Bulking up Orange County’s coffers
Online auctions offer surplus government goods, some of them in large sizes
Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond kicked off another online auction this week, offering up a garage full of surplus government goods, including 15 used vehicles and over 600 miles of two-ply toilet paper, “brand new in the box,” according to the bid site.
Virtual bidding, which began May 25, continues through 3 p.m. Wednesday.
While the battered, high-mileage, heavy-duty work trucks have fetched the highest bids so far, some shoppers have been intrigued by other discarded property, including a portable stage with lighting, perfect for an impromptu news conference, and the reams of toilet tissue.
Since switching to online auctions in 2018, Diamond has hauled in $4.3 million in 23 sales of used or surplus assets.
Proceeds go into the county’s main budget fund, he said. As always, buyer beware. Some of the vehicles, sold “as is,” were towed to the storage grounds.
A 2003 van that had logged more than 120,000 miles, boasts “a special cargo hold.” It was used to transport prisoners.
Though regularly maintained by fleet services, the county offers no guarantees on any of the trucks.
“This is a used vehicle and may contain defects not immediately detectable,” the bid site warns.
But that hasn’t stopped some spirited early bidding for four John Deere multi-purpose vehicles known as Gators, formerly used by utility workers to prowl the grounds of the county’s reclaimed water operations. All need batteries and one is missing a passenger’s seat.
Photos are posted on the comptroller’s site, occompt.com. By appointment, prospective bidders may inspect items in person.
More than $25,000 has been pledged so far for the combined collection of used equipment shed by Utilities, Public Works, Mosquito Control, the Orange
County Convention Center and other county departments.
“The first three or four days, there’s really not a ton of activity,” said Katie Phelps, surplus property assistant manager. “But
wait until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, it will blow up. I mean it will quadruple in price,
in number of bidders. The last few days are always crazy.”
The comptroller’s last auction, which ended Feb. 2, offered more assets and raked in over $900,000.
The auction is open to bidders everywhere, but there’s a catch for winners half a world away.
They’ve got to arrange pick-up or come get it themselves.
“Our last two auctions, the computer pallets have gone to China,” Phelps said.
Bryan Lefils, manager of surplus property and record management, said a Venezuelan client of a Tampa auto dealer balked at paying $35,000 in shipping costs to get the aging fire truck he bought for $8,000 through the auction and drove it all the way back home.
“That’s all the way through Mexico and South America,” Lefils said. “I’m not sure I’d want to drive in a nice, new, AC-equipped Toyota Corolla that far let alone in a fire truck that’s 20 years old with 250,000 miles on it and has logged a kajillion fire-rescue hours.”
The current cache of castoff chattel includes collections of computer gear.
Bidders can snag 38 used desktop machines or 25 laptops. Hard drives were removed from all machines.
Winners are responsible for packing up their winnings.
“Most assets, because of age, use or miles, have reached end-of-life requirement for the county to sell at auction,” Lefils said.
He said some stuff ended up on the sales rack because of a miscalculation — like the 11 pallets of concrete pavers left over from a renovation at the Convention Center or the giant, 1,000-foot rolls of toilet tissue that don’t fit new bathroom dispensers.
The 274 boxes, each holding a dozen rolls, would stretch 622 miles, a distance greater than Orlando to Miami and back.
The bathroom tissue could have been part of an earlier auction roster, Lefils said.
“But, for whatever reason, I think we worried about how it would look that we were selling toilet paper in the middle of a pandemic,” he said.
Bids started Wednesday at $5 for the whole load.