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Ford truck fleet auction, a day I’ve been waiting for.

JR4X

JR4X

wheeler
race
Joined
May 20, 2020
Member Number
445
Messages
4,073
Loc
Farmington NM
The company I work for is one of the few left that doesn’t use a fleet management company. Such a huge corporation they built their own fleet management company internally. So I just got the annual email with the company fleet truck reduction auction info.

What I’ve been waiting for: Last year about 1/2 the trucks were 5.4 triton V-10 or 6.4 powerstrokes. This year there’s over 50 2011 up Ford trucks with 6.2 gassers and 6.7 powerstrokes. Mostly XLT rubber floor mat power window trucks. Average mileage between 140k ~ 160k with wildly varying issues. Rules are I can only bid on two trucks per auction. The auction is for on staff employees only. Title must be transferred into my name only (no exceptions!)

I want a set of 11 up superduty axles with the factory rear E-locker to put under my Centurion. Thinking about bidding on a wrecked truck that runs, and a decent looking one with a blown engine. Making one out of two to sell for profit. Part out the remains for profit and keep the core axles I want. Seems like a long way to go to get a pair of axles but I think I can come out ahead with vehicle prices these days. Going to post some screen shots of a couple trucks, let me know what you think. Seems like something Projectjunkie would do.
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Each truck has a vague description of problems and the interiors on all of them are trashed. To make it work I’d have to swing high enough to get both of them. If I only get one I’m stuck with one fixer upper or one parter outer snd no pair of axles in the end. I’m bidding against a pool of probably 1000 other people with the same relative skill set and idea. So I gotta narrow it down to two trucks and bid either high enough to guarantee getting both of them. Or low enough to not get either. What do think? Can I make it work like I think I can? Guesses on what they’ll go for in the end.

The ticker has been counting down for 2 days already and the whole lot has 0 bids. I assume we’re all smart enough to not start slinging bids on day one an bid up a bunch of junk. Got 20 days to make a couple selections and commit.
 
Gonna be hard to pull off a decent flip with extended cab trucks. I met a guy who does something similar with his companies fleet out of Gillette but he is putting $5-10k into making them decent (fixing all the little shit, new wheels/tires) and probably only taking $1-2k profit in the end.

Try for one with the best bed you can find because 11-16 beds are expensive in good shape. Other than that, non-white one is a plus and I would be tempted to try for a running diesel if they don't go for a premium. Your audience when you try to sell is going to be retirement age guys so plan accordingly.

I would guess if someone had a truck they liked and knew the history it would go for $10-14k, otherwise sub $10k with a few just getting a starting bid but I am probably wrong.
 
What are you thinking they will go for?

Ex cab long bed is the most functional truck configuration imo, but everyone out there thinks they need a crew cab. So as mentioned, the flip will be a little harder.

If I ever get to the point of wanting to swap axles on my 97 F350, I think I'll just go with an entire 05+ chassis.
 
Driving now, saw the tag...

A matched pair of axles with an e locker is 1k-1700 depending on ratio, figure out what your time is worth
 
Extra cabs are a hard sell, but decent trucks are hard to come by right now

I would be concerned about being over extended going into the fall in case this truck market turns down...

Do you have trusted co workers who don't want their own truck? I was unofficially black listed by my former employer, and had others buy stuff for me:laughing:

Trashed interiors aren't terrible, if it's just seats, chances are the back seat is nice, and you could spend 700-1200 on new front seats, katskinz, or upholstery shop to make mint, but that truck would need to be one of those prettier gray trucks, not a white one....

I imagine your co-workers have some cash and will happily throw down on something they can drive, and hand off to family, those trucks will be bid up

Are these all in the same location? Others more remote?

I'd hold out till the end

Will you be paying sales tax?

You need to have friends ready to proxy bid for you for anything that goes "no bid"
I'd make it clear that you'll pay them 500 for that favor. I'm pretty forward with those favors:laughing:
 
I’ll see what things are looking like a day out from the ticker timing out. I would be confident I can get 15K out of a cleaned up straight ish extra cab long bed. As long as I don’t have over $10k in the pair it’d be worth my time. Definitely have to buy a new driver’s seat for every single truck I’ve looked at. But if they’re like the one I drive there’s never been an ass in any other seat. Just storage for the crap we carry daily. We don’t get any dibs at all not even the trucks that we drove. They go into a pile and every one has the same chance at the lot.
 
I see beat 100k+ 4x4 ex cab F250s flirt with 5 digits. No idea what they sell for cleaned up as it's a risk I'm not willing to take.
 
