Whether your business specializes in medical testing or simply has diagnostic equipment as a part of your overall operation, the value of those assets can make up a large portion of your balance sheet. At the same time, it's not uncommon to quickly depreciate the value of that machinery using tax tables, which reduces the value of that equipment on paper. What is the equipment actually worth? A medical lab diagnostic testing equipment appraisal can give you important insights into the value of your diagnostic equipment.

What's Involved in Valuing Medical Lab Diagnostic Testing Equipment?

But how does the valuation process work when it comes to diagnostic equipment? To start, your equipment appraiser will need to know some basic information. They'll need to know the manufacturer and model number of each piece of equipment you'd like to have appraised. They'll need to know if you've had any options or kits added to it, or other work that would modify the equipment, such as adding a heavier-duty table to your MRI to handle obese patients. They'll want to know how often the machinery has been used and how much wear and tear it's received over the years due to poor usage practices. The appraiser will need to see any maintenance and repair records for the equipment to ensure that it's being cared for properly and that any problems are being addressed quickly, before any other damage can occur.

Once this has been done, they'll take the information that they've collected and compare it against a number of different information sources. They'll take a look at what that specific piece of equipment has been sold for recently on the open market. The appraiser will make adjustments to account for your equipment's condition and the remaining expected useful lifespan. They may even take a look at your industry as a whole and determine whether that specific equipment is still in demand or if it's giving way to better technology.

After this information is gathered, the equipment appraiser will calculate the equipment's value using a number of methodologies that have been tested in a range of professional circles, including insurance, tax, financial and legal circumstances. This value looks at the equipment's original value, any amendments that have been made to it that may increase or decrease value, its expected remaining useful lifespan, demand for that piece of equipment on the open market, any damage or unrepaired issues that are still outstanding that will negatively impact the equipment's value and similar issues. This information, along with the final value calculation, is assembled into a professional report.

By having an appraisal performed on your medical lab diagnostic testing equipment, you can ensure that you're taking full advantage of your business' assets when the opportunity for growth presents itself. But don't take the word of your local equipment sales rep or another party who has a vested interest in that value. Instead, consider having an independent third-party appraiser value your machinery. By working with an accredited equipment valuation specialist, you can ensure that the valuation report you receive will reflect an accurate estimate of the equipment's value, not an over- or under-estimation designed to help the appraiser sell more of their equipment.

When you're in the oil and gas safety business, you know that you need to run a tight ship to keep operating profitably while the market is hot. But have you considered the assets you have and how they can impact your business' ability to compete? One aspect category that is commonly overlooked is safety equipment. Your clients need to make sure that you've got it on-site just in case, but what is it really worth and can you leverage that value to improve your business? Here's a quick look at how a rig site safety asset appraisal can help protect your company's bottom line.

How Rig Site Safety Asset Appraisal Protects Your Business's Bottom Line

To start, you'll want to consider what kind of equipment you should have appraised:

• Cargo vans or trucks: To get your equipment from point A to point B, you need vehicles capable of hauling it, whether it's to get the equipment on-site or to restock medical packs and air bottles that have been used up over time.
• Portable showers: Oil and gas rigs equal dirty work, in terms of dust, grime and sweat as well as chemical treatments that are used on-site during drilling operations. Portable showers are vital to your customers and may take a beating by the roughnecks using them.
• Heating or cooling trailers: It's fairly common for drilling to happen in some of the most extreme environments on the planet. Whether it's burning heat or freezing cold, trailers protect crew members from exposure injuries and are a valuable asset.
• Gas sensors and monitors: If your gas sensors or monitors aren't functioning properly or are getting old, they may not provide the protection they're supposed to for your clients. 
• Fire suppression equipment: A fire on a drilling rig is an oil or gas company's worst nightmare. Your fire suppression equipment is priceless at that point, but what's it worth the rest of the time?

However, there are other types of equipment that you should also have appraised that you may not have considered. This includes: 

• Emergency medical packs: These small but vital packs provide important medical supplies in a timely manner. Because they're required in so many locations, their value builds up.
• Personal protective equipment: Safety harnesses, hearing protection, safety glasses, respirators: all of these items keep workers safe on the job and add up to a large portion of your inventory.
• Oxygen masks and air bottles: These grab-and-go items provide much-needed oxygen during an evacuation, but must be regularly checked, refilled and replaced if malfunctioning.
• Signs: Where's the emergency exit? Can someone grab the defibrillator? What about OSHA regulations? Without signs, the workplace becomes that much harder to navigate.

