Government auctions/surplus buying

[Tom Dunlap]

I'm in the market for a Ford E150 van. This isn't a purchase I need to make now so I can take my time to find the perfect van.

While I've been searching I've looked on Craigslist and

https://offerupnow.com/search/

for local listings and used,

http://www.searchtempest.com/

For larger searches.

Today I stumbled back into

https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm

and found some pretty good deals on vans. The catch is that they're a bit too far away. The logistics of purchasing and shuttling home are a bit too much right now. Maybe later on.

While I was on the Gov Deals site I found the 102' firetruck for sale that I posted. That would be an interesting unit! Then I looked around the site and found lots of other vehicles and goods.

Most, not all, gov agencies do a reasonable job of maintaining equipment. I've bought muni vehicles at auction and had good luck with them.

Does anyone else have experience with auction or ex-muni vehicles?

Or maybe leads on a Ford E150 that's a 2007 or newer?

 

[SumoClimber]

I've been involved in auctions a bit, been following muni auctions here in WI for a while. Haven't bought too many vehicles, none that I've actually kept. Favors to friends and the like.

As far as used municipal vehicles, in my experience, they usually tend to be in decent shape. Most muni's have a good shop department and they tend to understand that routine maintenance prevents the big ticket problems. There's usually one or two big ticket repair or maintenance items that are supposed to be done in accordance to their schedule, but the cost is approaching that of replacement. I don't know the metrics most muni's use, have been told multiple things. The usual rule of thumb is keep fixing things until it gets to a fix that's either 10 or 20 percent of the original or replacement cost and then look into replacing things.

An auction site I keep tabs on is Proxbid. I like it because I can just do a map search and it shows me what's close w blue pins and any auction ending that day is highlighted in orange.

One odd bit of advice I can give is to watch for auctions with out-of-norm closing times. Especially if you're buying business-related items. The average bid price seems to be lower and there tends to be less last minute bidding. I bought a 1500# trash compactor for $25 last week, picking it up tomorrow. Same compactor on ebay has been selling for around $3k. Pretty sure the only reason I paid so little is that the auction ended at 8pm.