compliment

I was at auto auction earlier this week. If you have never been to one of these it is an experience that you will not believe. You are in a large barn like structure. There are lanes for the cars to go through in front of auction blocks where the auctioneer and clerks work. There is a car that is being sold in front of the auction block and up to 10 cars in line behind that car. Average time to sell a car is about 60-90 seconds.

There are from 4 to 16 lanes depending on the auction you attend. At a large auction the consignment on a given day can be 3,000 or more cars. I have gotten bidder numbers over 1800 at times. This is how many people who are there trying to buy cars. Some cars can have a huge crowd, others might only have one or two bidders.

I always talk to my friends and associates to try to gain knowledge about what is going on in their business, if it is good or bad, up or down etc. I was talking about inventory and how difficult it is to buy the nicer cars, because that is what everybody wants. This individual made an interesting comment. He said we both buy and a sell a lot of cars. You tend to buy a little bit nicer car than I do. You look a little closer at them and try to be more careful about what you buy than we do.

I thanked him for giving me a compliment. I know that when the car comes to the dealership, the fewer problems we have to correct before sale the better off we are. I would rather spend a few more dollars and buy a nicer car, rather than buy one that needs a lot of reconditioning. Sometimes when you really look at a car, once you have started fixing it, it is hard to find a place where you can say everything is fixed and the car is in good running order.