LONGMONT — The 85-acre auction yard looks like a giant toy box, with clusters of crawler tractors, motor graders, articulated dump trucks and even a 2008 Honda Civic sedan.
But come Thursday, every item on the . lot will be neatly lined up for inspection for one of the company’s last auctions of the year.
“Everything will be put in a straight line and in order,” said Matt Johnson, regional operations manager for Ritchie Bros., the world’s largest seller of used heavy-construction equipment.
“Auction day,” said Johnson, “is always a big event around here.”
The biggest happened in June, when $40 million in equipment and trucks were sold on the Ritchie lot, just off Interstate 25 north of Longmont.
The two-day unreserved public auction set multiple records for the Colorado site, including total sales, online sales — $17 million — and the number of “items” sold — 2,400.
As many as 2,300 items will be up for sale Thursday, including plenty of discarded oil and gas equipment.
In fact, oil and gas items helped fuel sales hikes for Ritchie this year. The company sold 72,500 items during the first quarter, up 16 percent from 2014. Ritchie sold 501 more pieces of oil and gas equipment during the same period than last year, said Johnson.
The company sold 1,000 more oil and gas items during its second quarter this year than last, said Johnson.
This uptick came as the oil and gas industry saw steep drops in oil prices that . But Ritchie officials say there is no real link between its business picking up just as oil and gas decline.
“It could be that companies are feeling better, so they are investing in newer equipment and letting go of the old,” said Johnson.
The June auction attracted more than 3,800 bidders from 48 states and 49 countries. Such activity could mean that the whole construction economy is on the rebound, said Casey Fencl, regional sales manager for Ritchie.
“Local contractors who held on to equipment over the last few years are now starting to feel more optimistic due to an increase in residential and commercial construction,” said Fencl. “Many local customers are choosing to sell and upgrade their fleets, which resulted in a record-setting amount of equipment in this (the June) auction.”
Buyers from outside of Colorado bought $27 million of equipment and trucks and came from as far away as Egypt, Costa Rica, Japan and New Zealand.
Besides construction equipment, Ritchie also sells used machines for transportation, agriculture and energy.
The company, which started in 1958, has operations in 19 countries, including 44 auction sites worldwide.
Company officials refused to say what total sales might be for Thursday’s auction, which will be the fourth for the Longmont site this year. That’s because everything on the lot is sold with no minimum bids or reserve prices.
Buyers set the prices, not the owners or Ritchie officials, said company spokesman Ian Malinski.
The June auction saw longtime Ritchie customer Purgatoire Valley Construction sell 125 items. “We sold everything from dozers, excavators and scrapers to pickup trucks, hiboy trailers and more as a part of a realignment of our fleet,” said Dean Moltrer, vice president of Purgatoire. The Trinidad-based company works on street construction, sewer and water infrastructure, pipeline construction as well as oil and gas infrastructure.
“We’ve worked with Ritchie Bros. for many years, both buying and selling,” said Moltrer. “They always put their customers first and make sure we are taken care of and well represented.”
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907, mwhaley@denverpost.com or @montewhaley
