McLanahan Parts Buyer's Checklist: 8 Steps to Avoid Costly Downtime

I'm the office administrator and buyer for a 40-person sand and gravel operation in central Pennsylvania. I handle every parts order for our wash plant—roughly $400,000 in annual spend across about 30 vendors, from McLanahan down to the local bearing supply house. I report to operations and finance, which means I hear about it when a part is wrong and I hear about it when a budget line is off.

If you're the person in your company who orders replacement parts for aggregate washing equipment, this checklist is for you. It's eight steps, and I use all of them when I buy McLanahan sand screw components, crusher wear parts, or anything else with a McLanahan part number.

This checklist started with a $2,800 mistake

When I took over purchasing in 2020, I assumed a McLanahan parts order worked like this: find the part number in the manual, call for price, send the PO. Simple.

Then we needed a lower bearing assembly for our 44-inch sand screw. I found the part number in our paper manual, cross-referenced it, and ordered it. The box arrived in four days. The maintenance crew opened it and immediately saw the problem: the machine had been rebuilt in 2015, the lower bearing arrangement had been upgraded, and the bearing assembly I ordered was for the original configuration. The bolt pattern didn't line up.

The part cost $2,800. Expedited freight for the correct replacement added another $900. And the sand screw sat idle for nine days while we waited.

The plant superintendent didn't say “I told you so.” He didn't have to.

The 8-point McLanahan parts procurement checklist

That mistake created the process below. I don't have hard data on how many bad orders it has prevented, but anecdotally I can tell you the number of “wrong part” phone calls from maintenance has dropped from roughly one every couple of months to nearly zero.

1. Get the serial number off the machine itself

Don't trust a spreadsheet, a file folder, or someone's memory. Walk to the machine and read the nameplate. I keep photos of the nameplates for all our McLanahan equipment in a folder on my phone, so I can zoom in on the serial number even from my desk.

When you call McLanahan's parts team, that serial number is the key that unlocks your machine's build history. With it, they can usually tell you which version of a component your machine actually uses. Without it, you're guessing.

2. Look up the part number, then confirm it with a human

The manual gets you most of the way there, but McLanahan has been building washing and crushing equipment since 1835, when Alexander McLanahan founded the company in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. That's 190 years of revisions, upgrades, and superseded part numbers. Paper manuals don't always keep up.

So after I find a number in the manual, I call and ask one question: “Can you confirm this part fits the machine with this serial number?” The person on the other end has access to information I don't. It takes two minutes, and it has caught more than one mistake I would have made.

3. Photograph the old part before it leaves the shop floor

Worn parts are evidence. Take photos with a tape measure in the frame so you can see dimensions and bolt spacing. Photograph wear patterns and any orientation marks. Part numbers stamped into metal can be worn smooth, especially in sand applications, so take the photo before the part is cleaned or blasted.

When the stamped number is unreadable, a clear photo and a call to McLanahan with the machine serial number will usually get you a match. It's a five-minute check that can prevent a five-day return.

4. Make an intentional OEM-versus-aftermarket decision

The price difference between genuine McLanahan parts and aftermarket alternatives is real—on some items it's 30 to 50 percent. I get why that's tempting, because budgets are real too.

In 2022, we installed an aftermarket coupling on one of our conveyor drives, thinking it was a low-risk application. It cost about 35 percent less than the OEM part. It failed after 11 months of normal operation. The genuine McLanahan coupling that replaced it has been running for more than two years. The surprise wasn't that the cheaper part failed; it's that the cheaper part ended up costing more once we added double labor and a second, unplanned downtime event.

To be fair, that's one data point, and I don't have industry-wide failure statistics. But the way I see it, some components are worth the premium: drivetrain and structural parts, for example. Wear items might be a different story. The key is to make the call deliberately, not because a price sheet caught your eye.

5. Get lead time in writing, then add a buffer

I've yet to meet a parts supplier who says “it's backordered” before you order. They all say “in stock.” Honestly, I'm not sure why that is. My best guess is that some of them quote inventory they don't actually control until they place their own order.

So I ask for stock status, lead time, and shipping method written directly on the quotation. If the part is made to order, I ask how many weeks. Then I add a few days of cushion when I tell maintenance what to expect. One clear email at the start saves five status-chase emails later.

6. Check the total landed cost, not just the sticker price

Sand screw parts are heavy. Bearings, shafts, gearboxes, and even sets of wear shoes don't arrive by small-parcel courier. They move by LTL freight, and freight can add hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on where the plant is and whether there's a loading dock or forklift access.

Ask for freight quoted separately, including a liftgate if you need one. For international shipments, confirm incoterms and who handles customs clearance before you issue the PO. A purchase order is a commitment, and surprise charges are awkward to explain to finance.

7. Verify the vendor's paperwork before you commit

In 2021, we tested a new supplier because their price was about 15 percent below our regular source. The parts were fine. Their invoicing was not. We got handwritten documents, no tax ID, no PO number, and finance rejected the expenses. What looked like a $600 saving disappeared in administrative hours and an uncomfortable conversation with accounting.

Now I ask one question before ordering from any vendor I haven't used before: “Can you provide a commercial invoice with our PO number, itemized pricing, and your business tax ID?” If they can't answer yes, I don't order.

8. Log the order where maintenance will actually find it

The final step feels optional on a busy day. It isn't.

When a part arrives, I keep the packing slip and the parts tag, photograph them, and file everything under the machine's maintenance history. I update our PM spreadsheet with the part number and the date. It takes about five minutes.

Five minutes of logging beats five hours of digging when something fails mid-season. Over time, those records also tell you which components fail early, which suppliers deliver on their promises, and which parts genuinely earn their OEM premium. That data turns parts buying from a guessing game into a manageable process.

Mistakes I still see other buyers make

• Ordering from memory. “That bearing for the feed end of the sand screw” is not a specification. I made that mistake in my first year, and it cost us an expediting fee I still remember.
• Waiting for the breakdown to order. If a part is a known wear item, the cheapest time to order it is before it fails. Emergency freight is how maintenance budgets die.
• Assuming aftermarket “fits” equals OEM spec. Some aftermarket parts are excellent. Others fit well enough to bolt up but create alignment and wear issues later. Ask your maintenance crew what they actually think before defaulting to the cheapest number.
• Ignoring supersession notes. If a part number has been replaced by a newer revision, write it down. The second time you hit the same obsolete number should be the last.

Five minutes of prevention beats five days of correction

I don't have a precise dollar figure for what this checklist has saved us. What I can say is that we haven't ordered a wrong major component since 2020, and I no longer lie awake wondering if the part on the dock is the part we actually need.

If you're new to buying McLanahan parts—or new to buying parts for aggregate equipment in general—you don't have to learn the expensive way. Read the nameplate. Take the photos. Make the call. The cheap check takes five minutes. The wrong part takes weeks to fix.