Ritchie Brothers

I've always thought walmart takes pretty good care of their equipment

 

I've seen brand new trucks sell at auction I've also sat and watched 200 walmart trucks come across the ramp so no there isn't always just junk at the auction yard. Ritchie Bros. didn't get to be the premiere auction company in the world by selling junk. Multi Day auctions are usually broke out by equipment type so they'll spend a day selling yellow iron and the next selling transportation equipment so you have to deal with the auctionitis throughout the sale sometimes even multiple times a day if you're interested in items selling in multiple rings.

 

Been to and bought / sold equipment at a lot of RB auctions setup for $8 Million for on line bidding .

I have seen everything from BRAND NEW to pieces of rolling junk cross the ramp and RB did not get to the top for only selling top notch stuff they got there as they have the ability to promote the sales properly to a large demographic ,draw a large group of bidders and be able to sell most of what is listed at the sale.

 

As I understand it, you don't have to buy an entire lot if it is a fleet. My brother attended a RB auction last year. On the third day of a three day auction he watched as a lot of 25 three year old Cascadias came up. Bidding went to about $38K, then the auctioneer asked the winning bidder how many he wanted. He took 12 and bidding began all over for the remaining 13. It went like that until only one was left and it went for around $20K.

 

This is called selling choice and it is a very common way to speed up an auction especially if they have a bunch of identical trucks. The thing about that is one buyer could step up and buy all the lots at once. The other is that people get desperate and will over pay when they are down to the last lot of a choice deal.

 

The Adesa heavy truck auctions aren't a bad place to look either should you happen to be looking around at auctions. Most that I have been to are one-day deals but they also have them once a month. Similar to RB, you can start it, look it over, no test drives though. Just like most auctions, some good stuff, some crap, and some a lot of in between.

www.adesarigs.com

 

So most of the trucks are sold in lots and not individually?

 

At Ritchie Bros. everything is sold individually, they may sell choice and group 2 to 30 or as many as they have together but your only really buying one. If you want more than one you can tell them how many and you multiply the price by however many units you want.

 

Some of the tractors are NTP warranty eligible straight from the RB auction. YMMV depending on age of equipment, mileage, plan, etc ... but if you want to pay for the piece of mind. You have that option.

I feel the RB is a better option than going used truck shopping. You will usually pay less, and if you have even mediocre business credit ... RB lines of credit interest rates and credit limits are hard deals to pass up.

 

I bought my lowboy truck at a Ritchie Brothers auction a little over a year ago. She's been a pretty good old truck for me. I showed up a day early, went by and looked at everything I was interested in. Ended up buying my truck, went and paid for it, by far the quickest I have ever bought any vehicle. Picked up the information and service records the previous owner left. Had a oil leak on the brakesaver so went down to the parts house and got 2 gallons of oil. Went back to the yard, hopped in my truck and drove to the exit gate, had to wait till the auction was over before they would let me leave and then I headed on home.

Now that I have that truck and a lowboy, I can buy stuff that's in a lot worse shape at an auction for a better deal and just haul it home and fix it up in my spare time. Don't have to worry about something not being roadworthy and having to pay to get someone to haul me home.

If you are going to an auction seriously truck shopping I would sure go a day ahead of the sale and inspect them thoroughly. I looked at some trucks that sold at Vegas at the same time as the last CONEXPO, looked at them on my way into town, lots of little things that made me hesitant, was pretty obvious that the company knew those trucks were going away for a little while. There was about 8 trucks all the same I was interested in, when I fired 2 of them up they were either blowing up or had major bad things happening in the motor, I didn't even bother going to the sale and checked the results and laughed when I saw what people paid for a blowing up truck.

As far as driving them around, I wonder about that myself. I have only fired them up, listened to the motor and rocked back and forth a bit. I'll have to look in an old bidders book if there's anything in them about it, but if not I think the next time I stop by a RB sale yard to look at something I may take it for a little spin around the sale yard if there aren't too many people around. What's the worst that's going to happen I'll get yelled at?

Be careful though. Those auctions are fast and fun. I went there to buy a dump truck and ended up coming home with a tractor set up perfectly to pull a lowboy... So now I'm in that business too!