Ulmer Auction has a big reputation for a family-owned auction house near the North Dakota/South Dakota state line. Randy Ulmer and his son Brent often use EquipmentFacts, Sandhills Global’s auction webcasting platform, for various farm retirement and consignment sales. The Ulmers broke their own record for total sales value with an end-of-year auction they livestreamed on Equipmentfacts. As more and more consignments filled the sale catalog from five states, the December 13, 2021, sale expanded into a major two-day event. “It’s very difficult to predict what the value of a sale like this would be,” said Sandhills sales representative Mark Winter. “Brent Ulmer and I assumed it would be in the $4 or $5 million range—but thought that might be a bit high. This same sale last year totaled $2.7 million by comparison.”
SELLING MACHINES AS THEY ARE, WHERE THEY ARE
Every piece of equipment could be sold right where it was—that is, in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Kansas, and Minnesota—thereby avoiding the expense of transporting assets to a sale lot. Each item’s listing included the owner’s location and phone number in its description. The Ulmers invited buyers to come bid in person at their auction facility in Ashley, North Dakota, where big-screen TVs displayed the items up for sale. Buyers were also able to bid online via Equipmentfacts or by phone, with Ulmer’s staff taking call-in bids.
DRIVING EXPECTATIONS
The experienced auctioneers built up the buzz for the sale using multiple advertising avenues available from Sandhills Global. The Ulmers sent a custom email blast to frequent bidders on Equipmentfacts and AuctionTime, and booked a banner ad on the homepage of TractorHouse.com. For even more exposure, the auctioneers also took out a full-page print ad in TractorHouse magazine. Word of the sale spurred record traffic to Ulmer Auction’s website (UlmerOnlineAuctions.com), which is hosted by Sandhills. Its asset listings on TractorHouse.com and Equipmentfacts.com drew impressive attention as well.
EQUIPMENTFACTS’ GLOBAL IMPRINT
Although bidders could bid by phone as well as in person, over 50% of the assets were sold online through Equipmentfacts’ live web stream. More than 1,600 bidders participated from all 50 U.S. states and 12 countries around the globe: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, China, Poland, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize.
AUCTION HIGHLIGHTS
A high-horsepower 2016 John Deere 9620RX tractor was a late addition to the sale, being added just days beforehand. Despite missing most of the sale’s advertising period, the 2,200-hour Deere sold for $380,000, a full $50,000 over its auction value. A seller had hoped to get $200,000 for a 2015 John Deere DB60 planter, which ended up selling for $230,000 on the yearend sale. And a 2012 Kenworth T800 day cab, purchased for a mere $25,000 on a competing auction platform two months earlier, found a new buyer willing to pay $55,000 for it with the help of Equipmentfacts’ vast reach. The combined sale value for both days was just over $8.8 million from 437 items sold, with nearly $4.7 million coming from Equipmentfacts. That’s a little more than 53% of the total brought in through online bidding from the live video stream of the sale. Ask your Sandhills rep for more information about adding global webcasting to your next live auction with Equipmentfacts.