Britannia AuctionsPlant and construction equipment auctions in Nottingham
Plant in Nottingham is rarely all in one place. A contractor may keep the excavators at a yard on Lenton Lane, the dumpers at Colwick, a telehandler on a site at Clifton and the site cabins at Bulwell, and when the business closes or the fleet is cut, all of it has to be sold. The ring road is what makes that workable, for our cataloguing and for buyers viewing.
We sell plant and construction equipment by online timed auction. Each machine is a lot with photographs, the hour reading, the year and the serial number, and buyers bid over a week or two before collecting in a fixed window. The catalogue can run from your yard or from the site where the plant stands. If the yard has to go back to the landlord first, we can collect and sell from our own premises.
Send us a note through the contact form and we will come and look.
One catalogue across several yards
A sale with plant on more than one site runs as one catalogue. Each lot carries the location, so a buyer knows before bidding whether the machine is at Blenheim Industrial Estate near junction 26 or at Colwick by the Trent. Viewing day is arranged as a route, with a time at each yard, and collection slots after the sale are set per site.
Access is checked yard by yard. The estates on the ring road are laid out for articulated lorries and the A52 moves a low loader between them without going through the centre, with the M1 junctions from 24 to 27 close by, so a buyer from Derby, Mansfield, Loughborough or Newark is on the motorway soon after loading.
Where it gets tighter is a small builder's yard in an older part of the city, or a site compound with a temporary gate. We look at both before the catalogue opens and agree what moves and what does not.
Housing and warehouse jobs feed the catalogue
Construction around Nottingham is split between housing and the big sheds. Warehouse and manufacturing units at Fairham Business Park and along the A453 towards junction 24 need groundworks and compaction plant. Housing sites need mini diggers, dumpers, rollers and breakers, and the smaller contractors who run them keep tight fleets that come to market when the work dries up. Both kinds of plant turn up in our sales, and each is catalogued for the work it does.
Derby and Long Eaton are on one side, Newark and Grantham on the other, with Beeston and Ilkeston in between, all well placed to come and look before bidding closes. Bidding is online and open nationally. What a machine makes depends on its condition, its hours, its specification and how it is lotted, and a mini digger listed with its hitch and buckets is a different lot from the same machine listed bare.
Reserves are agreed with you on the main machines before the sale opens.
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 Nottingham
- We have plant on hire to a customer that has not paid. Can it go in the sale once it is back?
Yes, once it is back in your yard and the hire agreement is closed. We cannot sell a machine that is still on someone else's site under a live hire contract, so recover it first. When it is back we check ownership and any finance on it, catalogue it with the hour reading, and it sells with the rest. If the machine has been damaged, we describe the damage plainly and let buyers price it.
- Our yard lease at Lenton Lane ends at the quarter day. Can a sale fit before that?
Usually, if we hear from you early enough. A sale needs a week or two to catalogue, one to two weeks of bidding and a few days for collection, so around five weeks from first visit to an empty yard is a reasonable plan, depending on the size of the catalogue and the access. If the date is closer, we can collect the plant and sell it from our own premises, so the keys go back on time.
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.