4 Hidden Reasons to Upgrade Old Equipment
There are plenty of positive reasons to update or upgrade your equipment. From increased capacity and capabilities to better performance, we take advantage of new features and technology to stay current with competitors.
This is enough of a reason to keep your equipment updated, but what about the hidden negative costs of worn out or expired equipment. By evaluating the impact on your bottom line, we can discover several warning signs that your older equipment may be a bad investment.
Your Old Equipment Can Cause Downtime
It is a fact of life (and physical law of the universe) that all things break down. Time is one of the greatest enemies to the health and wellbeing of your equipment. From both age and wear and tear, your machinery can and will break. This can interrupt business and even lose jobs if the timing is bad enough. Plus, as equipment ages, the support for these machines dwindles as well. It can actually be more expensive to fix old equipment than newer ones.
By keeping your equipment in good review and tracking the bottom line drain of operating costs, you can avoid losing valuable revenue to old equipment.
Your Clients like seeing new equipment
As silly as it may sound, clients observe the apparent quality of your equipment. From your foreman’s pickup truck to your driver’s caddy or your backhoe, the customer is making assumptions on the quality of your work.
Keeping your old equipment in top operating shape is crucial and we are not saying to throw out perfectly fine machinery. But does your truck look like it just rolled off the lot with a fresh wash or has it survived a few accidents with blatant battle wounds?
Go back and evaluate your most recent client interactions and review the equipment they saw, especially the equipment during the sales process. If you lost an opportunity because they saw old or battered equipment, that may be lost revenue to your old equipment.
Employees Don’t Enjoy Working with Old Equipment
One of the most important tasks of a business owner is keeping the employee’s morale high. This always results in better work and long-lasting employees. One thing that can impact a positive work environment is old equipment. Employees like having access to new and pleasing equipment. By providing your employees with new equipment, you imply that their work environment is important to you and you value their working experience.
One difficult part of this exchange is that employees will rarely speak up about anything to management. They will joke in the quiet places about that old junker, but if their complaints are not resolved they may decide to seek employment elsewhere. Perhaps someplace with newer equipment.
Old Equipment can be unsafe or Dangerous
This goes without saying. As equipment wears, it can create unknown dangers for anyone in their vicinity. There are brakes, belts, tubing, and a whole host of other items that suffer regular wear. In addition, there can be unknown issues from manufacturing defects to simple stress breakages based on unique uses. By hurting employees or even clients, you can lose major revenue and even opportunities due to both equipment and worker downtime.
In conclusion, we strongly recommend creating regular reviews of the older equipment to ensure it is in safe working order and that it isn’t impacting the worker’s experience or the client’s perception. By doing so, you secure your bottom line and create a healthier working environment. And when your equipment does breach any of these needs, Transcapital Funding can help you recover some of the value of the equipment and explore financing and partners to acquire new equipment.
