Manufacturing in Texas
Texas runs several industrial economies at once: Permian Basin oilfield fabrication around Midland and Odessa, petrochemical and energy equipment along the Houston Ship Channel, Lockheed Martin aerospace work in Fort Worth, Toyota truck assembly in San Antonio and semiconductor fabs at Taylor and Sherman.
What we buy and sell in Texas
Texas throws off two classes of machine. From the Permian and Gulf Coast come oil country lathes with large spindle bores, boring mills, plate rolls, press brakes and welding plant. From Dallas Fort Worth and Austin come tight tolerance machining and turning centers. Either can go on a same day cash offer, settled in full once inspected and before anything is removed, or onto a free brokerage listing.
Selling and buying machinery in Texas: common questions
Our Permian Basin shop is slowing down. Is there a market for oilfield machine tools?
There is, though it is cyclical and it does not track the rig count in the way people expect. Oil country tooling has a wide buyer base beyond West Texas, including shops in Oklahoma, Louisiana and overseas, and large bore hollow spindle lathes in particular are hard to replace new. What sells fastest is a machine with its chucks, steady rests, tooling packages and any API threading gauges kept together. Splitting the accessories away from the machine narrows the buyer pool considerably.
What fabrication equipment moves well out of the Houston and Gulf Coast plants?
Heavy plate work is the signature of that corridor, so the steady sellers are press brakes and shears in long bed lengths, plate and angle rolls, hydraulic ironworkers, CNC plasma and high definition cutting tables, waterjets, and column and boom welding manipulators. Pressure vessel shops also release positioners, turning rolls and submerged arc plant. Age matters less on this equipment than condition of the rams, rolls and hydraulics, so pictures of the working surfaces and a note on last service tell a buyer more than the year of build.
The equipment is financed and the lender holds a lien. Can it still be sold?
Yes, this is routine and it is better raised at the start than discovered at removal. A lien has to be released or paid through the transaction before title passes cleanly, so we need the lender name, the account reference and a payoff quote early. On a cash purchase the lender is settled through the same payment that clears the machine, and nothing leaves the floor until that is done. On a brokerage listing the lien is disclosed to the buyer and cleared at closing. Texas filings are searchable, so it will surface either way.
How does a Dallas Fort Worth aerospace supplier document a machine so it sells to another aerospace shop?
Buyers in that supply chain are qualifying a machine against their own approvals, not just buying iron. Give them the control and software version, spindle and cycle hours from the control, the last calibration or ball bar report, whether the machine has been under a service contract and who held it, and a full list of tooling, pallets, probes and fixtures included. If the machine ran to a customer specific process, say so. That history is worth keeping visible, because it shortens the qualification the next shop has to run.
Buying or selling machinery in Texas? Call KD Machinery at 480-922-1674 or tell us what you have.
We also buy and sell machinery in Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee.