NEWS ROOM
SHIFT FROM AUCTIONS TO ASSET MANAGEMENT PLATFORM TRANSFORMS RITCHIE BROS. LONG-TIME USED EQUIPMENT SALES SPECIALISTS EXPANDING BROAD PLATFORM OF SERVICES FOR CONSTRUCTION AND MORE BY LEE TOOP, EDITOR
B
ack in 1958, three brothers who ran a furniture store in Kelowna, British Columbia, held an auction that turned out to be the start of a new venture that, in the years since, has turned into one of the world’s largest heavy equipment auction businesses. Moving from selling furniture to auctioneering is quite a shift, but it proved successful for the Ritchie Brothers. Today, the company that followed on from that first auction is making another business move: from an auction house to software and service provider targeted at equipment fleet owners and managers.
The Internet and software has given people more and more ways to not only sell used equipment, but start to manage their fleets and their assets so they can maximize the return on that particular investment. Matt Ackley Chief Marketing Officer, Ritchie Bros.
14
heavyequipmentguide.ca | JANUARY 2022
Ritchie Bros. has expanded from in-person unreserved auctions into more and more online spaces, and through a string of acquisitions it is growing its fleet management strengths to become a one-stop dashboard for tracking, managing and selling assets. The Burnaby, B.C.-headquartered company with more than 2,200 full-time employees has certainly come a long way from that first auction.
AUCTIONS SERVE LARGE USED EQUIPMENT MARKET
Auctions are a key way for heavy equipment owners and buyers to dispose of and pick up assets at prices that make the most sense for them. Matt Ackley, Ritchie Bros. chief marketing officer, describes auctions as “the most efficient way to determine an asset value or to get the appropriate value for a particular asset.” For Ritchie Bros., heavy equipment auctions, held quarterly at specific locations, helped to bring supply and demand together and create an efficient marketplace. That worked very well for the company over many years, before the internet arrived and changed the auction game. “As Ritchie Bros. looked at itself over the years, it asked ‘How do we adapt to this new paradigm where efficient markets can be made every day via the internet, via Google search, online where people can be reached around the world in an instant?’” Ackley described. Ackley, an engineer with a career that saw him spend time
