Why Businesses Choose Online Auctions for Fleet Management
Fleet management priorities are changing. According to a recent report, 73% of companies now say ordering and vehicle replacements top their list, while 61% point to cost savings.
Interestingly, this is true on both sides of fleet management — buyers want to purchase high-quality equipment without breaking the bank, while sellers want to get the best value for their machinery by connecting with serious buyers, not just local lookers.
Online auctions from Bid Equip LLC help businesses get the best of both worlds. Here’s how.
Are You Losing Money Managing Your Fleet the Old Way? Discover a Smarter Strategy
As fleets get bigger, budgets often struggle to keep pace. This puts fleet managers in a tough position: Keeping older machinery can negatively impact productivity, but buying new equipment may be out of reach with current budgets.
Online auctions with Bid Equip offer a better way. Instead of trying to find local buyers or listing equipment through online buy-and-sell sites, Bid Equip provides a centralized and trusted platform for online sales. Prospective buyers can see and compare all available equipment, while our licensed auctioneer ensures that all auctions are handled fairly, transparently, and efficiently.
Traditional fleet liquidation can be slow and costly. For example, buyers may cancel at the last moment or attempt to negotiate a deal after agreeing to a fair price. Online fleet management strategies provide the visibility and transparency that your company needs to make the most of fleet management operations.
Save Time, Cut Costs — How Online Auctions Simplify Fleet Liquidation
Online auctions offer several benefits for fleet liquidation.
Reduced complexity
Hosting auctions on-site is difficult and time-consuming. Teams either need to make space in current warehouses for machinery viewing and bidding or rent out local venues for this purpose. In addition, they need to market the event to local buyers. This often means digital and paper advertisements, along with connecting directly with prospective purchasers via email or phone. In addition, attendance at in-person auctions can the negatively impacted by factors beyond your control, such as weather or traffic.
Best case? You spend a significant amount of money and sell most of your old equipment. Worst case? Your auction brings in less than it costs to set up and run.
With online auctions, you simply submit details about your equipment, and we take care of the rest. Our teams handle marketing and social outreach, and since auctions are carried out primarily online (we also have several in-person events each month), you don’t have to worry about inclement weather causing poor attendance.
Increased reliability
Online auctions are also more reliable. Venues may cancel, or other business priorities may sideline auction plans, requiring companies to notify buyers that plans and dates have changed.
This doesn’t happen with online auctions — buyers and sellers can be confident that auctions will start on time and offer all listed items for sale.
It’s worth noting, however, that not all online auctions are created equal. With Bid Equip, you get a licensed, experienced auctioneer who knows how to get the best value for items on the docket. Plus, you get post-auction data that shows exactly how your lots performed and how many bids were placed, which can help inform your next auction efforts.
Improved savings
Equipment storage and transport are costly. If you’re using a local or state-wide auction company, you’re typically on the hook to bring your equipment to the auction location on or before the sale date. If you arrive before, you may need to pay for storage. If you opt for the day of, this means assigning staff members to transport your equipment or paying a professional service to ensure your machinery arrives on time.
Opting for online auctions means your equipment stays in your shop or warehouse until deals are complete. You can specify delivery or pickup conditions, or work with buyers to facilitate an exchange.
Enhanced transparency
Finally, choosing online auctions can enhance transparency by reducing the need for third-party brokers and other middlemen. With every additional person involved, the complexity and cost of your auction rise. If you have to pay the auction house to promote the sale, a broker to facilitate connections, and an auctioneer for their time and expertise, what seems like a cost-effective option can quickly become expensive and inefficient.
With online auctions, everything is handled from a single, secure platform. You know exactly how, when, and where your equipment will be sold, and you can watch the process in real time.
Get More Eyes on Your Fleet by Reaching Serious Buyers
More interest in your equipment means higher sale prices and fewer buyers just looking at your inventory with no intent to purchase.
