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Need A Crane? Auction Site's Loaded With Heavy Equipment

Tribune photo by BILLY TOWNSEND

Potential buyers check out several rows of heavy equipment up for bid at Ritchie Bros. auction site at I-4 and U.S. 27.

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By BILLY TOWNSEND, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 20, 2008

Updated: 02/20/2008 12:14 am

HAINES CITY - Kwesi Osei Ofori wants to feed a building boom in his native Ghana - and turn a little profit in the process.

Jeff Smith and Juanita Tarbell fled the upstate New York winter in search of an excavator and some golf.

They all landed in northeast Polk County, at the interchange of Interstate 4 and U.S. 27. That's the Florida home of Ritchie Bros., which bills itself as the world's largest auctioneer of heavy equipment. This week is the company's Olympics.

Company officials say they've spread 6,141 pieces of equipment across the company's massive auction yard. Need an articulated dump truck? They've got 180. A rough-terrain crane? Thirty. A backhoe loader? One-hundred thirty.

It's all part of a five-day extravaganza that Ritchie Bros. claims is the world's largest annual auction of heavy equipment. In last year's version, 5,800 registered bidders from all 50 states and 65 countries bought more than 6,500 pieces of equipment for a total of $172 million.

Company officials say they expect to break that sales mark this year.

Ritchie Bros. gets most of its equipment from contractors or rental companies upgrading their fleets, said Gary Seybold, regional manager. Ritchie Bros. buys the equipment, paints and services it, then resells it at auction.

Seybold expects one of his company's cranes will fetch the largest single price at the auction - likely about $900,000. A new version of the same crane might sell for $2.5 million, Seybold said.

All Ritchie Bros. auctions are unreserved, which means every piece of equipment is sold to the highest bidder, regardless of how low a high bid might be.

Smith, a New York corrections officer, said he runs a building business on the side. Tuesday, he was in the market for an excavator, hoping to pay $30,000 or $40,000 for one he thinks would fetch $120,000 new. This is his second visit to the auction, which started after Ritchie Bros. opened its I-4 location in 2002.

He and Tarbell are mixing commerce and pleasure, staying through the week at a Disney-area hotel and planning for some golf.

By contrast, Ofori, managing director of Erdmac Group of Accra, Ghana, was all business Tuesday. He said he has regularly attended Ritchie Bros. auctions in Holland, but this is his first trip to America for an auction.

"This is the biggest I've ever seen," Ofori said.

His reasons for traveling to America were purely economic. The value of the euro has risen so high against the dollar that Ofori thought he'd find more affordable equipment in Florida than Holland. He's looking for excavators and backhoes to sell to contractors in Ghana, where Ofori said a construction boom is feeding demand for equipment.

The Ritchie Bros. auction will continue through Saturday.

Bidding begins each day at 8 a.m.

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