The Used Equipment Network uses a hierarchical system to classify equipment because of the very large number of items available on the site.

The first level is the "major specialty". This describes the type of equipment in very general terms, like "metalworking" or "medical". This level is designed to get you into the right ballpark for the equipment you need.

Many of the major specialty areas also have "sub-specialties" under them as a second level. For example, under the general area of metalworking, we have sub-specialies for "grinding", "brakes & folding", "machining center", and many others. Listed under the general heading of "material handling" we have sub-specialties for "cranes & hoists" and for "lift trucks & carts" among others.

The final level of detail is the UED Category. The category system was developed by Used Equipment Directory and has been the standard in the used equipment industry for many years. These are alpha-numeric identifiers that are quite specific to the equipment; Examples are L3000 which is "Lathes, Engine" and C6575 which is "Cranes, Jib"

The assignment of categories to specialties is not unique. Category M0130 (Machining Centers, Horizontal, CNC) appears under both the sub-specialty for machining centers and that for CNC equipment. H5000 (Hoists) appears under both the material handling specialty and the construction specialty. This makes it easier to find the equipment you need or the category under which a listing should be entered.

It is not necessary to know either the specialty number or category code to locate equipment on the system, but if you frequently look at a particular type of equipment you can go immediately to those listings from the main page of the site if you know the category.

For each of the over 2000 categories in the system, we have assigned the appropriate sort/search fields. As examples, lathes are measured primarily by swing and center distance which machining centers are measured by the X, Y, and Z travels. A hoist is measured by capacity in tons and maximum lifting distance, while a tranformer might be measured in KVA and primary and secondary voltages.