We went through the same thing when we purchased our 312. We looked at used prices (for Cat, anyway) and decided that new was a better purchase for us. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with used equipment. I wouldn't say it's a gamble buying used, but you definately could be buying a machine that has had problems in the past or was neglected as far as maintenance goes, there's really no way to tell. The only neglect you could notice is how beat up the machine is, doing a fluid analysis, finding a maintenance log for the machine. There's really no way to know how often the air filters were changed, how often the fluids were changed, how often the machine was greased. It really is a guessing game at some point. In the 3-5,000 hour range, if maintained very well, you shouldn't have any problems. The key is maintenance. These machines will easily run to 8-10,000 hours without a huge problem. However, when you get to that point, they do need overhauls that are spendy, but not nearly as costly as replacing a new engine or something along those lines. But, if you can afford to buy new, there really isn't anything wrong with that either as long as you have enough business to support a new equipment payment. There's days I wonder why we bought new, we could have settled for something with a couple thousand hours, but when you buy Cat a 312 with 2,000 hours it's about $90-100K and we bought a brand new 312CL the way we wanted for $135K before tax.
