It’s a preview day at the Bar None Auction yard in east Sacramento, California.
The 18 acre dirt lot feels like a blend of well-organized junkyard and used car dealership. More than 2,000 items are set for online auction the next day, including beat-up ambulances to portable saunas.
“Some stuff will come from government agencies,” said Jeff Huber, Bar None’s marketing head. “The other piece is just individuals, corporations, businesses themselves, older equipment they’re looking to offload, maybe to make room for new stuff or just free up some cash.”
Huber gave me a tour of the auction’s biggest attractions — a stretch of the yard the Bar None employees call “Main Street”.
“And you’ll see in front of us we’ll have a nice big wheel loader, beyond that we have a motor grader, then we have a nice big excavator, then we got some mini ex’s,” he said.
Huber described rows upon row of construction equipment, often with Caterpillar and John Deere logos adorning their sides and keys in the cabs. He walked me to a skid steer — kind of an all-terrain Bobcat type-thing. He wasn’t sure if it would start up.
“You know, some things will be dead,” said Huber. “So like, if you were to come out and you were to turn the key and nothing happens, we will try to jump the vehicles and the equipment for you.”
Bar None doesn’t certify that the equipment won’t need some tune-ups before use. Which is why, in a different section of the yard, John Van Tassel did a close inspection of the semitruck trailer he’s thinking of bidding on.
“You just kind of do a little walk around, get under there check your breaks, check your tires cause tires are expensive,” said Van Tassel.
Even with a pretty big crack on the wood section of the deck, there’s been plenty of early bidding online. “Yeah so this trailer right now, I think I just looked at it, it’s $10,500,” said Van Tassel. “And I’d probably go up to $15,000.”
New trailers can run you $30,000.
Van Tassel works in construction. He’s a truck driver and equipment operator for a Northern California bridge-construction and repair company. But he’s actually here for his side hustle: his own trucking business.
“I’m getting my own thing going. I have a freight brokerage, so I do freight brokering. And then trying to pick up some of my own accounts with my own equipment,” he said.
There’s a lot of “getting my own thing going” buyers in the used equipment market these days.
Bar None territory manager Brad Fanini said that tells you something about how the construction industry is faring. Not slow, per se, but slowing.
“So you buy a little excavator go work Saturday and Sunday to try and feed your family, that’s what you do,” said Fanini. “It’s where the side hustle kicks in, these guys, they’ve got free time on their hands.”
Residential construction is especially lagging. Housing completions are down about 7% from last year. Tariffs are also part of the equation.
But Fanini said a run-up in sticker price at the Caterpillar dealership isn’t necessarily good news for auction yards.
“It’s kind of that double edged sword,” said Fanini. “We want customers going in there, buying new equipment. And that way we can take the advantage of selling their old equipment.”
The actual online auction itself is not that much more exciting than eBay. But in total, about $8 million worth of stuff was sold. That includes the five-by-ten dump trailer Ken Dilbeck picked up from the yard the following week.
“I bid $4,600 and after taxes and everything, registration, it came to $5,600. That’s a good deal,” Dilbeck said.
The dump trailer is actually brand new. Bar None frequently auctions new items they get their hands on.
But Dilbeck has relied on the used market to re-launch his remodeling company. He said auction yards are a lifeline for smaller contractors.
“I’m trying to start my company up again and everything. I bought $50,000 worth of stuff, and that would have cost me $200,000 and you can’t afford that,” said Dilbeck.
After picking up his dump trailer at Bar None, Dilbeck said he’s actually headed to another auction yard to load it with $1,500 worth of other stuff he bought.
