Dozens of Cranes Sold at Ritchie Bros. Auction

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, Vancouver, British Columbia, sold more than $20 million of heavy equipment and trucks—including 61 cranes—at its unreserved public auction in Chicago, Ill., last week. More than 2,200 people from 49 U.S. states and 27 countries registered to bid in person or online on more than 2,700 used equipment items.

Out-of-state bidders purchased almost $14 million of equipment and trucks, including more than $5 million of equipment purchased by bidders from outside the U.S. Over one-third of the bidders registered to bid online in real time. Online bidders purchased more than $7 million of equipment.

“We saw even greater international participation than usual in Chicago, largely due to the number of cranes in the auction,” said Richard Evans, Ritchie Bros. regional manager. “We sold cranes to buyers from across the U.S., Canada, even the Middle East, but we also saw strong demand for the other equipment in the auction, especially trucks. We’ve never sold so much transportation equipment in Chicago. The great lineup of equipment and our commitment to unreserved auctions attracted thousands of bidders and helped drive strong returns for sellers.”

Imperial Crane Services of Bridgeview, Ill., sold 22 units from its 200-piece rental fleet at the Chicago auction. “As a rental house it’s important to keep our fleet up-to-date for the market,” said Dave Dobson, Imperial Crane’s chief financial officer. “We decided to sell a large number of cranes in response to the current market conditions and our need to make room for the 30 new cranes we have on order for delivery this year, which is why we turned to Ritchie Bros.”

Greg McCauley, crane sales for Imperial Crane said that a lot of the cranes sold were duplicates of older models that the company is replacing with new models.

There are 60 unreserved Ritchie Bros. auctions on the upcoming auction calendar at www.rbauction.com, including the next public auction at the company’s permanent auction site in Chicago, Sept. 21-22, 2009.

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