WILTON – Three hundred used vehicles, 200 dealers, three auctioneers with more than 50 years’ combined experience in 44,000 square feet of exposition center net one busy wholesale car auction.
That’s how many dealers and vehicles filed in and out of the exposition area of the Nichols/Bass Business and Technology Center on Friday.
“It’s organized chaos,” Dan Archer, promotion and marketing manager for Nichols Development, said over the din of Friday’s inaugural wholesale car auction.
He said organizers had expected about 150 vehicles to be offered for sale at the first of the weekly auctions, but it appeared there would be twice that many.
Cars and trucks of every shape, color and size crept into position as dealers bent to inspect tires, peer under hoods and feel for cool breezes from air-conditioning vents. Bidding started before most vehicles were even stopped and were sold within seconds of their appearance on the auto dealers’ version of a fashion runway. It’s not unlike a cattle auction, according to some.
“But it’s a different smell,” joked a woman behind the busy registration desk.
And three cars being auctioned simultaneously can create quite a clamor.
Rick Cushing was buying and selling for Adams Auto Sales in Livermore Falls.
He said the Nichols people did a good job on the building, with sound baffles between auctioneers for better acoustics and three lanes that can be viewed simultaneously from the right vantage point. He doesn’t feel like he’s missing any sales that way, he said.
Benefits
The development company, which has been in the former G.H. Bass Shoe manufacturing plant for just under a year, has increased employment at the facility from about 14 to about 68, according to Gil Reed, a principal with the company. Close to 30 of those positions are full-time jobs, he said. In addition, ICT, leasing space in the facility, employs about 300 people, according to Archer.
But, Archer said, increased employment opportunities from the auction are not the only benefits to the area.
The auction brings dealers from all over Maine and New England, and those visitors are expected to spend money at local establishments.
“It will trickle down to other business,” Archer said. “That’s what we’re after.”
Local car dealers will benefit as well.
“I’m hoping this goes well,” Cushing said as the sale got under way.
Cushing, of Wilton, who also works for International Paper in Jay, said he goes to about two auctions weekly, including one in Connecticut. When he goes there, he leaves at 4 a.m. and doesn’t get home until midnight. He and many others at Friday’s event also regularly attend the state’s largest auction in Richmond, which brings in 500 to 600 vehicles each time, he said.
Here to serve you’
“For a start-up operation, it has potential,” said Matthew Martin of Jim Martin Auto Sales in Farmington. “Very impressive turnout for an inaugural auction. It is a good place for western Maine dealers to participate in the wholesale market.”
Also, he’ll have an outlet for vehicles that don’t sell on his lot, which specializes in mainly Subarus.
Stewart White from Farmington Ford said he sold seven of the 10 vehicles that had been on the block by 11 a.m. – the auction began at 9.
“It’s hard to say (how it’s going),” he said. “The first day there’s sure to be jitters but they’re working hard to serve everybody and taking care of all the little problems.”
Indeed, Reed, in opening the event asked participants for suggestions for changes.
“We’re here to serve you,” he told them.
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