Copart Inc., a Fairfield, Calif.-based company that auctions off wrecked vehicles for insurers, has bought 33 acres of undeveloped land near Spokane International Airport for a planned vehicle storage and processing facility.


The property is located just west of Hayford Road on the south side of McFarlane Road, about a mile west of the airport terminal. Another auto auction business, Spokane-based DAA Northwest, occupies a large site northeast of there, at 2215 S. Hayford Road.


Copart, which does business as Copart Auto Auctions and conducts its auctions entirely over the Internet, bought the land along McFarlane from Jack Gillingham Jr. and Randall J. Gillingham for about $1.2 million, Spokane County real estate excise tax documents show. Jack Gillingham formerly owned Western Refuse Co., of Cheney.


Paul Styer, Coparts Fairfield, Calif.-based senior vice president and general counsel, says the company is anxious to open the facility here as soon as possible.


Were happy to be expanding into Spokane. Its an area we need to be in, he says.


The facility will employ 10 to 20 people and is expected to draw buyers from several hundred miles around, Styer says. The site that Copart has bought here will be fenced, graded, and landscaped for vehicle storage, and an office building, probably with no more than 5,000 to 10,000 square feet of floor space, will be erected there, he says.


Some work already is beginning at the site, says Dick Edwards, of Spokanes Hawkins Edwards Inc., who along with a California broker handled the real estate transaction.


Founded in 1982, publicly traded Copart provides vehicle suppliersmostly insurance companieswith a range of services to process and sell salvage vehicles through auctions. Buyers of the vehicles are mostly licensed dismantlers, rebuilders, and used vehicle dealers.


Salvage vehicles either have been damaged so badly theyve been deemed a total loss for insurance or business purposes or are recovered stolen vehicles for which insurance settlements already were made.


Copart generates its revenues mostly from auction fees paid by vehicle suppliers and buyers, as well as from related fees for services such as towing and storage. However, it also has expanded recently, mostly in the East, into the public auctioning of used vehicles on behalf of clients such as banks, leasing and financing companies, and auto dealers.


The growing company currently operates 113 facilities in the U.S. and Canada, including eight in the Northwest.


Listed on the Nasdaq trading system, Copart reported net income of $79.2 million on revenues of $400.8 million in its fiscal year ended July 31, 2004, up from net income of $57.2 million on revenues of $347.4 million in the previous year. At the end of its last fiscal year, it employed about 2,200 people.


Copart converted all of its salvage vehicle auction facilities from live auctions to an Internet-based auction style during its 2004 fiscal year, using a technology it developed.


The technology combines two bidding processes. In preliminary bidding, prospective buyers enter bids either at a bidding station at the auction facility during a three-day preview period or over the Internet. Similar to eBay, bidders can see the current high bid on the vehicle they want to buy.


They enter the maximum price they are willing to pay for a vehicle, and the system increases the bid incrementally on their behalf, as warranted, up to that maximum.


Preliminary bidding ends one hour before the start of an Internet-only virtual sale, conducted on a real-time format, during which the system represents the high preliminary bidder and continues to submit bids on their behalf up to their maximum bid. When bidding stops, a countdown begins. If no bids are received during the countdown, the vehicle sells to the last recorded highest bidder.