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Peter Blake, CEO of Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, at the company's site in Bolton, Ont.Kevin Van Paassen

*Editor's note: This article has been changed online to reflect a correction. More than 80 per cent of items are sold on direct commission.

They stand in a neat line, groomed and gleaming, all waiting their turn to slowly promenade before the rapt audience.

One by one, backhoes, excavators, dump trucks, and all manner of industrial equipment are put on display. At a Ritchie Bros. industrial auction in Bolton, Ont., the Caterpillar 900-series Wheel Loader attracts as much interest as a beauty pageant.

Each item is sold for tens of thousands - and sometimes hundreds of thousands - of dollars. By the end of the day, more than $17-million in machinery will have been sold by more than 400 consignors to the winners among 2,500 bidders.

Ritchie Bros. has turned auctions into big business. The Burnaby, B.C.-based company is by far the largest auctioneer of industrial equipment in the world, on track to manage $3.5-billion (U.S.) in equipment sales at its auction sites this year.

And though the economy remains soft, Ritchie Bros. says it's a good time to expand, as the company takes its first steps in India, Japan and other areas.

"We grow well in good times, but we tend to grow faster when times are harder," says Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Inc. chief executive officer Peter Blake.

While the appetite for antiques and traditional auction fare may wane during a recession, roads still need to be built and sewers fixed. The people who do that work look to used equipment when the economy takes a dip, Mr. Blake says. Roughly one-quarter of bidders at Ritchie Bros. auctions this year were first-timers; the typical rate is about 10 per cent. Less than 5 per cent of the company's auction business comes out of insolvency situations.

Ritchie Bros.' own revenues from auctions for the first nine months of this year were $280.1-million (U.S.), up a little from $273.1-million a year earlier.

The bidding on Ritchie Bros. shares is also healthy. Shareholders have doubled their money over the past five years, including dividends, far outpacing the S&P/TSX index. Those who invested when the company went public in the late 1990s have done even better.

The company has become the industry's biggest player by taking on all business, big and small. "We get customers that are the largest infrastructure companies in Canada and the United States, and the world. And we've got a guy that's got one backhoe," Mr. Blake says.

Still, analysts say Ritchie has plenty of room for expansion.

Though the company has 110 locations, about 95 per cent of the used equipment trading hands in the world goes through other channels.

"They have an unlimited growth profile," says analyst Ben Cherniavsky. "They're such a small fragment of the market … There's a snowball effect to what they do: more buyers bring more sellers, more sellers bring more buyers. But it involves a very long gestation period."

It is a long, methodical process as the company develops sites and attracts buyers in each new market. It had its first auction in India in November, and recently purchased land in Germany for a new site. A site in Japan will open in January.

"If you look in Europe or Asia, Latin America, they've just scratched the surface," Mr. Cherniavsky says.

But even though a Canadian company is holding auctions that attract roughly 1,700 bidders on average, at sites from Minneapolis to Paris and Dubai, there's a good chance you've never heard of them if you're not in the construction business. Even among its clients, Ritchie executives say there's not enough brand recognition. That's part of the confusion that caused the company big headaches this fall when Toronto-based Ritchies Auctioneers went under.

Confusion over the companies' names led many to associate Ritchie Bros. with bankruptcy. In October, when Ritchies Auctioneers was forced into bankruptcy amid reports that the money didn't exist to pay many of its consignors, Ritchie Bros. faced a "massive" PR problem, says Ontario regional manager Brian Dykstra.

"It was huge … We had people manning the phones to quell the concerns of all our clients," he says. One woman called the Vancouver offices demanding to know where her antique rug was. "It wasn't going away."

Ritchie Bros. sent e-mails to 48,000 clients and mailed out a slew of flyers, all with the same essential message: We're not that Ritchies.

Size matters in auctions, Mr. Blake says. The more bidders Ritchie Bros. can attract, the fairer the prices are, he argues. "Our job is to get the bidders here and to get the equipment refurbished. The market will dictate the price … We're a marketplace. We're buyers and sellers both. We're just the interchange." The "market" that sets prices here is made up of players whose business savvy can almost be measured by the mud caked on their steel-toed boots.

"These are the guys that have no necks. They got hands like this. They're big, big men. And they run machines for a living," Mr. Blake says, gesturing out the window as a trio of men in camouflage hunting jackets stroll by. "They want to run it, try the machine, check the hydraulics."

Outside the Bolton auction, a man is doing just that, clambering up into the seat of a backhoe and firing it up, a plume of black smoke belching into the grey morning air.

Bidders can plug into any auction through the Internet. At one point, the auctioneer is egging on potential buyers in the U.K. and Pakistan at the same time. But the real action is onsite, amid the acrid smell of gasoline, where buyers can inspect the equipment and watch it roll by the ramp at the open end of the auction theatre.

The heated room looks like a hangar filled with chairs in the Ritchie Bros. trademark pylon orange. Over the speakers the auctioneer's call runs out staccato and unrelenting, while a line of five bid catchers watch the audience for offers.

Deals close at speeds that would make an auto dealer drool. One machine sells for $11,500 in 35 seconds. The next goes for more than 10 times as much, but still takes less than a minute.

Upstairs in the VIP lounge, Rod Lentino of Mississauga-based rental company SMS Rents glances out the window at the ramp below, looking for one of the excavators, rollers or bulldozers he's come to unload.

"You get greater exposure here, and there's more bidding because people are watching online too," he says. Today's sale "could be better. But we got what we expected."

Unlike many other auctions, these are unreserved, meaning there is no hidden minimum price and owners can't bid on their own pieces to drive it up.

Ritchie Bros. will occasionally buy a lot and auction it off, when sellers want a safety net. "It happens once only," Mr. Dykstra says. "Then the trust in the unreserved process comes in." More than 80 per cent of items are sold on straight commission, with the company taking a roughly 10-per-cent cut.

The vast majority of Ritchie Bros. bidders are the same people who end up using the equipment. And when they sell, consignors are often putting up a piece of machinery they've spent a great deal of time with.

"We were in Truro, N.S., last week, and this guy was crying as his equipment went across the ramp," Mr. Blake says. "These are tough gentlemen out there. Letting go of your equipment, it's an emotional experience. We try to be there for them."

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