Last updated: October 31, 2026

Heavy Equipment Prices, Rental Rates, and Auction Results

Nobody publishes the price of a new excavator. Everybody publishes the price of renting one — and the auction hammer tells the rest.

Dealer-published rental rates

New-equipment list prices are mostly negotiated behind a dealer's door, which is why published rental rates are the better public window into equipment pricing: a dealer posts them, a contractor can check them, and the gap between the day rate and the month rate shows exactly how much the rental house discounts for commitment. Carolina Cat's published card for its smallest mini excavator makes the arithmetic plain — a month costs roughly four days' worth of day-rate billing, not thirty.

Cat 300.9D mini excavator — rental, daily
$321
● Baseline (October 2026) — trend tracking starts with the next refresh
No prior-period rate from the same dealer page was published in the source used.
Carolina Cat published rental rates — source
Cat 300.9D mini excavator — rental, weekly
$587
● Baseline (October 2026) — trend tracking starts with the next refresh
No prior-period rate from the same dealer page was published in the source used.
Carolina Cat published rental rates — source
Cat 300.9D mini excavator — rental, monthly
$1,357
● Baseline (October 2026) — trend tracking starts with the next refresh
No prior-period rate from the same dealer page was published in the source used.
Carolina Cat published rental rates — source

Used values from the same dealer page

Used listings on the same page show how fast hours erase value. A 2022 Cat 304 with 1,352 hours listed at $47,700 sits beside a 2025 Cat 304 with 723 hours at $65,000 — the spread is the market pricing size, age, and hours in one number, and it is why two machines with the same paint color can differ by tens of thousands of dollars.

Used listing (Carolina Cat)HoursListed price
2022 Cat 305-07CR1,762$52,000
2025 Cat 304-07723$65,000
2022 Cat 304 TH1,352$47,700
2026 Cat 305CR324$86,000
2025 Cat 306CR272$87,400

Source for all used listings: Carolina Cat — source

Auction results: Ritchie Bros. Orlando, February 2026

Auctions price the other end of the market — the big iron that rarely appears on a dealer lot. Ritchie Bros.' February 16–20, 2026 premier global auction in Orlando sold more than 14,500 equipment items, trucks and vehicles to more than 19,500 participants from 80 countries, for more than $265 million in gross transaction value. About 86% of equipment went to U.S. buyers, 39% to Florida buyers.

Ritchie Bros. Orlando premier auction, Feb 2026 — gross transaction value
$265M+
▲ Up from $250M+ (Feb 2025)
Prior year (Feb 2025): $250M+; Feb 2026 event: 14,500+ assets, 19,500+ participants, 80+ countries, about 86% sold to US buyers.
RB Global / Ritchie Bros. press release, Feb 26, 2026 — source
Methodology. Figures below come only from the named public sources linked beside each figure. Where a source publishes a prior-period figure from the same series, the trend indicator compares against it. Where it does not, the figure is labelled as an October 2026 baseline and trend tracking starts with the next refresh. No proprietary dataset is reproduced in full: figures are summarized with attribution, and ranges are reported as published. Paywalled tables and login-gated data are excluded.
Disclaimer. These are aggregated public estimates for information only. They are not investment, financial, legal, or professional advice, and they are not a quote for any service. Verify current figures with the original source before acting on them.
Freshness. This page is refreshed on its stated cadence (see SOURCES.md) and only when new or changed figures are available. A refresh never changes only the date. The site sitemap's lastmod entry for this page is updated on every refresh once the page is deployed.

Changelog

Sources

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