Consider a company trying to sell 10 excavators to make way for newer, larger models. If transactions are kept entirely local, this naturally limits the prospective buyer pool. Within municipalities or even states, there are a finite number of companies looking to bolster their fleet with well-maintained heavy equipment.
This approach can create two problems: lookers and low-ballers. Lookers are curious about your equipment but have no plans to purchase. They might be local competitors or equipment enthusiasts who are curious about the market but aren’t serious about buying.
Low-ballers, meanwhile, are interested in your equipment but don’t want to pay your asking price. Since you’re selling locally, there may be few (or no) other offers, making them hard to turn down. If you do choose to take these offers, you’re taking a loss, which makes room for new equipment but leaves you with more capital costs to cover. If you refuse low-ball offers, meanwhile, you’re back where you started: Looking for prospective buyers. Scheduling and marketing another auction means even more spending, which makes it even harder to recoup initial costs.
With online auctions from Bid Equip, you get broad exposure that helps capture committed leads and get the highest value for your equipment. To help maximize your reach, Bid Equip uses email blasts, SMS messages, social campaigns, and partner platforms to let buyers easily check upcoming auctions. This creates an interconnected, nationwide marketing strategy that reaches your target audience: B2B equipment buyers looking to expand their fleet.
Want to Sell Smarter? Use Data to Drive Better Fleet Decisions
The more information you have, the better your equipment sales decisions. For example, equipment often sells more quickly in the months leading up to spring as the ground starts to thaw and new projects get underway. Conversely, it may be more difficult to sell equipment in the winter months as businesses look to consolidate staff and bring down spending.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. With the Bid Equip platform, your fleet managers can see how many people viewed your equipment, how many bids it received, and how its selling price compares to previous purchases.
Equipped with this data, your fleet managers are better prepared to create effective sales strategies and evaluate current fleet performance. Consider a quarterly fleet review. If auction data shows sluggish sales, it may not be the time to invest in cutting-edge machinery. If equipment sales remain steady, however, it’s worth considering an upgrade backed by the budget benefits of selling your equipment online.
Data can also help with long-term fleet planning. If you have a fleet of 30 older-model excavators, you may be considering an upgrade. Selling and replacing all 30 at once through online excavator auctions can be challenging — if new models experience unexpected challenges, you could be in the unenviable position of trying to buy back your own equipment. With accurate auction data, you can see when equipment sales are strongest and what type of equipment brings in the highest bids. This lets you design a fleet replacement strategy that’s tied to the success of online auction sales. Since you’re in the know about these sales numbers, you can purchase new equipment with confidence that bids will match expectations, and you’ll bring in enough money to cover capital costs.
Go Green Without Sacrificing Profit — Reduce Your Carbon Footprint While Selling
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives and goals are now critical components of business strategies, especially for those that rent or use heavy equipment.
Consider a construction company with a fleet of excavators, forklifts, and trucks. Both investors and customers want to see evidence that the company is taking steps to reduce its environmental footprint. One simple way to facilitate ESG goals is to replace older equipment with newer, more efficient solutions. This could mean purchasing hybrid or electric vehicles that reduce fuel consumption, or more advanced gas-powered equipment that can connect with monitoring and management applications that allow companies to track usage over time.
But purchasing new equipment comes with a potential problem: Taking old equipment out of service. Simply letting equipment sit unused in warehouses or fields both wastes money and poses a potential risk as components rust and fluids such as oil or gas begin leaking. Selling equipment to scrap yards helps recoup some costs but can still have a detrimental impact on the environment, depending on how parts are salvaged and used.
Selling equipment online, meanwhile, helps extend the lifecycle of older machinery and helps recoup some of its initial cost.
Choosing fleet auctions offers ESG advantages such as:
Reputation benefits
Companies with strong ESG programs are often preferred by customers. For example, a construction company that prioritizes low emissions may be the ideal fit for an enterprise looking to improve its ESG position with stakeholders and regulatory bodies.
In addition, commitment to environmental stewardship can improve public perception of your company. If you take action to reduce waste and emissions, your businesses can benefit from improved online word of mouth and recommendations, which can, in turn, boost revenues.
Two components are central to this process: Clearly stating your ESG goals and providing evidence that you have achieved stated outcomes. Doing the first without the second may provide an initial reputation bump, but you will lose any goodwill created if you can’t back up promises with action.
Emissions reductions
In-person auctions require you to transport or pay someone to transport your machinery. This transport process creates significant emissions, especially if you’re moving tens or hundreds of pieces of equipment.
Online auctions let you keep equipment on-site. The only emissions occur when purchasers come to collect their machinery or when you transport equipment directly to buyers.
Sustainable practices
Choosing digital fleet auctions also sets the stage for larger-scale sustainable practices.
Put simply, every ESG initiative has to start somewhere, but businesses are often overwhelmed by the number of processes and practices that could be improved. This can lead to hesitation — teams are often afraid to commit to a single course of action due to potential failure risks.
Consider a massive project, such as replacing all gas-powered heavy equipment with electric alternatives. This is time-consuming and expensive and comes with the potential to fail if new machinery doesn’t offer the same durability or performance as its less-wasteful counterparts. Committing fully to this project could set companies back months in labor and millions in spending.
Online auctions offer an easy ESG entry point. This is because they allow businesses to reduce emissions and minimize environmental impact by doing nothing. Instead of doing something — in this case, moving equipment from place to place and burning large amounts of fuel — companies can leave machinery where it is and still reap sales benefits.
Long-term management strategies
Finally, online auctions can set the stage for long-term management strategies. For example, if auctions go well and sales are steady, companies can use this money to run trials on all-electric or hybrid equipment or roll out software-based fleet monitoring. These practices, in turn, help businesses pinpoint additional opportunities for ESH initiatives.
Simplify the Online Auction Process With Bid Equip
While online auctions give equipment new life and let companies sell machinery for a fair price, fleet managers are often hesitant to take this approach. Time and resource costs are often the biggest concern — if teams spend days or weeks planning auctions just to have no one show up and no bids received, the result is significant expense with no measurable benefits.
Bid Equip handles the entire auction process from start to finish. This lets fleet managers focus on what matters: Deciding what to sell, and when — we take care of everything else.
Along with nationwide heavy equipment, forklift, skid steer, and metalworking machinery auctions, Bid Equip also offers:
- Purchasing: We pay top dollar for the machinery you need to sell. Plus, you get a commission when we sell the equipment to the next buyer.
- Appraisals: Not sure how much your equipment is worth at auction? With more than 30 years of industry experience, our teams can assess your inventory and provide an accurate figure.
- Consignment: Choose to list your equipment at our next auction. If it doesn’t sell, we’ll buy it.
- Warehousing: Need to move out the current machinery to make way for new equipment? We can store equipment or materials for you, either in our climate-controlled warehouse or on over 20 acres of secure outdoor property.
- Plant clean out: If you have equipment that needs to go right now, we’ve got you covered with complete disassembly and removal. Our teams have the skill, expertise, and tools necessary to get the job done ASAP.
Ready to Maximize Your Fleet’s Value? Let Bid Equip Handle the Heavy Lifting
Tired of putting in the work to sell fleet equipment only to have deals fall through or buyers haggle over the details? Bid Equip has a better way.
Getting started is simple: Call our auctioneer and get expert advice. Learn how to set up your fleet for auction with pictures and online listings, all backed by a licensed auctioneer. Then, sign up for SMS alerts — text “Sign Up” to 205-336-3833 to get notifications about upcoming options. This lets you track and manage your fleet sales and make adjustments to price and positioning if necessary.
Bottom line? Traditional fleet management is time-consuming, costly, and often leaves companies holding the bag on vehicles they no longer want or need. With Bid Equip, you’re in control. List your equipment at our next machinery auction — backed by a written guarantee that we’ll buy it if it doesn’t sell.
Don’t let aging equipment gather dust. Sell it online with Bid Equip to help reduce environmental impact and put money back in your pocket.
Talk to our online auction experts today.
