{"id":667311,"date":"2010-02-17T15:02:08","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T20:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com\/?p=11641"},"modified":"2010-02-17T15:02:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T20:02:08","slug":"world%e2%80%99s-largest-tractor-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/667311","title":{"rendered":"World\u2019s Largest Tractor Auction!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Davenport, Fla. – There’s so much iron and metal that it’s too much for the eye to take in all at once – actually it’s impossible. We see front loaders, bulldozers, cherry pickers and dump-trucks. There are water trucks and sky-high cranes with arms that have been extended to look even bigger. They resemble the “daddy long leg” spiders I used to catch as a kid.<\/p>\n

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The first thing I notice right away are all the baseball caps. Most look old and worn. My guess is it’s probably favorite headgear. Frayed edges, some stained – and I’m pretty sure these folks don’t care.<\/p>\n

There’s more than 3,500 people here at what’s been dubbed the world’s largest auction of industrial equipment in Davenport, Fla. Ritchie Brothers owns this 200-acre tract, and today there are close to 6,000 different pieces of heavy machinery up for auction.<\/p>\n

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Bidders from 75 different countries are represented here. We’re told most of this equipment comes from across the U.S., from companies and private owners who think it’s time to unload.<\/p>\n

This could be for a couple of reasons. It could be the slow economy and fewer big projects on the horizon, or just families and small companies that couldn’t hang on any longer.<\/p>\n

Pete Blake is the CEO of Ritchie Brothers. He’s tall and skinny, and like most of the crowd, he’s wearing a cap. Pete tells us that the auction, in its third day, is bringing in good numbers. Pieces are being bid on and bought quickly. He says that could mean a couple of things; either the sellers have a bad feeling that their industry hasn’t quite bottomed out, or, the buyers see a promising future – so good, in fact, that they want to bid on and buy as many pieces as possible.<\/p>\n

The scene here is sort of a mechanical beauty pageant. Tons of machinery rolling by an audience, each piece having been \u00a0cleaned and positioned to look its best.<\/p>\n

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Folks take notes as equipment is driven by in front of them – scribbling as fast as the auctioneer is spitting out numbers. It’s a language I don’t know.<\/p>\n

Most of the bidders are men. A few women are scattered in the crowd. They would be hard to spot though if it were not for a whiff of perfume.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy: Ritchie Brothers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Davenport, Fla. – There’s so much iron and metal that it’s too much for the eye to take in all at once – actually it’s impossible. We see front loaders, bulldozers, cherry pickers and dump-trucks. There are water trucks and sky-high cranes with arms that have been extended to look even bigger. They resemble the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-667311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2NB5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}