The Orange Dump Truck and Other Auction Nightmares

By: Marsha Boulton

There is nothing like an auction for drama, entertainment, warm pop and organized confusion. Particularly, if you want to buy something that you never thought you would ever feel a need to own.

If your Tupperware collection is missing that one final element to reach completion, if you just can’t own enough used waffle irons of if you are constantly in fear of running out of anything from pillowcases to jackhammers – a country auction about as close to Nirvana as you may ever come.

When I first moved to the country, every auction in my area seemed like a potential gold mind. People smart enough to be retiring from the business I was getting into were having auctions that served as a great repository both in terms of value and information.

At an auction you can ask questions about farm machinery that you have never seen before. More often than not, there will be someone leaning against it who not only tells you what the contraption does, but also offers a theory of its ability to ever function in the future.

Of course, you must be wary because disinformation can also form part of the auction mentality. Somehow items that were in “good working order” the day before a sale have a nasty habit of falling apart the day after a sale.

Also, the definition of “good working order” sometimes stretches the envelope of reality. A friend of mine bought a stone picker at an auction and it does work. Unfortunately, it works at twice the speed anyone would expect.

Stores about auction bargains are often like fish tales. The bargain seems to grow larger with each telling, but that is half the fun.

Over the years I have had some good fortune, but I have yet to bid on a cookie jar containing enough money to pay the mortgage. That is only one of many stories I have heard – and it always makes me look twice when an auctioneer holds up an innocent-looking cookie jar.

Then, of course, there was the day the 1952 orange Dodge dump truck ended up in my yard, courtesy of a bidder cursed with auction fever.

I took a male companion to a farm auction and made the mistake of letting him wander off alone. While I waited patiently for the auctioneer to hold up an old pickle crock, my fellow fell into the company of some farmer neighbours who were camped out on the other side of the barn where the machinery was being auctioned. I guess they spotted the city slicker and decided to have some fun because the next thing he knew they were offering him a little sip of something from the swish barrel out behind the chicken shed. I bid about as far as I was prepared to go on the crock, and added a few extra bids for good measure, which is my form of auction revenge. Then I wandered to find my friend.

There was a lot of machinery for auction. Rows hay bines, wagons, manure spreaders and such. Smack dab in the middle of the row was a huge old dump truck pained cadmium orange. I heard a shout go up as it was auctioned and then the crowd moved on.

As I scanned the human mass, I saw my urban buddy and managed a wave. He fairly bounded across the field, grinning from ear to ear and positively glowing from his venture behind the chicken coop.

Sure enough, he had become the joyful owner of an uncertified, engine-seized, ancient orange dump truck. The story was rather jumbled, but it seemed his newfound friends had told him it actually worked, but no one else knew that it did. They had also told him that it would not sell for more than 60 dollars because everyone just thought it was scrap. So, the boys dared him to buy it, and he did- for just 55 bucks. The boys were rolling with laughter by this time and still snickering at my dilemma as they ambled out the lane way.

It all worked out in the end. My neighbour, Elmer, who collects old dump trucks for usable parts traded me a new hitch on my pick-up for the orange nightmare. Then he turned around and sold the antique ram head hood ornament for 125 dollars.

My foolish friend recovered from the swish with fond memories of owning a dump truck for a day, and I vowed never to allow city slickers to wander off at auctions.