Lagos road contractor buys four Komatsu PC200-8

This spring, a contractor doing road and drainage works in Lagos, Nigeria left an enquiry on the website, looking for four 20-tonne excavators. The budget was not high, and the machines had to go straight to work on site on arrival.

The customer had used Komatsu before, and local parts and mechanics are easy to find, so we recommended 2012 to 2014 PC200-8. The four machines had between 9000 and 12000 hours, and before shipping we changed the bucket teeth, the hydraulic oil filters and two undercarriage track pads that were badly worn.

The customer did not come to China, and inspection was by video. The salesperson filmed in the yard item by item against the customer's list: cold start, swing, travel, then checked the boom and arm for drift, recording more than twenty minutes per machine. The customer's operator watched and raised two questions, whether the left travel motor was leaking oil and whether the air conditioning cooled. We filmed those two points again, and there were no problems.

The four machines were loaded onto a ro-ro ship at Tianjin port, taking about 40 days to reach Tin Can port in Lagos. The chassis numbers and engine numbers on the bill of lading, invoice and packing list matched the machines, and the customer said customs clearance went more smoothly than expected.

These four machines are now working on a road project around Lekki. For the next batch the customer wants to look at 30-tonne machines.