Agricultural News
BigIron.com Revolutionizes the Sales of Used Ag and Heavy Equipment
Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:00:50 CDT
Selling farm equipment at auction used to involve lots of planning, preparation, and headaches. It involved bringing lots of people to your farm or transporting your equipment somewhere else. The process could be costly and, if there wasn't enough interest among local buyers, your returns could be meager.
As an auctioneer, Mike Wolfe saw exactly those same pitfalls and knew there had to be a better way. He is now a district manager with Big Iron, an online equipment auction service. Mike manages Oklahoma, and large parts of Arkansas, Texas and New Mexico. He spoke recently with Radio Oklahoma Network Farm Director Ron Hays. (You can hear their full conversation by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story.)
"Big Iron is an auction company, but it's an online auction company. It's all by internet. We were traditional auctioneers for years, we did on-site sales, now we do everything on the internet."
As many businesses do, Big Iron started slowly and simply kept growing. Its first sale in Oklahoma was in January of 2010. The company held one sale per month. In just over three short years, Wolfe says, the company now has auctions every week.
Wolfe says buyers find all sorts of equipment on BigIron.com in this area of the country.
"We sell a lot of farm equipment. We sell a lot of transportation equipment from pickups to semis. And we sell some construction equipment and some oilfield equipment. I guess our biggest market is agricultural equipment. We'll sell anything from farm tractors to a combine."
He says selling equipment on Big Iron is a simple process, even for those who may not know much about how the online auction works. Wolfe says his representatives go out and visit with each person who asks about selling equipment on the website.
"The first thing we do is we have to explain to the customer the difference between what they've always known as their traditional auction versus online. And we don't care if the customer only has one item or if they have 100. But if they have one item, for example, they don't have to haul it anywhere. They contact us and one of our reps will go out to their location. They will visit with them and once they're ready to put that item on auction, we take pictures, we do the write up, we put it all on the internet. We put it in our advertising which goes all over the United States including our radio advertising."
He said the key to profitable online sales are pictures-lots of pictures.
"We don't just take one or two pictures like people are used to seeing on other sites. I sent in two pickups in last night for a customer and there were 68 pictures on one of them and 90 on the other one. We want to make sure we cover every detail for that prospective buyer."
Not only does Big Iron want to show every little detail it can about the equipment it sells, Wolfe says they also want buyers to be able to get every possible question answered about the items up for sale so they can be confident in their buying decisions.
"And the other thing that's different is we put the seller's name and phone number on our advertisement so when they go online and see what part of Oklahoma, for example, the item is setting in, they know where it's located, they can call the seller and talk to them about it."
Big Iron makes the buying process just as easy, Wolfe said.
"The buying process is simple, I think. As a new buyer you go on and register as a bidder. Our bidding registrations are very simple. Once you get that you're assigned a permanent number. And then as you find items you're interested in, if you make that customer contact and feel comfortable about that item, you see all the pictures, you can go look at if you want to. In many cases, people don't if we supply enough information in the pictures. And then the buyer can bid. It's real simple to do. And once the auction is over with we send them instructions on how to pay for the item."
At any one time, there are thousands of items up for sale on BigIron.com. The rotation of sales closes every Wednesday.
"Once a customer lists an item, it's on there a minimum of 21 days. And every Wednesday, every item has a countdown time that day. Starting at 10 o'clock on Wednesday morning, the first couple of items will end and then every minute thereafter. They buyers that are bidding on those items, they can watch the countdown and they know when that item's going to end."
He says transitioning from a live, in-person auction at a specific location to one that is ongoing and online isn't hard, but it is a little different for some people.
"I think a lot of time's the obstacle is just doing the unknown-making change. We're all used to doing things a certain way and we all fight change. I've been an auctioneer for many years and doing a traditional auction, that was all I knew. And when the internet came along, you have to learn to do some things different. One of the things we talk to people about is that they feel like, 'Well, I need to haul it somewhere.' In our case, they don't have any freight. They don't haul it anywhere. And those are things they must overcome themselves."
If a person wants to sell an item, Wolfe says, it's as simple as going to the BigIron.com website and clicking on the "Sell Your Equipment" button. Wolfe says a Big Iron representative will contact the prospective seller, explain the process and list their item if they so desire.
"It's a no-pressure deal. We go over the process from beginning to end so they understand everything, they understand how it works. We make sure they're comfortable with that and then we go from there."
So far, Big Iron has only accessed the tip of the iceberg with the amount of used equipment there is available. Wolfe says there's a lot of room for these type of concepts to grow.
"We continue to grow. We're up to an auction every week. And we sell several thousand pieces of equipment every month now. Every corner we go by, there's something sitting for sale, so the potential is just unlimited out there."
"Our market is totally bigger because, traditionally, we sell on a local base here. We just sold two items, identical items, out in Dewey County. One of those items went three miles and the other one went to Ethiopia. That just happened a couple of weeks ago."
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