Heavy machinery & equipment

Soil is the most common hold

Used construction and agricultural machinery that arrives carrying soil, plant material or seed is an APHIS problem before it is ever a customs problem. Inspectors look at tracks, undercarriages, buckets, blades and radiator packs, and they are good at it. The remedy at the port is supervised cleaning or re-export, both of which cost considerably more than a pressure wash at origin, and both of which run on the terminal clock while demurrage accrues.

Clean the machine before it loads. Photograph it clean, with the serial plate legible in the same frame, and keep the photographs. This is the first thing we tell every equipment importer and the thing most often ignored, usually once.

Engines

Non-road diesel and spark-ignition engines have to meet EPA emissions standards, and the declaration is EPA form 3520-21. What EPA actually wants is the engine emissions label and, behind it, a certificate of conformity covering that engine family and model year. The recurring failure is grey market equipment built for a market with different standards: the machine is sound, the engine is not certified for the United States, and there is no code you can tick after arrival that fixes it.

Genuinely old equipment, engines below the applicable thresholds, and machines imported for parts or scrap are each handled differently, and every one of those positions has to be declared and supported rather than assumed. If the equipment will work in California, add CARB to the list before you buy: the state rules sit on top of the federal ones and are stricter.

Which heading, and why it is no longer a small question

Chapter 84 classification is decided by what a machine does, not by what it looks like. The legal notes to Section XVI do most of the work: a composite machine takes the classification of the component performing the principal function, a functional unit assembled from several machines is classified as the unit, and parts suitable for use solely or principally with a particular machine follow that machine unless they are named somewhere more specific.

Ordinary rates in Chapter 84 run from free to a few per cent, so the classification argument is usually not about the ordinary rate at all. It is about whether the machine, or more often the parts shipped with it, fall inside a Section 232 derivative annex or an AD/CVD scope. Buckets, attachments, fabricated frames and structural components are exactly the sort of downstream steel article the inclusions process has been adding. A machine can sit outside the annex while three line items on its packing list sit inside it. The content mechanics are on the Section 232 page.

Value

Used equipment values get looked at, and two things trip importers up. An auction purchase is dutiable on the price actually paid, which includes the buyer premium and not merely the hammer price. And equipment moved between related companies, typically a parent selling a used machine to its US subsidiary, needs a value CBP will accept, which is rarely the number sitting in the internal ledger. We would rather have that conversation before the entry than in a written response to a CBP Form 28 eighteen months later.

Getting it inland, and getting it out again

• Immediate Transportation. Machinery often lands at the nearest port and is wanted somewhere else. An IT entry moves it in bond to the port nearest the jobsite and clears it there. See in-bond and bonded warehouse.
• Transportation and Exportation, where the equipment is crossing the United States rather than entering it. See in-transit filings.
• Temporary import bonds for demonstration units, trade show plant and test rigs, exported before the clock runs out. See temporary import bonds.
• Breakbulk, flat rack and out-of-gauge handling, where the entry has to describe a stow that was never going to fit a box. See project cargo.

What we need from you

• Invoice or auction settlement showing the price actually paid, with the buyer premium itemised separately.
• Make, model, serial number and year, plus engine make, model and family.
• Photographs of the engine emissions label and of the machine after cleaning.
• Whether the machine is self-propelled and whether it will ever be operated on a public road, which changes who regulates it.
• Country of origin, and steel content value on any component falling inside a 232 derivative annex.
• Dimensions and weight, because the entry and the inland move have to describe the same object.