In a span of little more than a week earlier this year, two heavy-equipment auction companies sold a reported total of nearly $12 million worth of machinery at separate events here that attracted hundreds of buyers. Some of those buyers, submitting bids over the Internet, were from as far away as China, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia.

The dueling auctions were somewhat a sign of the dour economy, reflecting the large amount of surplus equipment that has come onto the market due to the number of businesses scaling back or closing their doors, industry observers say. They also, though, illustrated the competition—accompanied by disparaging verbal volleys—occurring between auction companies that, for a cut of the proceeds, seek to help those businesses liquidate that equipment.

One of the companies, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and claims to be the world's largest industrial auctioneer, held its first auction here in nearly 20 years on May 5 and generated a claimed $6.8 million in sales at the West Plains event. Ritchie Bros. says it plans to hold another auction here this fall, though it hasn't set a date for that sale yet, and said earlier this year that it's considering opening a Spokane auction facility.

The other company, Spokane-based Garry Montague Auctioneers, which claims to be the Northwest's second largest industrial auction company behind Ritchie Bros., says it sold more than $5 million worth of equipment at its April 27 sale at the Greyhound Park & Event Center, in Post Falls. On Aug. 10, also at the Post Falls facility, it says it will manage its first-ever auction for Oldcastle Auctions, a new venture set up by one of the nation's largest fleet operators.

"For any auction company, sales are best when the economy is going up or going down. It's hardest to get equipment and sell equipment when everything is going along on a level playing field," says Garry Montague, owner of Garry Montague Auctioneers.

"Particularly over the last two years, as the economy went south, our business has gone up substantially," he says.

Rob Giroux, Ritchie Bros.' Olympia-based regional manager for the Northwest, Alaska, and Hawaii, says, "It's a recession-proof occupation. When times are tough, if a guy's got 50 pieces of gear and he's only running 25 of them, who better to talk to than someone who's going to market them globally."

Manufacturers were pumping out equipment when the economy was surging, but the recession and resulting decline in sales of new machinery created a glut, he says. "A lot of local companies that used to buy new now are looking for used, so there's new markets being opened up for us," he adds.

National reports have described the used heavy-equipment market as a $100 billion-a-year industry, with auctions representing a fraction of overall sales. Record-high used-equipment auction prices of a couple of years ago have fallen off markedly, and aren't expected to return soon, but largely have been offset by increased volume, the reports indicate.

Montague says his company had gross auction proceeds of about $20 million last year, which is nearly double its volume of around $11 million to $12 million five years ago and up from about $18.5 million in 2008. He adds that he expects further strong growth this year.

The experience of the vastly larger Ritchie Bros. through the economic downturn has been different. Last year, it sold a record number of pieces of equipment and registered record numbers of on-site and online bidders, but said its gross auction proceeds of $3.5 billion were down 2 percent from the year before because of lower average equipment values and generally lower-priced items being offered for sale at its auctions.

Additionally, CEO Peter Black said in the publicly traded company's most recent earnings statement that, "Equipment owners had the unusual situation of low interest rates and generally more accommodating lenders, so in the face of a high degree of uncertainty in the market and depressed equipment values, many equipment owners chose to hold on to their assets."

The company, though, is continuing to expand into new markets as part of a focused growth strategy. It announced earlier this month that it has secured a site in Napavine, Wash., south of Centralia along Interstate 5, and plans to move its regional headquarters there from Olympia by late next year, due to limited ability to expand at its current location.

Montague, meanwhile, is exuberant about his company's opportunity to work with Oldcastle Auctions, which is owned by Oldcastle Materials Inc., a major supplier of aggregates, asphalt, ready-mixed concrete, and paving services and owner of several companies here.

"For us, it's a huge, huge thing," he says. "I believe this auction will be more than double the size of our last auction," due partly to the size and reputation of Oldcastle Materials, which is a subsidiary of Ireland-based CRH plc, a big international building-materials group.

"This is kind of a test deal. We believe if everything goes well with this auction, we'll be given the opportunity to run these (Oldcastle) auctions nationwide, but we don't have any guarantee of that," Montague says. If that happens, though, he says, "In the next two years, our growth could be like 500 percent from where we are now."

Such an arrangement also would allow his company to compete more effectively with Ritchie Bros., which he contends is trying to force his company to fold and initially had sought to schedule its sale here to coincide with, and sabotage, his sale.

"We opened up on the West Side (a number of years ago) and put so much pressure on them, and they wanted to get even. They were here to run me out of business, and it didn't work," Montague asserts.

Giroux scoffs at Montague's claims.

"We set our (original auction) date before Garry (set his), as far as I know. The difference between Garry and Ritchie Bros. is the difference between the minor leagues and the major leagues. It's not revenge at all," he says. "There's an opportunity over there, and the local contractors are actually ecstatic that there's a pure, honest auction company come to town."

Montague, who owns stock in Ritchie Bros., nevertheless asserts just as vehemently that his company is the one that equipment owners here prefer to use. He claims that Ritchie Bros.' auction here had a number of reported problems, some related to the dirt site on the West Plains where it was held, and that the company had to scramble to assemble enough inventory to make the sale viable.

Giroux says, to the contrary, that the sale was such a success that it "really opened our eyes" about the potential for Spokane-area events, and he says Ritchie Bros. is too busy planning its own auctions to care about flattening Montague.

"There's nothing wrong with competition. It's good for our customers. It's still business as usual," he says. "We're a public company and we need to be growing our business every day."

Montague says the upcoming Oldcastle auction in Post Falls that his company will be managing will include a wide selection of late-model construction and transportation machinery, including excavators, loaders, backhoes, crawler tractors, dump trucks, and trailers.

His company typically conducts six sales a year in the Northwest—two of them here, one each in the spring and fall. It occupies a 6.5-acre site at 2020 N. Dollar Road, where it also operates equipment-hauling and restoring divisions under the names GM Heavy Haul and GM Paint & Sandblast.

It has a year-round, full-time staff of about 20 people, as well as sales representatives in Seattle and Longview, Wash., and Portland, Ore., Montague says, and—because of the rise in used-equipment sales—has since enjoyed a related surge in sandblasting and painting work as well as vehicle sales. Along with heavy equipment, it sells a large number of used fleet vehicles, including for the city of Portland and other government entities, he says.

Montague says he initially launched trucking and moving-and-storage businesses here about 30 years ago, then sold those operations to get into the auction business, holding his first sale in late 1991.

Looking ahead, he says, "My personal belief is that the economy won't come back that fast. We believe at least for the next two to five years our growth will continue." Given the likelihood of ongoing weakness in industries that provide inventory for his auctions, he says, "We believe there's going to be a lot of fallout from that."