European made have serial numbers - example.5811733. Serial Number Location.

Validate the year of manufacture to ensure a reliable value. Avoid paying too much for used construction equipment or not asking enough when selling your current equipment. An error of just one model year (2005 vs.

2006, for example) can change the price by thousands of dollars. The Serial Number Guide is the leading source for year-of-manufacture data on all major and hard-to-find construction equipment. This means you get over 50 years of serial number information from more than representing over 100 equipment types in construction, forestry, paving, material handling and aggregate industries – FAST! The guide also includes over 15,000 models with shipping dimensions. The Serial Number Guide is available in three formats. Also, an extraordinary effort has been made to verify, categorize and interpret serial number data from several million records of UCC filings.

The use of this exclusive source of information makes this Serial Number Guide the most comprehensive resource available. The format of the Serial Number Guide follows the standard practice of listing serial numbers either by a machine’s make and model (and in some cases, Caterpillar being one, by serial number prefix) or by its manufacturer only when one set of numbers covers all categories and all models in a product line.

Numbers are listed lowest to highest for known numbers assigned to machines in each given year. In some cases, because of the system a manufacturer may use to assign numbers, it is necessary to assign an arbitrary cutoff to the range of numbers for a given year. In these cases our team of analysts uses UCC filings to determine the most accurate cutoff points possible. There are many manufacturers of equipment, past and present, that embed codes or use unique combinations of numbers in particular places in the serial number string to designate the year of manufacture. Examples of these may be the use of a letter to indicate a year (e.g.

A = 1987, B = 1988, etc.) or several digits to note a month and year (e.g. 1092 = October 1992). Top Bid’s staff has gone to great lengths to contact manufacturers and verify their codes and formats. The notes shown for these manufacturers will clearly explain how to interpret serial numbers. Many manufacturers in this Serial Number Guide are no longer in business and therefore cannot be contacted.

Top Bid relies on the experience and judgment of its analysts and other professionals in the business to verify information long in the public domain.

Hyundai Construction Equipment U.S.A. Has successfully sued a gray market importer for illegally bringing in equipment that didn’t meet Hyundai’s specifications. The equipment in question had altered serial numbers and some failed to meet EPA standards.

The defendants were ordered to pay Hyundai $1 million for lost sales and court costs. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled that Christ Johnson Equipment of Macomb Michigan illegally imported 29 Hyundai branded wheel loaders and excavators and sold them primarily to U.S.

The case was the first published decision to deem such sales a violation of the Lantham Act. In the wake of the ruling Hyundai has published a Q&A on the case and the issues surrounding gray market equipment. To read the text click on the more tab. Hyundai Construction Equipment USA and Gray Market Imports FAQ More than four years ago, equipment dealers in Hyundai’s U.S.

Network alerted the company to an independent dealer in Michigan that was selling illegal gray market wheel loaders and excavators made for non-U.S. Hyundai investigated and sued Chris Johnson Equipment, Inc. In July 2005 in federal court, seeking to permanently stop Johnson from importing and/or selling non-authorized Hyundai equipment and surrender all of the profits generated from those sales. The federal judge approved the permanent injunction in late 2008 and ordered Johnson to pay Hyundai about $1 million in profits from the equipment sales in addition to court costs. What is a “gray market” import?

A gray market item is one that has been imported directly from another country, by-passing the manufacturer’s authorized distributors in that country. In this case, it pertains to Hyundai construction equipment that was made for use in non-U.S.