USED CAR NEWS
May 15, 2017 • 19
WHOLESALE MARKETS MONTANA Terry Sheetz, general manager, Auto Auction of Montana, Billings, Mont.: “We have four lanes and we’ve been running between 600 and 700 on average each week. It’s the same as last year. “Honestly, we’re running a lot of the Canadian rigs. We’ve dedicated one lane just to those (units). “We hold them for 30 days. We have one dealer who will run anywhere from 100 to 120 every week and now he wants to double that. It’s pretty crazy and has been for a while. “Over the last 60 days, we’re selling about 55 percent. It’s unheard of compared to what we used to do. During one recent sale we had 63 percent. It’s a good problem to be that busy. “Our Internet attendance is really picking up. We’re getting anywhere from 100 to 150 every week. We’re selling over 100 on the Internet. It’s crazy. “We used to have people
who came out here all the time and now they do nothing but go on the Internet. It’s really changing for us and it’s working good. All four lanes are on the Internet and we use OVE and Pipeline. “In the physical lanes, we’ll get a couple of hundred to 250. That’s typical. But we’re getting people from places we didn’t before, like Idaho. We also have a guy who comes up from Tennessee. “Volumes include about 30 percent leet-leaserepos. We run Hertz and they’re running more. Enterprise has always been with us. “We have a GSA sale. That goes once a month. That’s the irst thing on the morning of our regular sale. “Our average price in the lanes is about $17,000. That’s the trucks. Some of those trucks are up to $50,000 to $60,000. “When oil was running good, we got a lot of business out of that. When that
shut down, the Canadians kind of took over that.”
NEVADA Russ Norrish, general manager, Dealers Auto Auction of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Nev.: “Our irst sale is in November 2015. Both Dan Thomas and I used to work for Manheim “We have six lanes, but we’re running four. We’re pretty proud of our facility. “We’re drawing about 230 dealers in the lanes. “Our volumes are right around 320 to 330. That’s way up from this time last year. It’s a grind here. There are a lot of cars around. We’re taking our time and slowly growing each month. “(Our conversion rates) were running around 67 to 68 percent, but the last couple of weeks have been a little challenging. A lot of people stock up for the tax season and a lot of dealers were telling me that tax season (bump) didn’t material-
ize like it did last year. “Dealer consignment is 85 percent of our volume. Fleet-lease-repos are 15 percent. We sell cars for Avis, for Budget and Enterprise pops in once in a while, There are also some local credit unions we’re running. We also run for Smart Finance and Honor Finance. It’s deinitely grown since last year. “We have Auction Pipeline and we do simulcast. It started slow. Last year nobody knew about us (online). But now we’re doing condition reports, we’re doing pictures and we’re getting more and more exposure. As we get more cars, I think that will drive up our base as well. “I think the biggest challenge we have is getting the cars in on time. A lot of people want to drop the cars of a day before the sale or the morning of the sale. “Our sale is on a Wednesday, so if we can get the cars in a Monday afternoon or even Tuesday morning, that
Compiled by Jeffrey Bellant gives us time to get a picture, a CR and get them up on the Pipeline. That way when people look at our inventory they see we have cars. “Average price is about $5,700. Last year, it was actually higher because we had a new car store that was giving us a lot of their frontline stuf. They were giving up a lot of rental car, latemodel vehicles. But now we’re getting some of their trades. So we are consigning more cars, but some of them are lower-end cars that lower the average. “It’ just a matter of getting dealers to our sale. Once they come and walk in, they go, ‘Oh, wow,’ and it’s better than they expected. I tell them to just come in one time and try it. “I think the market is correcting itself. It was really high in March and April. “We haven’t set the date, but we usually do a summer bash in June. We’ll have a barbecue with beach prizes.”