Going once, going twice... sold!
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Auctioneer Brightwells sells more than municipal vehicles, it handles horses, property and antiques too By Steve Banner We are seeing some better stuff come through now though, and anything clean is fetching a premium price"
IF YOU WERE HOPING to buy an ex-council tipper or gritter at auction then Madley in rural Herefordshire might not be the first place you would think of visiting: but perhaps it should be.
Auction house Brightwells holds a truck and plant sale on a modern, 40-acre site on the second Friday of every month, and has made municipal vehicles one of its specialities.
Finding keen bidders is not too much of a problem, according to plant and machinery director Nick Gorst. "We get rid of 70% of everything that is entered," he says. Attracting entries is another matter: in these austere
times, councils are hanging on to their existing vehicles for longer rather than replacing them. As a consequence, there are fewer ex-council vans and trucks around and those that do come onto the market tend to be older than those that might have been seen when the public sector was betterfunded.
"We're talking five to seven years old rather than three to four years old," says Gorst. "We are seeing some better stuff come through now though, and anything clean is fetching a premium price."
A Brightwells auction typically sees an entry of 80 to 90 vehicles and trailers, some of which are sourced from the Royal Mail, the Environment Agency and leasing companies, as well as municipal authorities.
They are typically accompanied by a sale of plant — excavators, dumpers and so on — and various smaller pieces of equipment. Overseas buyers
Who bids? A mixture, according to Gorst, including end-users, dealers and exporters. "A lot of the gritters end up going over to eastern Europe, with people in countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic among the buyers." Farmers also bid, particularly for tractor units and semi-trailers.
As for prices, a pair of 06-plate Daf CF75 26-tonne tipper grabs fetched £14,800 and £15,100 respectively at a recent sale, while at the lighter end of the scale a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 311CDI on an 08-plate with a GreenMech chipper/shredder went for £12,000.
A Daf 85CF 8x4 hook-loader on an 02-plate was knocked down for £8,200 and a Volvo FL6E tipper grab, also on an 02-plate, went for £11,600. Gorst and his colleagues will soon have an online bidding system up and running but, for those who want to bid in person, Madley is not as far off the beaten track as might be supposed. "It's about 25 minutes from the end of the M50 and easily reached from Gloucester, Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham," says Gorst. •
What else does it do?
Based a few miles from Medley in Leominster, Brightwells regularly auctions horses, farm livestock and machinery, fine art, cars and land as well as trucks and plant. Established in 1846, it is also an estate agent and provides a variety of other services including chartered surveying.
Among other activities, it holds four wine auctions a year, with each sale comprising more than 500 lots.