RoadOne San Diego Quick Stats

Established: 1950s

16 Locations Throughout San Diego County

150-200 Cars Per Week; 2 Auctions Per Week

80-90% Of Inventory Sold At Each Auction

RoadOne San Diego became a customer of our auction management software, Auction Simplified, in November 2021 and since then has seen much success and efficiency in all their auctions.

Our Senior Content Marketing Manager, Laura Dolan, had a candid conversation with Bill Peters, Auction Manager at RoadOne San Diego. He described how he has fully leveraged our auction management software to save money, save time, and clear his impound yards all around San Diego County on a twice-per-week basis. This is his story.

Laura Dolan:

Thank you so much, Bill for jumping on and taking the time to speak with me today. Let’s start off by telling us what you were doing before Auction Simplified.

 

Bill Peters:

In the late 2000s, there was a bird flu scare where at that point, they were discussing if they had to shut the Mexican borders. So at that time, we decided we needed to supplement our live auction in case that did happen because my auction yard literally was a few hundred yards from the border.

 

A lot of our customers would have to cross, and if they lost the ability to cross, that would’ve taken out a large part of our customer base, probably 30% at the time. So at that point, we decided to go simulcast. We used a program where we would broadcast it at the live auction, so we did that from 2012 until COVID. When COVID hit, we used a competitor where the owners of the company also had markets in Seattle, Phoenix, Reno, and Tucson, and it was a fairly small market for us. So we went into emergency mode when we got shut down [in 2020], literally the night before one of my live auctions was supposed to go on.

 

I spent that weekend learning a new software program, because what we were using at the time wasn’t set up for what we needed. So I spent roughly the better part of a week learning that so we could get everything set up, and we used that until we came across you guys. We came across you because we’ve been using TOPS since 2006, so the relationship was already there with what is now TRAXERO, and that’s how we found you.

 

LD:

Since you started using Auction Simplified, how would you rate the overall ease of use of it? Has it really helped improve the efficiency of how you run your auctions?

 

BP:

Yes. In fact, this is a good question, because at the beginning of COVID, I was probably working up to 16-hour days, seven days a week, just trying to keep and get auctions going and then keep them going. I actually tracked how long it took and got it down over the course of the first two years to what it was. It was just over six minutes a unit for me, from my end, to get everything up and in. That’s not counting my crew out there taking pictures and whatnot.

 

Since we’ve gotten Auction Simplified, the last time I checked it, we were just a shade above four minutes a unit. And right now my guess is because of my experience with it, and my crew, it’s probably just under four minutes a unit. So we shaved off a couple of minutes. That’s significant, that’s like a 30% cut in time from my end to do this. So I’ve gone from seven days a week to five days a week. It’s definitely made my life much better.

 

LD:

That’s wonderful! And how satisfied have you been with the level of support and assistance? Have you run into any difficulty, and if so, how fast has our team been there to help you?

 

BP:

When I had other issues [with a competitor], I was not impressed with them. Turn that around here, and part of it is maybe our relationship, but there are some guys working on your technical team for a number of years and I’ve always had the utmost respect and I’ve dealt with them for a while. But honestly, from the moment I started with Auction Simplified, with us it started with Kevin, and now to Andrea, and it doesn’t matter what I bring up, they’re on it almost immediately in almost every case. And feedback’s immediate, the response is incredible. It’s night and day compared to what I had before this.

 

And I will be honest with you, when we came to you, it was more forced on me than choice because at the time I wasn’t interested in learning yet another system, but because we’re using it elsewhere, the owners wanted me to do it, and all I thought was, now I’m opening up a new can of headaches. But two years later, my quality of life is back to what it was pre-COVID, and I’m very pleased with that. My crew is extremely pleased with that.

 

LD:

That’s fantastic! And you said you’re a customer of TOPS as well, do you find that the integration with TOPS helps make everything run a little more smoothly?

 

BP:

Absolutely! That had a lot to do with the cutting of the time, because basically, it’s pulling information, as you know, from TOPS. Previously, I had to manually enter all of that into a spreadsheet for the competitor I used and upload that as the list, but I had to do it all myself. And then I had to upload all the pictures and the pictures had to be sent to me for labeling, it just was so time-consuming. Again, if I had issues, it was just killing me to get through to anybody on that end. Auction Simplified made everybody in my crew’s life easier, significantly.

 

Prior to COVID, I had been asked many times by my live auctioneer at the time if I had considered or if the company was considering going full online only. And I told them no, if we ever do that, part of my kick is being with the customers during auction day and dealing with everybody. I said, if we do that, that’s the day I’ll retire. Then COVID hit, obviously I couldn’t retire, everything else was shut down. I was the only income in our family, so there was no choice but to keep going. But we were worried that over time, doing live alone would kill us, because on auction day we would have hundreds and hundreds of people out there watching the cars as they drive through one by one, they smell them, they touch them, we pop the hoods, they’re checking fluids, everything.