By taking the time to have a rig site safety asset appraisal performed on your gas and oil safety business' equipment, you can ensure your accounting books are up to date, your equipment is in good condition and you can leverage every possible asset when you need fast growth. However, that appraisal is only as good as the person making the calculations. Make sure that you have your equipment appraisal performed by an accredited equipment appraiser who doesn't have any interest in the final result and can provide you with an independent estimate of your equipment using tested methodologies that will hold up in legal, financial, tax and insurance issues.

Whether you're in logistics, manufacturing, shipping, construction, agriculture or some other industry that requires the movement of large equipment and quantities of material, the assets that you use to move those items are of paramount importance to your business. What would you do if those vital resources weren't available? If you think that your business insurance would cover losses, you're right, but at what cost? By knowing the value of your trailer fleet, you can improve your chances of getting a fast, favorable resolution to a number of potential issues. A commercial trailer fleet appraisal provides you with the information you need to leverage those assets to your company's benefit. Here's more about the different types of commercial trailers available on the market and how they're appraised.

What Type of Commercial Trailer Fleet Appraisal is Available?

Let's start by looking at some of the differences between commonly-available types of commercial trailers:

• Box trailers are one of the most common types of trailers, consisting of a box that is permanently affixed to the base. This type of trailer provides protection to the materials or goods being transported.
• Grain trailers contain special valves underneath the trailer that can be opened to allow grain or other dry food materials such as soybeans, to flow out at the grain mill, allowing for easy unloading.
• Tanker trailers carry a wide range of liquids and gasses, such as diesel fuel, milk, anhydrous ammonia and similar materials. They must maintain a strong, sealed compartment to avoid contamination.
• Livestock trailers allow stock to be moved from the farm to the feedlot to the processing center. They are ventilated to allow for fresh air to be circulated to the livestock and are often sized to specific species of animals.
• Refrigerated trailers are insulated and have separate climate control systems and on-board fuel supplies for those systems. This allows refrigerated or frozen food to be safely transported between locations.
• Flatbed trailers provide easy options for loading and unloading, as forklifts can simply place or remove pallets of material from the trailer. They do not provide a great deal of protection to the materials they are hauling.
• Vehicle trailers are designed to allow a number of vehicles to be hauled by a single semi, with an assortment of hydraulic rams in place to raise and lower different decks during loading and unloading.
• Equipment trailers are specifically created to carry heavy machinery, such as backhoes, bulldozers and other equipment. It's designed both for the heavy weight of the equipment as well as the bulky size of the machinery.
• Cargo trailers are designed to be fitted with cargo containers from shipping, whether by ship or rail. This type of trailer allows goods to be transported without additional handling of the material inside, lowering overall logistics costs.

By having a commercial trailer fleet appraisal performed on your company's assets, you'll have documentation of value for a wide range of purposes. However, to gain the most benefit from your appraisal, you'll want to make sure that the process is carried out by an accredited equipment appraisal specialist. The methodologies used by accredited appraisers have been tested over and over again in legal, financial, insurance and tax circles, providing you with a solid estimate of value that is free from outside influences.

With the changes in today's culture to focus on sustainability, recycling has become a hot business. From LEED construction credits for materials that contain recycled content in them to initiatives to reduce waste in municipalities, recycling businesses are seeing significant growth. But what is the value of that recycling company? A recycling facility asset appraisal can help your business flourish, providing you with information on the value of your equipment. But what equipment is evaluated during the appraisal process and how is it valued? Here's a quick look at the equipment and process involved.

What Equipment is Evaluated in a Recycling Facility Asset Appraisal?

