Services, Variety Draw Buyers to Ritchie Bros. Top Auction
This story appears in the Feb. 27 print edition of Transport Topics.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Ritchie Bros., a leading industrial auctioneer, put up more than 10,000 pieces of equipment for bid here, including hundreds of heavy- and medium-duty trucks.
The weeklong auction Feb. 20-24 showed the industrial-based equipment spread side by side across more than 200 acres, and the event is increasingly becoming a venue for more fleets to buy equipment.
The company said that the trucks are supported by a raft of value- added services that are attracting small-fleet buyers and owner- operators in growing numbers.
Ritchie Bros. offers truck buyers warranties, insurance, buyer financing, appraisals and refurbishing services for vehicles sold under its policy of no minimum bids or reserve prices.
Everything would be sold, either to a buyer on-site or online because the auction also was simultaneously streamed live on Ritchie’s website. For this event, which the company called its Super Bowl, 10,000 registered bidders from 80 countries evaluated items offered by 1,129 sellers from 25 countries. In all, 10,092 pieces were up for purchase.
“Since the presidential election, there is stable consignment demand. It is a little more predictable, and there is stable buyer demand. It seems we went through a bit of turmoil last year [with truck prices], but so far, this year has been fairly stable,” said Jake Lawson, senior vice president of sales at Ritchie Bros., a publicly traded company based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“When we look at the buying audience for a lot of our trucks, they have changed over the last five years,” Lawson said. “Historically, a lot of our buyers were brokers and dealers, who will buy at the auction and resell.”
Whereas the auction once was 50-50, it has progressed much more heavily to the end users, he added.
“That owner-operator who buys a $35,000 truck can get a warranty because [without one] if his engine blows up, he’s out of business,” Lawson said.
The truck sellers included some well-known industry names.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sells fleet trucks, as does Swift Transportation, Lawson said. Plus, two truck makers and their captive finance arms do, too. He did not identify them.
Wal-Mart ranks No. 3 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest private carriers in North America.
Swift ranks No. 6 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.
Meanwhile, Class 8 brands from Freightliner, International, Mack, Peterbilt and Sterling were clustered on the site as golf carts scooted past, carrying buyers out to inspect the towering cranes, crawler tractors, hydraulic excavators, vibratory rollers, crushers, wheel loaders, boom lifts, marine barges, asphalt equipment and more that would be auctioned first.
Freightliner is a brand of Daimler Trucks North America, International is a brand of Navistar Inc., Mack Trucks is a brand of Volvo Group AB and Peterbilt Motors Co. is a unit of Paccar Inc. Sterling is no longer manufactured but still supported by Daimler Trucks.
The 500 or so trucks — plus dry vans, tankers, lowboys, dump trucks, car haulers and refrigerated trailers — were slated to be sold on the auction’s last day. Throughout the process, bids could be placed at self-serve kiosks on-site or online at rbauction.com or in the live auction, the company said.
The auction, attended by reporters Feb. 22, began at 8 a.m. and was scheduled to end that day at 6:30 p.m.
That morning, heavy equipment was selling in seconds. Several hundred potential buyers in an auditorium-like room sat in orange plastic seats with a view of the equipment passing by outside. Each piece also was pictured on a large screen that reflected the details and bids.
More people jostled in back. In a booth off to the side, the auctioneer held a microphone close to his mouth. He kept his eyes on Ritchie Bros.’ “bid catchers” — three men who faced the crowd and relayed him the bids. The auctioneer’s chant spilled out, over and over. Sometimes, the room shook as heavy equipment on tracks crawled by.
Ritchie Bros. sold about $246 million in medium- and heavy-duty trucks in the United States in 2016, Lawson said. Overall, it sold $4.3 billion worth of equipment last year.
Used-truck prices at its auctions in 2016 contracted — falling by “the low to mid-teens,” another executive said — while the company sold more trucks, 13,768, compared with a year earlier, but did not provide a comparative figure.
Lawson said 44% of the trucks stayed in the state where they were auctioned, 51% left the state for another U.S. location and 5% were exported.
