When you sell used equipment do the buyer a favour and include the owner’s manual

Just about everything you buy, from a Dollar Store pencil sharpener or stapler to new machinery worth into the millions, comes with an operator’s manual or instructions….and has for years.

New farm machinery comes with an operator’s manual. A shop or repair manual is less likely these days as machinery becomes high tech and farmers become less inclined to fix their machinery themselves, relying instead on a shop mechanic. When the machine is replaced, either sold or traded in, whatever becomes of the manuals the original owner once had? They are rarely, if ever, go with the machine or offered to the next owner, so where are they now the machine has left the farm?

I have visions of piles of damp, wrinkled, discoloured manuals thrown in a corner. Or were they used to start the wood burning heater or just thrown out? I have no idea but I do know we have never bought a used machine that came with an owner’s manual.

Both husband and son are super handy at fixing machinery so manuals are a necessity and, as we seldom buy a brand new item, we, or rather I, have to find them online.

So on top of being chief cook and bottle washer, cleaner, gardener, food processor, accountant and keeper of the paperwork, shopper and go’fer, mother and freelancer, you can add in ‘locator of printed copies of shop manuals and occasionally operator’s manuals’, a tiresome, long task at the best of times.

To complicate things, often the same model tractors are not at all the same. Parts from one don’t fit the other. Add in a third same model tractor and many of its parts don’t match the other two, so manuals are issued by serial numbers. Is this how tractor manufacturers decide to change a model number? When 80 % of the parts no longer are consistent with prior tractors bearing the same model number? To order the right manuals you need the serial numbers. Annoying for sure.

We have three 4 ft. shelves in our bookcase full of manuals. I tracked them down and bought them as soon as a ‘new-to-us’ machine enters the yard. No point waiting until something breaks and then waiting weeks for delivery! While most are $100 and under, in recent years several manuals have been in the $500 range.

Not once has a used piece arrived with its manual. Why not? They are of no use when you no longer have the machine. We have passed many manuals to new owners when we sell something and they have always been surprised to see it. We also have about 2 feet of that shelf space dedicated to machines that we no longer have and which were either scrapped or made into something else. Memories of what once was.

Yes, most manuals are available free of charge online and I have at times taken advantage of this and copied anywhere from 50 to 100 pages for a machine I couldn’t locate elsewhere. Not much fun doing it, then punching holes, and setting them in binders. We don’t have a heated, dust free shop to have a computer in and taking a tablet out there runs the risk of the screen getting broken. Besides the screen is so much smaller than an actual page plus in the sun, everything disappears, so paper copies are preferred.

Please, the next time you sell or trade in a machine, include any manuals you have. Someone will be happy!

Angela Dorie is an agricultural writer and a Jersey farmer near Cornwall.