Muskrat Falls auction helps break new regional sales record for Ritchie Bros.

Ritchie Bros. was all prepped and ready to conduct their latest regional auction in Atlantic Canada when Hurricane Fiona showed up and had other plans.

The multi-day Timed Auction scheduled for late September featured close to 4,000 items stored at three locations: Truro, NS; St. John’s, NL and Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador. Unfortunately, on September 24, Hurricane Fiona hit the east coast with wind speeds of 165 km/h (103 mph). Thousands of trees were knocked down and uprooted, while rains caused localized floods.

For the safety of our employees and customers, we quickly made the decision to reschedule our Atlantic Canada Timed Auction to October 3 and 4. The rescheduled auction ended up breaking nearly every single company record for the region.

On October 3 and 4 we attracted more than 4,600 bidders from 40+ countries, resulting in strong pricing for most equipment categories.

“Approximately 70% of the equipment in the auction was used in the Muskrat Falls Generating Project and sold from an extremely remote location in Happy Valley—16 hours away from our nearest auction site,” said Ryan Pottruff, Regional Sales Manager, Ritchie Bros. “More than 2,700 items were stored in Happy Valley—everything needed to run a big project, including massive generators, big yellow iron, mobile structures, trucks, and small tools.”

“Regardless of the location of the items, we saw great results,” added Raphael Patola, Director, Operations. “Once again proving the benefit of our satellite yards and online inspection capabilities.”

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Big sellers in Atlantic Canada

This our second Timed Auction event for Atlantic Canada and the technology solution is providing exceptional results for sellers and buyers alike.

Here are five of the biggest sellers from last week:

2016 Mack MRU613 12×6 concrete pump truck – CA$675,000 (US$489,510)

Cat C32 910kW containerized gen set – CA$282,500 (US$204,869)

Mega 240x60ft mobile dome structure – CA$185,000 (US$134,162)

2014 Caterpillar 966M wheel loader – CA$177,500 (US$128,723)

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2013 Terex RT780 80-ton 4×4 rough terrain crane – CA$157,500 (US$114,219)

All items were sold without minimum bids or reserve prices.

Clean-up continues in Eastern Canada

With thousands of trees down, blocking roads and driveways across Atlantic Canada, our operations employees quickly got to work helping the local community. There is still a ton of work to be done, but our guys worked for days with their chainsaws to get things going.

Ritchie Bros. has also made a donation to the Red Cross to help with local relief efforts.

See also

Beyond the Bids: Building the most liquid marketplace in the world