Heavy Equipment Depreciation Calculator

Because it matches reality: heavy machinery loses value fastest in its first few years, just as declining balance front-loads depreciation. A straight-line schedule would overstate a young machine's book value and understate the early loss. For resale, fleet-replacement and total-cost-of-ownership planning, the declining-balance curve tracks actual market depreciation far better.

Realistically high — well-maintained heavy equipment retains substantial resale value, often 15–30% of original cost even after several years, depending on brand, hours and condition. Check auction results and dealer trade-in values for comparable machines and hours. Setting salvage too low overstates depreciation and understates the machine's worth when you plan to sell.

The book/market value curve tells you what the machine is worth now; combine it with rising maintenance costs and downtime to find the economic replacement point — typically where the declining resale value plus climbing repair costs make keeping the machine more expensive than replacing it. The depreciation schedule here gives you the value side; pair it with a maintenance-cost trend for the full picture.

Yes, and it's often more accurate for usage that varies a lot — depreciate by machine hours against the equipment's rated lifetime hours. A machine that works 2,500 hours one year and 500 the next will show depreciation that tracks that activity. Use our units-of-production calculator for that approach; use this declining-balance one when you want a time-based curve that mirrors market value decline.