I am just getting ready to go to the auction and I am
thinking about things, like things. I am going to buy and sell 900 cars
this week, close to a record for me. I am thinking about where the buyers
are from, market regionality, CRs, arbitration, post-sale inspections fees,
auction fees, the amount of working cash necessary, technology, and
transportation. Man, it’s amazing how the game has changed over the past
ten years compared to the prior 32 years I have been in the wholesale
business.
In my opinion it is just the beginning. Cost of
acquisition is overwhelming so that process will change. The inefficiency
of static wholesale listings is so bad that will change as well justy like the
eBay craze came and went in a short period, so will the insanity of listing 100
cars to sell 3 due to sellers unwilling to sell at market value and buyers
overwhelmed looking and bidding on 1000 cars to buy 2. It’s
actually brain dead. We have moved away and from the most beautiful for
of inventory exchange in history, the live auction driven by the hammer, into
meshugas.
Relax, it will be back because the efficiency and beauty of
greed versus fear in an open arena will not be trumped.
Just like the spirit of the human being naturally refuses to
be stifled, the fact/need to find the highest and best market for liquidating
wholesale inventory will not be trumped by a non-player’s invention to be in
the middle of the middle.
I give it two years and some Christopher Columbus will come
to the conclusion that the live auction with a hammer, simulcast, a CR, a
seller that has the balls and brains to price to the market, and a venue that
isn’t looking to retire on the amount they charge for each transaction
!@#$%^&*()__)(*&^%$#@! will be the winner, as long as there are still
guys like us that are still in the game (not sure if you are paying attention
but there are fewer and fewer guys in our game…and no young guys getting
in).
P.S. I still say we need to have a united voice but the
apathy that we as a group show seems as if that is a pipe dream. Anybody
awake?
Robert
Hollenshead