McLanahan Equipment Buying Checklist: 6 Cost-Control Checks Before You Commit

If you are evaluating a McLanahan sand screw, feeder breaker, or filter press—new, used, or as a serious replacement—this checklist is meant for you. I manage equipment budgets for a mineral processing operation, not a manufacturer’s sales department. Over the last six years, I have reviewed a lot of capital proposals and I have learned that the price on the quote is the least trustworthy number in the file.

Before the checklist: if you searched for Shane McLanahan age or Dixie McLanahan, you probably meant the baseball player. That name is usually spelled McClanahan with two c’s. This article is about McLanahan Corporation, the equipment company. Buyers of process equipment should keep reading.

This is a six-step checklist. It does not tell you a particular model to buy. It tells you where the risk hides before money changes hands.

1. Start with the feed, not the sticker price

Almost every request I review begins with a capacity target. “We need a 200 tph washer.” “We need to feed 500 tph through a breaker.” The problem is that a capacity target without a defined feed is a guess.

For a sand screw, write down feed rate, percent solids, maximum particle size, fines content, and how much the feed varies by season. For a feeder breaker, record lump size, material hardness, moisture, and expected tramp material. For a filter press, you need slurry chemistry, feed solids, flocculant compatibility, and cycle time. If the feed details don’t exist, the purchase order already has risk built into it.

A week spent collecting samples and data is cheaper than fifteen years of an ill-fitting machine. In my experience, the sales conversation changes once a buyer gives the vendor a real feed profile. The proposal starts to include optional equipment that was missing before—because it was missing from the original assumption.

2. Treat nominal capacity as a starting point, not a promise

The brochure says 200 tph. What feed condition was that based on? If your feed has more clay, more moisture, or more variability than the reference case, 200 tph is fiction.

Ask the vendor for written operating ranges: minimum and maximum values for each variable that affects the machine. If the reply is “no problem,” ask what the performance basis is. If the reply is backed by a test report or an installed reference, you have something useful. If it is based on goodwill, adjust your contingency.

In 2024, I compared two quotes for a fine material washer. The cheaper unit had the same nominal capacity as the higher-priced unit, but it required additional water and a change to our settling pond. Once I added that cost, the cheaper unit was not cheaper. The surprise wasn’t the purchase price. It was the system around the machine.

3. Build a 10-year cost model, not a purchase-order comparison

I keep coming back to total cost of ownership because that is where the money disappears. The machine price is only the first line. If you are missing any of the following lines, you are comparing quotes incorrectly:

Machine price, tax and freight, rigging and site delivery, foundation and structural steel, electrical and controls integration, piping and water supply, start-up consumables, first spare parts package, training, and projected annual maintenance. Put those lines into a 10-year model. Add an annual number for unplanned downtime.

I don’t have a universal percentage for how much site-fit work adds to plant equipment. I can tell you this: one of the projects I approved did not include the cost to relocate an existing conveyor that blocked the planned installation. The relocation came to about 18% of the machine price. The vendor did not hide that cost. I just compared quotes instead of walking the site before finalizing the budget. A lesson learned the hard way.

4. Check spare parts and service response before the PO

Nobody plans for the first breakdown. The first breakdown will happen. The real question is how fast you can get back online.

Call the aftermarket group and ask for current lead times on the components that are most likely to wear. For a sand screw, those are often wear shoes, shafts, and lower bearings. For a feeder breaker, picks, gearboxes, and hydraulic components. For a filter press, filter cloths and seals.

Ask what they recommend keeping in stock for the first year of operation. Then ask which parts warehouse serves your region. A spare part that takes six weeks to arrive is not a spare part; it is a maintenance risk. If the price difference between two options is five percent but parts availability is ten days faster, take the longer view.

5. Call references that run like your plant, not just references that own the machine

Customer references are usually selected to say positive things. Ask better questions.

When you talk to another producer, ask things like:

• How many hours per week did the McLanahan equipment actually operate?
• What did the first year of maintenance cost, and which components failed?
• What was the most common unplanned downtime reason?
• How long did McLanahan take to respond to a technical or warranty question?
• Was a service engineer present at startup, and did the startup run as planned?

Don’t ask “are you happy?” A happy reference can still hide a machine that is not suited for your feed. Focus on downtime and repair history. Those answers are harder to fake.

6. Include maintenance access in the capital request

This is the step that I see forgotten most often. A sand screw may be long and heavy. To maintain it, you need space to pull the screw or reach the lower bearing. A feeder breaker needs room around the picks, the crushing mechanism, and the drives. A filter press needs overhead access for plate movement and enough floor space to remove cakes.

People think a maintenance access problem is a contractor issue. Actually, it is a cost. If the building column is in the wrong place, moving the machine after delivery is not change-order money; it is mistake money.

Before you approve the purchase, take the quote and walk the physical location. Mark clearance areas on the plant layout. If you are installing outdoors, check crane access and elevation. In my opinion, this is the most ignored part of capital planning for McLanahan equipment; it is also the easiest to catch early.

Where this checklist won’t help

This checklist assumes the application fits what McLanahan equipment is designed to do. Start with the actual bottleneck. No sand screw will fix an upstream classification problem. A feeder breaker is not a primary crusher for competent rock. A filter press will not solve poor flocculation upstream.

I don’t have hard data on how every McLanahan model performs in every material, and I don’t believe anyone has that data without testing. Ask for samples to be tested. If the vendor says “it can process anything without limitation,” treat that as a red flag. An honest vendor should be able to tell you when their equipment is not the right choice.

Real talk: if your upstream process is inconsistent, no equipment purchase will save the budget. Buy the machine that fits your defined feed, support it with real spare parts, and leave room in the cost model for the site work around it. That might sound like basic procurement. It is. But I have seen too many approvals skip the boring checks and pay for it later.

If you arrived from a search about Shane McLanahan’s age, Dixie McLanahan, or how much Henry weighs, this was not the page you intended. That name usually gets spelled McClanahan with two c’s and belongs to a baseball player. The McLanahan on this page builds sand screws, feeder breakers, and filter presses.