Before You Order McLanahan Equipment: A 6-Point Procurement Checklist

If you searched "McLanahan" and landed here, let me make sure you're in the right place. There's McLanahan the mining equipment manufacturer—and then there's Amy McLanahan, Michelle McLanahan (an OBGYN, from what I can tell), and a handful of other people who share the name. If you're looking for one of them, this isn't your page.

This is about the McLanahan that builds sand screws, feeder breakers, filter presses, and mineral processing systems. I've spent about five years coordinating equipment purchases for a mid-sized aggregate producer. I'm not an applications engineer. I'm the office administrator who manages the vendor side of things—I collect quotes, chase down references, and handle the paperwork. I report to both operations and finance, which means I see both the technical and the financial sides of these decisions. And I'm the one who pays the price when a vendor's invoice gets rejected by finance. If that sounds like your world, this checklist is for you.

Here are six things I verify before I'm willing to sign off on any major equipment order. It's kept me out of trouble more than once.

1. Confirm the equipment is engineered for your specific feed

"McLanahan makes sand screws" is a starting point, not a conclusion. Does their sand screw match your feed material, particle size distribution, and desired throughput? When I compared two competing proposals side by side back in 2020, the recommended motor sizes varied by nearly 30%—same nominal capacity, different assumptions about the material.

Get an applications engineer on the phone, not just a sales rep. Describe your material in detail. Ask about wear life, throughput, and what happens when feed composition changes unexpectedly. To be fair, McLanahan's applications team is solid about this. But I'd ask the same of any manufacturer. Per FTC guidelines (ftc.gov), performance claims need to be substantiated—if a vendor says their equipment handles X tons per hour of your material, ask for the engineering data behind it.

2. Ask for references from operations like yours

"We have thousands of happy customers" doesn't help you. Ask for three installations processing material similar to yours, at similar tonnage. In our 2024 vendor consolidation project, one well-known manufacturer took three days to provide references—and they were all from a different industry segment. Another responded with relevant references the same afternoon.

I get why people skip this step. It feels pushy to demand references from a sales rep. But it's standard due diligence, and most operations will talk honestly about their experience once you're connected.

3. Get the total cost of ownership in writing

The purchase price is what gets approved. The total cost of ownership is what you'll be living with for years. If a vendor is vague on numbers, that's useful information in itself.

Ask them to itemize:

• Shipping, rigging, and site prep
• Installation and commissioning time
• Power draw at full load
• Wear parts: cost and replacement interval
• Planned maintenance hours per month

Why does this matter? Because a $50,000 price gap on the initial quote can disappear or reverse in the first couple years when you factor in power consumption and wear rates. What I mean is: a lower price from a vendor with thinner support can end up costing more in year one alone.

4. Check the service network before you need it

A downed feeder breaker isn't a maintenance ticket—it's a production crisis. The question isn't "do they have service engineers?" It's "how fast can they get a part to my specific site?"

If I remember correctly, McLanahan has service coverage in the US and offices in the UK, India, and Australia. The exact locations may have changed, so don't quote me on that. The point is to verify what's relevant to your region. If you're in a logistics-friendly spot like Lincoln, Nebraska, you have more options. If your site is remote, parts lead time might be the single most important factor in your decision.

5. Confirm lead times and site prep requirements

This one seems obvious, but I've watched colleagues scramble because the equipment arrived before the site was ready. Electrical work, foundation pouring, access roads—all of that has to be scheduled. Get the manufacturer's lead time in writing, and ask what conditions in their production schedule could delay your order.

A piece of mineral processing equipment isn't something you can expedite from a warehouse. Understanding where your order sits in their production queue is critical. I want to say the typical lead time for a McLanahan sand screw runs a few months, but that depends on demand, configuration, and how many orders are ahead of yours.

6. Nail down invoicing and contract terms

This is the step almost everyone skips, and the one that bit me hardest. I found a great price from a new vendor a few years back—around 15% cheaper than our regular supplier. The equipment was fine. But they couldn't produce a proper invoice. Handwritten receipt only. Finance rejected the expense, and I had to absorb the cost. It was roughly $2,400, give or take. Now I verify invoicing capability before I order anything.

Before you sign, confirm:

• They can invoice against your PO number
• Their billing entity matches your approved vendor list exactly
• If it's a large order, what the progress payment schedule looks like
• Who handles billing discrepancies when they come up

Skipping the final review because we were rushing and "it's basically the same as our other vendors" was my exact mistake. Well, a $2,400 one. It's the one time it mattered.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Two patterns stand out from the years I've spent coordinating these purchases.

Assuming brand familiarity means the equipment is right for you. McLanahan has been around for a long time—1835, if I remember right—and they have a strong reputation in aggregate and mining. That reputation is earned. But it doesn't override engineering fundamentals. A sand screw designed for silica sand isn't automatically right for a crushed stone producer. There's no single "best" equipment manufacturer, in my opinion. Just the one that fits your application.

Hunting for one universal option—"the peanut butter" of processing equipment. If you're searching "McLanahan vs Hawk" or any other head-to-head comparison, you're probably hoping one company comes out on top. From my perspective, that's not how it works. There's only the option that matches your material, your site, and your maintenance capacity.

The good news is that this all comes down to a consistent process. Use the same checklist for McLanahan, Hawk, or any other vendor, and the right choice becomes clearer. When I look back at what made our recent vendor decisions work well, it wasn't the familiar name or the loudest claim. It was the vendor who answered the boring questions thoroughly. That's the one we signed with.