Prices bid up at equipment auction

Gary Huntington of Twin Falls, Idaho, came to Las Vegas to buy a 1989 International single-axle dump truck at Ritchie Bros. equipment auction Friday, but bowed out of the bidding early.

"I thought it'd bring $3,000; $3,500. Hell, it brought $8,000. I didn't think it was worth it," Huntington said Friday as he boarded a shuttle bus at the auction house's new 33,000-square-foot building off Interstate 15 north of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The truck has 258,000 miles on it, which is pretty high for daily use, said Huntington, who is retired from the construction business but wanted the truck for personal jobs every couple of months.

Most of the 1,100 construction trucks and heavy equipment for sale at Ritchie Bros.' first auction of the year went for more than the asking bid, said Joe Byers, regional sales manager for the auction company in Las Vegas.

Caterpillar scrapers that were expected to sell for a $25,000 to $75,000 actually brought $55,000 to $100,000, he said.

Byers estimated the inventory from 150 consigners at $23 million. The highlight was a lineup of specialized paving equipment that included five Gomaco GT6300 concrete pavers and a 40-foot-wide Gomaco GP500 crawler concrete paver.

Other equipment on the auction block included 45 wheel loaders, 30 motor scrapers, 25 loader backhoes, 20 hydraulic excavators, 40 truck tractors and 35 pickup trucks. A lot of trucks came from local companies such as Nevada Ready Mix, Steel Engineers and Meadow Valley Contractors.

"This is like our Super Bowl," Byers said between meetings and phone calls at Friday's auction. "This is game day for us. We do it every three months."

The auction was scheduled on the final day of the World of Concrete trade show, which brought about 50,000 construction industry professionals to Las Vegas. Ritchie Bros. conducted a charity auction Tuesday at Las Vegas Convention Center that raised more than $600,000 to support the Concrete Industry Management post-secondary education program.

More than 1,500 bidders registered for the auction, including 646 from outside of the U.S. who could bid online in real time at www.rbauction.com.

"We still have guys that come out and kick the tires and smell the oil," Byers said. "They come out to Las Vegas to see their buddies."

Last year, Ritchie Bros. sold $86.1 million in heavy equipment to 1,861 buyers. Eighty-five percent of bidders were from outside of Nevada, and they bought 92 percent of the equipment.

Buyers heavily represented at Friday's auction came from Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Minnesota, Texas and Washington state.

"This is getting to be a good facility," said Bill Stirling of Boise, Idaho. "We're looking for cranes, just about anything we can make money on. A lot of companies are downsizing. We're just coasting along, waiting for the economy to get better."

Contact reporter Hubble Smith at hsmith@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0491.