Comparing specialized and non-core agricultural auctions — logistician’s experience

When the boom in US cars reached its peak in Ukraine, many logistics companies offered their customers a new service: the purchase and delivery of agricultural machinery from American auctions. This expanded the scope of their business, but at first glance, it was no different from working with passenger cars.

The idea of buying and transporting American machines is really attractive: there is a shortage of high-quality agricultural machinery in Ukraine, and farmers are constantly updating combines, sprayers, reapers, tractors, etc. But is it really as easy to organize the transportation of agricultural machinery from the US as it is to organize the transportation of cars? Let’s find out.

In terms of logistics, these are completely different types of cargo. While cars are brought from America in standard containers, and the main task of the logistician is to offer the most favorable rate for sea freight, in 99% of cases, agricultural machinery cannot be loaded into such containers due to its size. This complicates the task for the logistician and requires the ability to organize the transportation of bulky goods.

First, you need to understand the condition of the equipment. This determines how the transportation will be carried out and what resources will be required for it:

1. Can the equipment board the vessel without additional equipment?
2. If the equipment is on the move, you need to ensure that there are people who know how to operate it and can transport it at the loading and unloading points.
3. If the equipment is not on the move, you need to ensure that professional equipment and specialists are available to perform loading and unloading.
4. The ports of departure and receipt of cargo depend on the state of the art — not all ports send and receive RoRo vessels.

Do you need to understand whether it is possible to optimize the cargo? There are many optimization options to reduce the transportation rate. But to do this, you need to know what to do and how to do it so as not to damage the equipment and save the client’s money.

For road transportation of oversized cargo across America, Europe and Ukraine, separate permits are required. There are also nuances here that are well understood by professionals in the transportation of oversized cargo. This is important because incorrectly issued permits lead to significant fines and delays in delivery times.

Let’s take a look at the main situations a logistician faces if a customer purchases agricultural machinery at a non-core auction:

1. Lack of trained personnel. If the equipment is on the move and you need to start it up to perform logistics work, no one from the auction warehouse team will likely be able to do it. At specialized auctions, of course, all the staff is professional and knows exactly what to do with your agricultural machinery.
2. Almost all the equipment is too dirty and no one prepares it for shipment. It is important to know this because ports may not accept very dirty machinery with, for example, soybean particles on it. Therefore, it must be prepared for transportation.
3. Condition of the equipment. At non-specialized auctions, there are many damaged lots, even if the Run & Drive condition was indicated during the sale. It affects the entire logistics route that was developed before the trawl was delivered to transport the equipment to the American port of departure. Now imagine a situation where the route was planned for Ro-Ro shipping, the trawl arrives at the warehouse to load the equipment, and it does not start, parts of the equipment fall off, and there is no mechanic who can fix it. In such cases, drivers may simply refuse to continue working, and you are left alone with your problem and forced to overpay fabulous amounts of money to get the equipment fixed quickly.

In our experience, many American road carriers of large equipment refuse to order if the place of loading is a non-core auction. They do not want to waste time and deal with non-professionals.

Another thing is specialized auctions of agricultural machinery, where only agricultural machinery is put up for sale. The lots there are of higher quality, and American farmers cooperate with them, not resellers. In addition, all the staff knows how to work with such equipment and has all the necessary resources to troubleshoot.

We don’t sell machinery and don’t cooperate with auctions М this is solely our experience as logisticians whom customers turn to for the transportation of agricultural machinery. Therefore, the choice of where to buy it is entirely up to you.