• Conveyance equipment: To move your recyclables from one location to another within your facility and to make it easier to load these items for shipping or processing, the equipment that conveys your items around is of vital importance to your business' success. Conveyor belts, hoppers and similar equipment are appraised based on its condition, demand for that equipment in the market and similar aspects that will impact the equipment's value in the market. 
• Material handling equipment: Beyond simple conveyance, some material must be handled with other equipment. This can include a range of items, such as pallet jacks, forklifts, loaders and similar machinery, which is used to haul and load bales, hoppers, pallets and other types of storage for the material you're recycling. This type of machinery can often be used in other industries, therefore the equipment's value can be influenced by its popularity in those industries, so understanding the factors that can influence that value is of vital importance to the financial health of your business.
• Sorting equipment: To keep your operation running efficiently, you need sorting equipment that will quickly and effectively sort one type of recyclable from another, which can happen based on weight, type of content and similar properties so that you can get those recyclables to market with very little contamination in your batches. The accuracy with which this type of equipment can sort materials, the condition of the equipment and the amount of material it can handle within a set period of time can all impact the overall appraised value of the equipment as demand for that machinery and the recyclables it sorts rises and falls.
• Packaging equipment: The machinery that packages your equipment into larger quantities and makes it easier to handle, load and transport helps keep recyclables moving throughout your facility. Balers, compactors and related machinery are a vital part of your business, the loss of which can create serious problems for your company. Though these pieces of equipment can be used in other industries, some are too specialized for use outside the recycling industry, so understanding which types of equipment can be used in which situations is important to determining the value of the machinery.

By having a recycling facility asset appraisal performed, it provides you with solid information about the value of your business' equipment assets. However, it's of vital importance that the valuation is performed by an accredited equipment appraiser, because doing so ensures that the valuation that is calculated is free of other influences. An accredited equipment appraiser is able to provide you with an independent third-party opinion on the value of your equipment, without being interested in the outcome of that valuation.

When you're having a mining equipment appraisal performed for the first time, it's not unusual to wonder what kind of equipment will be covered during the process. The short answer is: all of it. There are certain high-level pieces of equipment that should always be covered when you're having your mining company's equipment valued, to ensure that you have proper documentation of that value in case of a cave-in, mudslide or similar event that causes that equipment to be lost. Here's a quick look at major categories of equipment.

What Kind of Equipment is Checked Out in a Mining Equipment Appraisal?

• Excavators: In the old days, mining was accomplished by pick and shovel, but the advent of machine power has made excavators the equipment of choice to get the job done quickly and efficiently.
• Draglines: Used by miners to drag dirt away from the surface to reveal minerals beneath the surface, draglines do an exceptional job of quickly removing tons of dirt in a single pass, presenting a mineable surface for excavation.
• Roof Bolters: To improve safety and reduce the risk of cave-ins during mining operations, roof bolters are used to force bolts into a rock face using hydraulic power. 
• Longwall Miners: With hydraulic systems that support the mine ceiling during operations, longwall miners remove rectangular sections of minerals, allowing pockets of a mineral to be removed without disturbing as much of the surrounding rock.
• Continuous Miners: To remove mineral deposits a bit at a time from a large deposit, continuous miners feature large, rotating teeth to get the job done.
• Rock Dusters: Used to prevent fires, rock dusters spray nonflammable rock dust onto mining faces in coal mining, to prevent the coal from catching fire during mining operations.
• Shuttle Cars and Scoops: To transport minerals from the mining location to collection points within the mine, shuttle cars provide essential transportation to scoops, which finish removing the minerals from the mine entirely.
• Haul Trucks: Capable of hauling hundreds of tons of dirt, rock, minerals or other material in a single payload, haul trucks are huge dump trucks, specially designed to carry extreme loads.
• Highwall Miners: When exposed surfaces from open-pit mining reveal horizontal seams of minerals, highwall miners are used to extract this material to optimize mining efficiency.
• Bulldozers: Used to push large amounts of material around, bulldozers can be part of loading, clearing and scraping operations to help reveal mineral seams to mining operations.
• Graders: In open-pit mining, graders help keep the roads into and out of the pit operational to allow heavy equipment to pass and continue operating.
• Conveyors: When rock is crushed or mineral material needs to be moved around the mining site, conveyors help get the job done quickly and efficiently.

Though this should give you a solid idea of what type of machinery is evaluated during a mining equipment appraisal, it is by no means an exhaustive list. Other items that can be evaluated include transporting vehicles, rock crushers, ventilation systems, laboratory testing machinery and other assets that help keep your mining company operating in the black on a daily basis. However, it's important that you have the appraisal performed by an accredited equipment appraiser, so you can ensure that you're getting unbiased calculations from an independent third party who has no personal stake in the outcome of the appraisal.