Going ... going ... here! Ritchie Bros. finds home for Utah auctions

LAKE POINT, Tooele County — Is this the place?

As you drive along the off-ramp from Interstate 80 at Exit 99, you have little sense of where the 37-acre site for Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers is located. You can't readily see it from the main road or as you approach on the freeway, but after making one right turn, driving a short distance over a bridge and down a gravel road, there it is — acres and acres covered with almost every conceivable piece of heavy equipment ever made.

The site on Thursday was lined with scores of tractors, backhoes, cranes, dump trucks, cement mixers, pickup trucks, semitrailers, flatbeds, tools and even golf carts.

Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor would be in heaven.

Thursday marked the official opening of Ritchie Bros.' new, permanent site in Tooele County. It is a significant milestone for the global firm, which has conducted auctions at temporary locations in Utah since its first, in St. George, in 1985.

"We've conducted about 26 auctions in Utah in the past 25 years," Keith Spicer, the company's area manager, told the Deseret News. The new site will now allow the company to conduct auctions approximately every three months and attract buyers from throughout the region on a regular basis, he said.

"About 85 percent of our customers are end-users," he said. "Some are dealers, and some are just regular people."

Spicer said contractors, banks, new and used equipment dealers and brokers also participate in their unreserved auctions, meaning items have no minimum bid and owners cannot bid on their consigned property.

The Salt Lake City regional auction site is at 1428 East Hardy Road in Lake Point, an unincorporated community in Tooele County. It is the company's 22nd permanent site in the U.S. and 41st worldwide.

Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia,, the company is the world's largest industrial auctioneer and operates in more then 100 countries, generating $3.5 billion in gross auction proceeds annually, according to the company's website.

Spicer said the Utah location would generate about $30 million a year, up from about $22 million previously.

He described the new site as "a nice central hub" for contractors and others, such as veteran auction participant Larry Stubbs, an equipment dealer from Las Vegas. He came to Utah looking to bid on a few trucks, backhoes and trailers. While the competition was stiff in the morning from the more than 1,000 other bidders, Stubbs was able to secure at least one of the trucks he bid on for $10,000.

As for whether he felt like he got a bargain, Stubbs said only time would tell.

"You never know," he said, "until you get them back home and see how much work they need."

e-mail: jlee@desnews.com