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Pre-owned mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs) are increasingly popular in rental fleets. High-quality used equipment help enable you to economically maintain a blended fleet of older and new equipment to meet the changing demands of your customers.

However, many rental businesses struggle with the unpredictable total cost of ownership of used equipment sold outside of the manufacturer’s selling network. If you can relate to this struggle, here’s what to consider when purchasing used MEWPs to help ensure reliability:

1. Determine the right machine for the job: Understand whether the used model you’re purchasing is suitable for the work required. Learn the specifics of the work to be done and the jobsite characteristics or constraints that’ll impact machine performance and reliability. Look for factory supported equipment or factory approved vendors. Application-specific recommendations provide added value that enhances both jobsite productivity and total cost of ownership.
2. Know the service history: Ensure the manufacturer’s maintenance and product bulletin requirements have been performed and documented. Many fleet owners can provide in-house service history for their equipment for reference. This should also confirm if there are outstanding or uncompleted manufacture product bulletins that need to be performed prior to use. Using the serial number, this can be checked out on the genielift.com website for our brand prior to purchase.
3. Assess potential damage: Even a minor impact, shown as paint damage, could be amplified elsewhere on the unit. A minor impact or collision to the structure of the machine could apply significant forces which could impact safe operation. A reputable third-party, like a factory-approved repair company or partner yard, could provide the relevant guidance needed prior to your purchase.
4. Determine its origin: Reach out to the manufacturer to try and confirm the previous owners. Rental machines may still feature company decals and could have many hours of use (on average 3,000 to 4,000), and thus component wear and tear. However, maintenance and product bulletins are more likely to be completed by the rental company’s maintenance department. Unfortunately, equipment owned and operated by end-users often receives less attention, potentially reducing the reliability of the unit.
5. Set up operator training: Operator training will affect future reliability, as an untrained operator is likely to cause unintended damage or worse. Operator training, such as the Genie^®Lift Pro™ training program, can help qualify an operator for the mobile elevating work-platform category. Additional model specific familiarization training is also vital to qualify the operator and required by law.

As a MEWP manufacturer, we want to help take the guesswork out of buying quality used MEWPs. That is why we offer the Genie Certified Pre-Owned program, which can help complete the above steps for you. Taking these steps will help improve your used machine’s reliability, total cost of ownership and return on invested capital.