Manufacturing in Virginia
Virginia builds ships. Newport News Shipbuilding runs carriers and Virginia class submarines with more than 26,000 shipbuilders, the Norfolk yards repair everything else, BWXT makes naval reactor components around Lynchburg, Volvo assembles every North American truck at Dublin, and Micron runs a memory fab at Manassas.
What we buy and sell in Virginia
Shipyard and reactor work leaves big machines behind. We move large capacity horizontal boring mills, long bed engine lathes, plate rolls, radial arm drills and heavy press brakes out of Virginia shops, along with the machining centers that feed the truck and defense supply base. Sell outright for a cash offer the same day, paid in full before removal once we have inspected, or list on brokerage at no cost and we earn only if we perform.
Selling and buying machinery in Virginia: common questions
We run a ship repair machine shop on the Elizabeth River and we are downsizing. Who buys shafting lathes and machines that size?
Buyers for that equipment are national rather than local, which works in your favor. A long bed engine lathe set up for propeller shafting, a horizontal boring mill or a big radial arm drill has very few sellers at any one time, so the shops that need one are watching the whole country. What sets the number is between centers and swing, spindle and way condition, the control generation if it has one, and whether the steady rests, chucks, faceplates and manuals are still with the machine. We inspect on site, then give you a same day cash figure, or list it and let the market answer.
What does it actually take to get an oversize machine out of Hampton Roads?
The tunnels decide the route before anything else does, and this catches sellers out more than the rigging does. Anything wider than ten feet six inches has to cross on the Monitor-Merrimac on I-664 rather than the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, and oversize loads only move through it in the window between 9:30 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. Heading west on I-64 the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel turns back anything over thirteen feet six. So a crate that would leave Richmond the next day can take a week to schedule out of Norfolk. Worth knowing before you commit to a floor clearance date.
Our shop is in Northern Virginia and the land is now worth more than the business. Does that change how we should sell the machines?
It changes the clock, not the value. Industrial parcels in Loudoun and Prince William have been bid up hard by data center demand, and the shops selling into that are usually working to a settlement date rather than a business decision about equipment. That means the machines get treated as the last item on a list when they should be the first, because they are the part with a lead time. Start while you are still running. A machine sold from a working floor, under power and with the operator there to demonstrate it, is worth more than the same machine photographed in a swept building three weeks after the last shift.
Our machines were run to naval nuclear and code standards. Is that pedigree worth anything on resale?
The paperwork is worth more than most sellers think, though not in the way they expect. No buyer pays a premium for the program the machine worked on. What they pay for is the maintenance and calibration record that program forced you to keep, because it turns an unknown machine into a documented one. Geometry checks, ballbar results, way and spindle service history, a machine that has been kept to size for twenty years because it had to be. Bring that file to the sale. And clear the control before it goes, since customer programs, fixture offsets and drawings are yours to remove, not ours to inherit.
Buying or selling machinery in Virginia? Call KD Machinery at 480-922-1674 or tell us what you have.
We also buy and sell machinery in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania.