Denver’s trash trucks are auction treasures
By Tillie Fong 
| August 31, 2009 | 11:01 AM
Reg Hilta, 62, of Toronto, stands next to one of the garbage trucks that he bought Saturday for Canadian firm AmTruck. (RMI photo by Tillie Fong)
Ever want your own fire engine? How about a street sweeper? Or an airport runway broom, or even a bookmobile?
Once a year, Denver holds a heavy equipment auction selling everything from paint-striping machines to used garbage trucks.
“The majority of the items have already been replaced with new items,” said Nancy Kuhn, fleet administrator with Denver Public Works’ Fleet Maintenance Division. “When we get the approval to buy a new unit, the old one is surplused out.”
On Saturday, more than 100 people gathered in the parking lot of the Fleet Maintenance building on Roslyn Street for the auction, which listed more than 300 lots.
The auction consisted of two parts: the “boneyard” and the parade. The boneyard is where bidders can buy used industrial or mechanical equipment or parts. These can range from sewer pipe sections to metal cutting saws.
The parade is when the moving stock — the garbage trucks, street sweepers and runway brooms — are driven in front of a tent of bidders to show that they are in working condition.
The boneyard
In a dirt lot, piles of miscellaneous items are arranged in two rough rows along a wire fence. A man in a bright orange vest holds a sign on a pole to indicate which lot is being bid on, and the crowd moves along with him as the auction progresses. The auctioneer calls out bids from the back of a pickup truck that inches its way around the yard. Several men in orange vests walk around the crowd, looking for a slight nod or hand wave or the flash of a numbered card to indicate a bid.
Emergency equipment dealer Bryan Farr, 39, of Denver, learned the hard way to pay attention to his surroundings. Despite being an eight-year veteran of the Denver auction, he was surprised to learn that he was the winner of Lot 62, which he unknowingly purchased for $35 while in an animated conversation with fellow used equipment dealer Steve Ellison, of Thornton.
“What did I buy?” the bewildered Farr asked as he looked at a pile of items wrapped in plastic on top of a wooden pallet. “I was just talking to Steve.”
But the auctioneer had moved on to the next lot, and Farr walked around his new purchase, trying to find something useful that he could sell.
“That’s a Kuhn,” he said, pointing to a tan beverage dispenser on top of the pile. “Caterers use those — I can probably sell that for $100 and make back the $35 I pay for this lot.”
Just before the mistaken bid, Farr had won a Jaws of Life for $1,100.
“A lot of fire departments can’t afford to get one because it is so expensive,” he said.
The one he bought is an older version that probably sold for $20,000 when new. He bid on a second Jaws of Life and got it for $750. Later, he snapped up two snow plows: one for $250 and a second one with a truck attachment for $650. He said he sometimes spends up to $15,000 a day at an auction.
Lights, camera, action
Many of the serious bidders in the boneyard are used equipment sellers and have specific lots that they are interested in.
Several pallets of red, white and blue light bars — the type you see on top of police cars — were fought over by two Aurora light dealers: James Flammia, 35, and Moin Haroon, 39.
At least two people approached Flammia after he won a pallet of light bars for $500 and a pallet of single red, white or blue lights for $450. He said he usually sells the lights to police officers or firefighters who want to put them on their personal vehicles, and he verifies that they are authorized to have them.
“I know that they (police impersonators) are an issue, and I will not contribute to that,” he said.
But he said he knows that some people may want the light bars as a fun collectible.
“They may want to put one up in their garage or over their bar,” he said, noting that it’s not illegal for regular folks to own the police light bars as long as they don’t put them on their vehicles.
Flammia said that one of the men who approached him in the boneyard about buying a light bar had an unusual use in mind.
“He wanted it for his kid’s John Deere Gator” utility vehicle, he said.
This was Flammia’s first time at the Denver auction, and he only learned about it online the day before. He said he normally hits other auctions around the state about two or three times a year and buys what he can for $3,000 to $4,000 at a time. He resells his finds online.
One item that he won for $150 — a single red, white and blue light bar that elevates — Flammia said he plans to put on his own vehicle. However, he’s taking out the lighted arrows, switching out the lights in the bar, and putting the name of his Web site on the side of the elevating arm.
Moin, who sells graphic lighting as well as emergency lights, beat Flammia on four pallets. He estimates than he won about 70 light bars among the lots. Moin said that he has been a regular at the Denver auction in the past 12 years and that the city doesn’t always have the police light bars for sale.
He typically sells the light bars to fire and police departments, not individuals. “I do not sell for personal use,” he said.
But Moin said his top customer is a prop company in Hollywood that supplies police and military vehicles for movie-making.
“They pay top dollar, so I’m going to give them a call first,” he said.
Bidding on bargains
Ellison, who sells industrial equipment, decided to make a bid for a used rescue tarp — the kind used by firefighters to catch people jumping from buildings.
“It’s kinda cool,” he said of the $10 bid. “It’s a fun thing to have.”
The tarp is a bit tattered, with holes clearly visible next to the frame. He doesn’t know if he would be able to resell it, but at ten bucks, it’s a bargain. He said a new tarp would run about $1,000.
Ellison has been coming to the annual heavy equipment auction for more than a decade but said he noticed a few differences this year.
“Because of the bad economy, there are a lot more buyers here” and more competition in bidding, he said. “Now you have to bring more money.”
Arguably, one of the best bargains Saturday went to Danny Kulp, 68, of Commerce City, who won 40 theater seats for $5.
Initially, no one bid on the lot, prompting the auctioneer to ask the crowd if anyone wanted to set up a home theater with the seats. He started the bidding at $10 but had no takers, so he lowered the price to $5. Kulp, who was looking at nearby lots, decided to acknowledge the bid, but then no one else went higher, so he wound up winning the lot.
Kulp, though, didn’t think he got a deal. He scours auctions for items that he can sell to metal scrap dealers, and the seats had very little metal attached to them. He said he knows of a neighbor or two who might be interested in buying some for home use, but he plans to scrap most of the seats.
“I will get a little more money than what I paid for them,” he said. “But if you figure in the cost of getting them out of here and shipping and such, it’s not worth the trouble.”
The parade
While the boneyard was a place for rock-bottom deals, the parade was where Denver made the most money.
The highest bid Saturday — $64,000 — was for a 1988 Caterpillar 966E front loader with a 5-yard bucket that had logged 18,323 hours of service. The next lot, a 1998 Komatsu W450-3 with a 6-yard bucket and 12,806 service hours, went for only $20,000.
“It just happens sometimes,” Denver Public Works’ Kuhn said of the high bid. “It’s not unusual for that vehicle. You just never know what you can get.”
Ten years ago, the city decided to take a different approach to auctioning off its heavy equipment vehicles, which are sold after they have been replaced with newer ones.
“Some of them are replaced because of a program change. They may be less fuel efficient or have an emission issue, so you want to replace them,” Kuhn said.
Instead of doing boneyard-type bidding, the city decided to drive the vehicles past a tent where the bidders are seated. The vehicles are washed, cleaned and detailed for the auction.
“We found that we get top dollar when we parade them,” Kuhn said.
Still, some large vehicles did not participate in Saturday’s parade. Among them were four fire engines, which were parked in a row near the bidders’ tent. They were auctioned off in much the same way as the items in the boneyard, with people standing around the vehicles and making bids.
The bids were low: $1,800 for a 1992 Seagrave fire truck, $3,200 for a 1983 Mack rescue vehicle, $1,900 for a E-One pumper truck, and $2,500 for a 1992 Seagrave aerial truck with a 110-foot ladder.
None of the winning bidders wanted to be identified. One man said only that he plans to scrap the fire engine he won, and a second man, when asked what he planned to do with his prize, pointed to his cap, which bore the name of an equipment and metal company. Two others didn’t want to comment.
“There could be 200 different reasons why someone would buy a fire truck,” Kuhn said. “Maybe they want the engine, or just the chassis. Maybe they are parts dealers and they just want the aluminum.”
Bookmobiles and trash trucks
One unusual item in Saturday’s auction was a Denver Public Library bookmobile, a 1997 Blue Bird 3700C bus with a generator. Only two men were interested, with John Byrne, president of Byrne Equipment Sales in Craig winning it for $9,400. He declined to say why he purchased it and referred questions to his wife, Julia, who was unaware that he had won the vehicle and also declined to comment.
Not everyone was mum about their reason for being at the auction or why they bid on certain items.
Take Pat MacIntosh, 54, fleet manager for the city of Gunnison, who was given a budget of $30,000 to buy a side-loading trash truck. He put in the winning $23,000 bid for a 2001 Mack LE613.
“It’s going to be the backup truck,” said MacIntosh, adding that Gunnison recently purchased a new side-loading garbage truck for about $100,000.
MacIntosh left the auction after winning the truck. ”That’s all I want,” he said. “I’m done.”
Several bidders, though, purchased multiple vehicles and pieces of equipment.
Reg Hilta, 62, of Toronto, is a buyer for AmTruck, a Canadian company that specializes in selling garbage trucks. With only the slightest of nods, he made bids on all 11 Leach trash trucks in the auction and won 10 of them, with bids ranging from $15,000 to $35,000.
Hilta said he hadn’t been to the Denver auction for three or four years but came this year because the city had so many garbage trucks for sale.
“The trucks are well maintained and there is no rust on them,” he said, adding that rust is a common problem with used garbage trucks in Canada. “It’s very dry here.”
Altogether, Hilta purchased 12 vehicles for his company: 10 garbage trucks and two street sweepers. He declined to say what his budget was for this auction but said he overspent slightly. Still, he was happy with the results.
Since he came to the auction alone, Hilta had to call his company to figure out a way to move all the vehicles from the Denver fleet maintenance parking lot by 3 p.m. Monday.
“We’ll probably hire a few guys to move them to a temporary lot in the city,” he said.
The street sweepers can be loaded onto a flatbed truck, but the garbage trucks will have to be driven individually to Canada.
Better-than-average results
The auction ended with a steady stream of pickup trucks and an occasional van, sport utility vehicle or delivery truck. One vehicle came from the Denver Botanic Gardens.
Many of the trucks had tool boxes in the back, some had campers, and a few had snow plows attached to the front. Prices ranged from $1,200 to $3,750.
Bidding on these vehicles went quickly, and the queue of trucks in the parade moved at a steady pace, with each vehicle pausing only a few minutes in front of the bidder tent before moving on.
Kuhn said that usually members of the general public are the ones who bid on the pickup trucks, although every now and then, a used car dealer will bid.
She couldn’t tell if more people came to the auction this year, but said that there were higher bids for items than in previous sales. She attributes this partly to the bad economy, which is prompting consumers to take a second look at public auctions.
“People can’t afford to buy new equipment, so they’re looking at buying used,” she said.
Saturday’s auction raised $1,257,000, with most of the money going back to the city’s general fund. In previous years, these auctions have generated $700,000 to $1 million.
“We’re very pleased,” Kuhn said of this year’s results. “We got a little more than we thought we would.”
Denver Public Works, Fleet Maintenance, heavy equipment auction
