Machines & Heavy Equipment
Buy and sell machines and heavy equipment in Costa Rica.
In Costa Rica a back hoe earns its keep by the hour: municipalities and contractors hire it with an operator to repair rural roads, open drainage and clear building lots, and the hour meter in the cab ends up as the machine’s working record. The machinery behind that trade, new and pre-owned, is bought and sold here, from excavators, skid steers and dozers to the forklifts and power generators that keep a warehouse or a hotel running. Almost all of it travels on a low boy, so where a machine is parked matters nearly as much as what it is.
Back hoe, excavator or skid steer for moving earth:
each does a different job, and listings mix them up. A back hoe, with a loader bucket at the front and a digging arm at the back on four wheels, drives itself between jobs and digs the trench, backfills it and loads the dump truck in one visit, which is why municipalities hire it more than anything else. Back hoes sit with the excavators, the tracked machines: a mini for a septic trench or a lot on a narrow street, a full-size one for slope cuts and river work. A skid steer, which most people here call a Bobcat whatever the brand, turns on its own footprint and takes a bucket, forks, an auger or a breaker on its quick-attach plate, so the attachments that come with it count as much as the machine. Tractors includes both farm tractors and tracked tractors (bulldozers).
Forklifts and telehandlers for lifting:
a forklift belongs on a hard, level floor. Electric ones are quiet and clean indoors but stand or fall on a battery that is expensive to replace; gas and diesel ones work the yard and the loading bay. Read capacity, mast height and tyre type off the data plate first. A telehandler reaches up and out with a boom, placing block on a second-floor slab from rough ground where a forklift would sink.
Power generators, air compressors and floor scrubbers:
these are sized by what they feed. A generator is selected by its kVA rating and phase: single-phase for a house or a small shop, three-phase for a hotel kitchen, a cold room or a workshop, so match it to your electrical panel before comparing anything else. Air compressors run from workshop piston units to towable diesel screw machines that drive jackhammers on a road job; judge them by the air they deliver at working pressure, not the tank. Floor scrubbers live or die by their batteries, brushes and squeegee rubber. Filters, cylinders and bucket teeth sit under industrial parts, where the part number matters more than the photo.
Hours, hillsides and the undercarriage of a used machine:
the hour meter is where every conversation starts, and the easiest number to doubt. A meter that was swapped or stopped gives itself away elsewhere: pedals and seat worn smooth, paint rubbed off the levers, pins that knock. Many hours with a full service record is a safer buy than few hours nobody can account for. On tracked machines the undercarriage is the big bill: sprocket teeth worn to a point, rollers with flat spots, a sagging track. So much work here happens on slopes, from coffee-farm roads in Tarrazú to the cuts along the mountain road south, that a hillside machine often wears one side harder than the other, so compare left and right. Swing the upper structure and watch the bearing for play, and look for fresh paint over welds on the boom. On a skid steer, a clatter from the chain case means the chains have run loose for a long time; on a forklift, check the mast chains and the heels of the forks.
A back hoe listing with its hours, its attachments and its low boy:
put the hour reading in the title and a photo of the meter in the gallery, then answer what buyers will ring to ask: the last service, which attachments come with it, any leak you know about, and whether it has worked on hire, since a rented machine has had many operators. Photograph the undercarriage from both sides and the data plate. For a generator, say whether it only ran during power cuts or ran a site every day. Above all, say where the machine is parked and whether it can be worked there: a contractor in San Carlos weighing up a mini excavator in Pérez Zeledón is also paying for a low boy across the mountains, and wants to see it dig before booking one.