in short supply, competitive bidding can exceed trade money.
Certainty of disposal. If you need it gone by a fixed date and you're prepared to accept whatever it makes, auction delivers that.
What Private Sale Costs
Cheaper in fees, expensive in time.
Advertising — £50–£200 per listing on the main portals.
Your time — this is the real cost. Fielding calls, answering the same questions repeatedly, arranging viewings, having people not turn up, negotiating.
Risk — payment fraud is a genuine problem in plant sales. Cleared funds before release, always. Test drives and demonstrations carry liability. And you're exposed to comebacks if the buyer claims the machine wasn't as described.
Time to sell — a well-priced mainstream machine might go in two to four weeks. A specialist machine or one priced optimistically can sit for months.
Private sale typically achieves the highest headline price of the three routes, because you're selling to an end user with no middleman. Whether it achieves the best net result depends entirely on what your time is worth and how long it takes.
What Direct Sale Costs
Nothing, in fees. A trade buyer quotes you a net figure, collects at their cost, and pays on collection.
The trade-off is straightforward and worth stating plainly: a trade buyer needs a margin. You won't get the full end-user retail price, because the buyer is taking on the cost of storage, refurbishment, marketing and the risk of how long it takes them to sell it. What you get instead is certainty, speed, and no costs coming back out of the figure.
The Honest Comparison
Take a 2017 20-tonne excavator, 7,000 hours, good condition, worth around £48,000 to an end user.
| Auction | Private sale | Direct sale | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headline price | £42,000 hammer | £48,000 | £40,000 |
| Commission / fees | −£3,360 | −£150 | £0 |
| Transport | −£600 | £0 | £0 |
| Prep / cleaning | −£150 | −£150 | £0 |
| Net to you | £37,890 | £47,700 | £40,000 |
| Time to money | 4–8 weeks | 2 weeks–4 months | 24–72 hours |
| Effort | Low | High | None |
| Certainty | Medium | Low | High |
Private sale wins on money if it sells promptly at the asking price. Direct sale beats auction on this example despite the lower headline, because there's nothing coming off it. And direct sale is the only one of the three where you know today what you're getting.
Which Should You Choose?
Choose auction if: you're clearing multiple machines, disposing of a fleet, working to a liquidator's timeline, or selling something specialist that needs an international audience.
Choose private sale if: you have a desirable, mainstream, well-presented machine, you're not in a hurry, you're comfortable handling enquiries and payment security, and your time isn't better spent elsewhere.
Choose direct sale if: you want it gone quickly and cleanly, the machine is non-running or has issues that make private sale awkward, you're mid-project and don't have time to manage a sale, or you simply want a firm number today rather than a guess about what it might make.
The Thing That Matters More Than the Route
Whichever way you sell, the same factors move the price:
Presentation. A clean machine makes more than a dirty one, at auction and everywhere else. It costs a couple of hours.
Honesty about condition. Overstating undercarriage percentage or hiding a fault wastes everyone's time and usually collapses the deal at inspection. Accurate description gets you a firm offer that actually completes.
Documentation. Service history, hour meter readings, telematics reports, attachment records. Every document you can produce narrows the buyer's risk and lifts the price.
Attachments. Buckets, hitches, tiltrotators. Selling them with the machine almost always achieves more than selling them separately, and it makes the machine easier to place.
Timing. Plant values soften in deep winter and firm up from February onwards as the construction season restarts. If you can wait a few weeks in January, it's often worth it.
Get a Direct Offer from Plant Machinery Trading
We buy plant machinery of all types directly from owners across the UK. If you want to see what a direct offer looks like before deciding on your route, it costs nothing to find out.
- ✅ Free valuation within 24 hours — no obligation, no pressure
- ✅ Same-day payment — bank transfer on collection
- ✅ Free UK-wide collection — we arrange and pay for transport
- ✅ No fees or commission — the figure we quote is the figure you receive
- ✅ All conditions — working, high hours, damaged, non-running
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