Place I worked had a few driver seats redone by an old school upholstery dude and I think the most expensive one was $120.

Funny how even guys that tear apart and fix things often view a seat as one component :laughing:

We also replaced a few bench seats with newer 3 piece seats and at the time about the cheapest non bench seat that fit a super duty was $1200.

I wouldn't get to carried away with lipstick on a pig though. Fix the driver seat, fix broken stuff, pay a detail guy to get it as clean as possible maybe, and call it good.
 
Got to go look closely at the lot full today. I knew in the beginning they all have something wrong with them making them “uneconomic” to repair. Pretty much anything that happens after 150K on the odo puts them on the DNR list.

A little less sure today that I can make this work but I’m still going to wait till the last day to make any bids.

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YotaAtieToo said:
Funny how even guys that tear apart and fix things often view a seat as one component :laughing:
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Not 3rd gen ram owners! Seat foam at every ball joint replacement, cover at injectors. I can swap them in a few minutes in the dealership parking lot :laughing:
 
Got my eye on a couple selections. First two. Wrecked one with lower miles and supposedly a good engine 2011 Totaled but interior is pretty decent (except where some dildo obviously swapped some old junky trim pieces for the nice ones). 2014 extra cab short bed with a blown up engine.

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And this one is in surprisingly decent shape. Only thing really destroyed is the tailgate. Says 4wd doesn’t work “front end issues” is the reason to get rid of it. Power seat. The 4wd not working is almost always one bad hub.

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Auction closes in 10 hours and out of 40 vehicles I’m watching there is only 1 submitted bid. Maybe nobody wants these pieces of shit.
 
Maybe everyone is waiting until the bitter end? Can you get your buddies to get their hands on a truck or two and then buy it from them?
 
So you can see above they have a starting price on them. One of the trucks I’m interested in I know, no one in their right mind would pay that much for a truck with a blown engine. So I asked if I can bid less than the posted opening bid. Here’s the response.

Good Afternoon!

Not a stupid question at all! So how we get the base bid is that we have wholesalers come in and bid on the trucks, and their bid is the starting price. So if employees don’t bid on them, they are sold to the wholesalers at that price and we ensure that all of the trucks are sold. So you wouldn’t be able to put in a price lower than the starting bid 😊Let me know if you have any other questions, have a great day!

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
1 hour till bidding closes. 11 bids total on 40 vehicles at the moment. Just like I suspected there’s some sketchy shit going on, missing keys and locked doors on the ones missing keys. A month ago I could check any of them. I set an alarm to enter bids closer to the end.
 
Pony_Driver said:
That sucks man. Let them throw their money at junk. You'll get it figured out soon enough.
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Out of all the trucks the 7 of us that bid, were only interested in the same 2 trucks. Most of them went to the wholesalers as the auction ended with 0 bids on most of them. I’m not sad I didn’t get them. I did some math. Set my max bids, bid up to my max in the last 4 minutes and someone else wanted each of them more. The others with zero bids had a minimum way over what they were worth.
 
JR4X said:
Out of all the trucks the 7 of us that bid, were only interested in the same 2 trucks. Most of them went to the wholesalers as the auction ended with 0 bids on most of them. I’m not sad I didn’t get them. I did some math. Set my max bids, bid up to my max in the last 4 minutes and someone else wanted each of them more. The others with zero bids had a minimum way over what they were worth.
Click to expand...

Good to hear you stuck with your plan.

Sometimes the 'fever' sets in and you just...forget all the rules :laughing: That's how an auction works.
 
speed bump said:
Gonna be hard to pull off a decent flip with extended cab trucks. I met a guy who does something similar with his companies fleet out of Gillette but he is putting $5-10k into making them decent (fixing all the little shit, new wheels/tires) and probably only taking $1-2k profit in the end.

Try for one with the best bed you can find because 11-16 beds are expensive in good shape. Other than that, non-white one is a plus and I would be tempted to try for a running diesel if they don't go for a premium. Your audience when you try to sell is going to be retirement age guys so plan accordingly.

I would guess if someone had a truck they liked and knew the history it would go for $10-14k, otherwise sub $10k with a few just getting a starting bid but I am probably wrong.
Click to expand...
I think this entire post was spot on. The one truck I wanted most went for over $10K, an 11 6.2 gasser with 192K miles on it. Only two of the running diesels sold, I didn’t want to mess with them because they had no beds at all, had near 200K on them and were just overall in terrible shape.
 
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