Britannia AuctionsPlant and construction equipment auctions in Milton Keynes
Collection day in Milton Keynes has the grid roads in its favour. A step frame low loader can reach a yard at Tongwell or Bletchley from junction 13 or 14 of the M1 without threading through terraced streets, and the bigger parks have yards used to artics, though the gate, the turning space and the hard standing still get checked before anything is listed.
The city is still being built, which keeps plant in work and keeps it coming to market. Groundworks contractors, hire companies, civils firms and the fit out trades at Magna Park all run excavators, telehandlers, dumpers and rollers. If you are retiring and selling the equipment rather than transferring the business, the smaller yards on the older estates at Bletchley are the kind of place that sale comes from.
We sell all of it by online timed auction. The contact form is the first step.
Hire fleet machines that stopped going out
A hire company knows which machines are earning. When a mini digger has spent more of the last year in the depot than on hire, it is costing money in insurance and space, and the question is whether to deal with it while it still has a value. Hire depots on the Bletchley estates and around Kingston are where those decisions get made.
We take the idle machines as a group. A catalogue of ten or twenty small plant items from one fleet carries its own evidence when the service records and the last inspection certificate come with it, and we list the hour reading from the meter rather than from the paperwork.
The date is worth a conversation before the catalogue is written. We will tell you what interest to expect and on the timing, and a lease end or a finance settlement often decides it for you.
Grid roads and the checks before collection
Selling in place is common here, and it is still a decision made on site. The larger parks at Magna Park and Tongwell have hard standing and turning space, and we look at the gate, the loading point and the road outside before the catalogue opens. We catalogue on site with the hour meter and serial plate in every set of photographs, and the machines that can be run safely are started on video.
The older estates at Bletchley are tighter, and some yards share an entrance with a neighbour. Where a loaded step frame cannot get out cleanly, collecting the plant first and selling from our own premises can be arranged.
Newport Pagnell, Bedford, Leighton Buzzard and Aylesbury are a short trip from the viewing day, with Northampton and Luton down the M1, and the rest of the country bids online.
What these sales can include
- Excavators and mini diggers
- Dumpers and site dumpers
- Telehandlers
- Generators and lighting towers
- Compressors and breakers
- Rollers and compaction equipment
- Site cabins and welfare units
- Scaffolding and access equipment
- Concrete mixers and pumps
- Buckets, quick hitches and attachments
- Plant trailers
- Surveying equipment and small tools
- Fuel bowsers and tanks
How the auction works
Each machine is a lot with a full description, photographs and the hour reading. Bidding runs online for a set period, usually one to two weeks, and lots close in sequence. A bid in the last minutes extends the close for that lot.
Plant is offered as seen under the auction terms, and buyers are expected to inspect before bidding. The buyer pays the hammer price plus a buyer's premium, with VAT charged where it applies and shown separately on the invoice. Payment is required before removal.
Buyers arrange and pay for the removal of their lots within the agreed window. What that takes depends on the machine: wheeled plant with road registration can be driven away, and tracked or heavy machines go on a low loader. Nothing leaves the site until it is paid for and signed out.
The plant and construction equipment auctions page covers what buyers want to know, finance and ownership checks, where the sale runs from, reserves and the market, alternatives.
Questions about selling in Milton Keynes
- We have plant parked on a finished site at Magna Park that the landlord wants cleared. How fast can it go?
If the compound can host the sale, cataloguing takes days and the bidding can run for a week, with collection in the days after, so about three weeks from first call to a clear compound is a reasonable plan. It depends on how many lots there are and the access. If the landlord's date is closer than that, we can move the plant to our own premises and the sale runs from there on its own timetable. Either way you get a date to work back from.
- Is there any point selling attachments and buckets separately from the machines?
Yes, and we usually do. Buckets, quick hitches, breakers and augers are listed as their own lots with the pin size and the hitch type in the description, and they are cheap to move, so distance matters less on them than on a machine. Listing them separately means the machine sells with one bucket and each attachment is bid on by whoever needs that attachment. Small tools and surveying kit are grouped into sensible lots.
More questions about plant and construction
Related services
Guides
- How used machinery is valued
Buyers pay for what a machine will do for them, less what it costs to get it out and running. This guide explains how make, hours, tooling, demand and removal cost feed a guide price, and why that price is not book value.
- Selling a commercial vehicle fleet
Fleet sales turn on paperwork as much as on price. This guide covers the V5C, MOT and plating documents, clearing finance before listing, keys and livery, recording mileage and tachograph data, and how to defleet in batches while still trading.