Running an auction

I recently cleaned out a facility of 170,000 sq ft, biggest job I have ever done. Since there was a lot of factory equipment, I decided to hold an auction, thinking things like electric motors (some of them huge) might sell for what their original purpose was. While I sold a lot of items to people who were going to put them to good use (pickup truck, hi-lo, commercial lawn mower, etc.) when all was said and done most items sold for scrap value. Boy did I get an education! While I did not make as much as I would have had stuff sold to folks who would use them for their original purposes, I was surprised at how high some of the scrap sold for, considering the labor necessary to remove it from the building.

I try to go to industrial auctions when they happen to be near by and I have the time. Like you said its amazing what people (scrappers I mean) will go crazy for and run the bidding up on. Same can go for the deals too though. I bought 5 industrial printers at the last auction I went to for $2 each, and listed them on an industrial auction site as non working for parts. Final price I got was $1500 for the lot plus shipping. Wish I could do that every day!

America's Industrial capacity sold for scrap....I see the same thing here. Local manufacturing can no longer produce anything competitively when up against Chinese slave labor. Soon plants will bypass the auctions and associated fees and just scrap it out directly to a yard.

Devo, can you share the auction site? I'm always looking for ebay alternatives. Have been getting into industrial stuff lately as well.

Burly,
Did you hire an auctioneer or are you one? What kind of fees and setup charges did they charge if I may ask?

Originally Posted by IronPirate

Devo, can you share the auction site? I'm always looking for ebay alternatives. Have been getting into industrial stuff lately as well.

I will later when I get to a computer. Fat fingers + phone + auto correct will probably get me banned.

Originally Posted by BurlyGuys

It was a sweet score.

No kidding!! That's awesome.

Forgot to come back to this thread and post the info about the auction service I used. Sorry for the delay.

The service was "Bid on equipment", and let me say up front THEY SUCK!

First off they don't work like a conventional auction, you can make counter offers to bids, and other stuff. All that is fine, but here's the problem.

When I accepted the price, I sent them an email accepting the bid, then went on vacation camping and had no cell service. Apparently an email wasn't good enough, and because I didn't give them a verbal acceptance be phone they cancelled my auction. Repeated attempts to contact them after the fact were ignored.

They have with out a doubt the worst customer service I have run into in a long time.

I got lucky after all of the above and sent out an email to various companies that service these printers and got lucky and found the people that were bidding on my stuff and got it sold privately.

Beware of "Bid on equipment". Their crappy customer service almost cost me $1500.00

At the end of December the contents of a motel by me went up for auction. the place had been locked up for 3-4 years, and when they locked up, they left the place just like they were coming back the next day. A contractor was hired to clear the building and get as much money as possible. He in turn hired the worst auction company I have ever seen, from halfway across the state, when there was a much more suitable company a few miles away. Most of the kitchen equipment was unusable from sitting in an un-climate controlled building for years, with food/grease in them. Most of the equipment was auctioned for under WAYYY under scrap value (as the auction progressed from room to room you could see the contractor getting more and more pissed/disgusted). They wound up having to buy back most of the kitchen equipment to scrap on their own. I found it funny.