 

Now it’s look at four pictures, maybe if we’re lucky we can clear enough room to make a video. And yet it’s been so successful, it’s eliminated an incredible amount of labor from our end. I used to have to bring in eight temporary workers on my auction days, Thursdays and Fridays, to help drive cars through the auction and everything, because we were selling so many cars. We’ve eliminated all of that. We’ve eliminated the cost of our auction company itself because he had his ringman and his clerk and everything he had to use. I thought we were going to lose a significant amount of money and I don’t think it’s happened at all, I think it’s grown our auction.

 

LD:

That’s incredible. That is so good to hear that it didn’t have any effect on the inventory in a negative way.. So do you have a favorite feature that you particularly enjoy about Auction Simplified?

 

BP:

Yeah, this will sound really simplistic and obvious, but the fact that you guys store your bidder information. With the competitor, every auction was a re-registration, so I had to keep my own spreadsheets on bad bidders and people that were fraudulent and whatnot. For two years I kept that spreadsheet. Now, I still match that from the people from that time, but you guys have everything in here, so I can look that up. And I’ll be honest with you, that’s a big thing for us. Auctions like us, it’s real easy for a lot of people to come out of the woodwork and just play games. I don’t know why, but I think last count we had around 8,000 confirmed bidders and 4,000 not confirmed bidders because of various reasons. But I love that the best because it gives me the information at my fingertips and I no longer have to manually track that. And again, that was more data entry too. Typing in names, IP addresses, phone numbers, and everything like that. So yeah, for me, that’s the best. For my crew, the best is the fact that they can take the picture out in the field and upload it immediately.

 

 

LD:

Yes, that is perfect. Is there anything about Auction Simplified that you would like to see improved or changed in any way?

 

BP:

Wow, good question. I hadn’t really thought about that.

 

LD:

That’s probably a good thing.

 

BP:

I don’t really have anything major on my end at all. Pretty much anytime I come up with something, the support team takes care of it for me. So I guess I don’t have anything outstanding right now, but when I do, I’ll give it up to Andrea, and I know that she and the team will take care of it for me. So that’s probably why I don’t have anything nagging right now.

 

LD:

That’s good to hear, let’s hope it stays that way. So what would you say to somebody who is on the fence about moving onto auction management software? 

 

BP:

Well, first and foremost, I’d tell them, if they can, try to do it like I used to do, a simulcast. And try to do it alongside or do a dummy auction alongside your live one and whatnot, just to see the ease of use of it and everything. And then the second part is, if you’re still using spreadsheets and cameras and doing your manual uploads and labeling and everything else, this is such a labor saver. I went from two auction yards, between them, probably 16 employees. And like I said, each auction had eight part-time, temporary workers come in to help and everything. And that was bringing all the cars to the two yards. And now, instead of bringing the cars to the yards, we go to the yards.

 

I’ve got a crew of four or five people right now, four on a regular day, five if needed, that go to the yards and do it instead. We no longer bring the cars to us so it saved us a lot of transfer costs. And I know smaller companies probably don’t have that problem, they’ll sell them right at their location. But it definitely decreases the number of employees I need to put on and complete an auction, a full sale, from start to finish, including putting the money in the bank, I need so many fewer employees than I did before. The labor costs alone for me are incredible.

 

LD:

That’s awesome. And how often do you run auctions?

 

BP:

I do roughly 70 to 100 cars on Tuesday and the same amount on Friday, two auctions a week, probably 150 to 200 cars a week.

 

LD:

And that’s consistent, the amount of cars you get and the amount of cars that actually are sold just every week like that?

 

BP:

Yeah, it’s fairly consistent.

 

LD:

Wow!

 

BP:

There are aberrations and it really depends sometimes on government agencies, holidays, etc. We might have one sale, like right now, the one coming up tomorrow I believe is in the seventies, the next one after that’s in the seventies. But we just came off last week on Tuesday, a 130-car auction, and last Friday a 100-car auction. So normally it’s in the seventies, eighties, maybe nineties. But every once in a while we’ll get an overload. The 130-car auction, that was because of the floods we had here, so that’s where the overload came. But normally we’re very consistent and pretty much the only time we don’t have two sales in a week is the week of Thanksgiving, we just do the one, so that can get my crew and my customers a long weekend. And then on occasion, if another holiday were to hit, sometimes 4th of July can hit really weird, so far it hasn’t affected us. But no, we’re very consistent.

 

LD:

Well, thank you so much, Bill, for all this information. Is there anything that we didn’t cover that you would really like to talk about or want our audience to know?

 

BP:

I am just so happy with this company and if you are serious about running your auctions and adding to your value on it, I think you should at least look into it. Between the support, the training available, and just the ease of use and the speed for me, the labor savings, I just urge anybody to take a look at it at the very least. And if they want, come on and watch my auctions, see what my stuff’s going for. There’s the best proof right there. If you’re happy with those prices, this is what you could do.

 

And I’ll be honest with you, I would not give you this kind of praise if it hadn’t been earned. I am just really ecstatic about working with this, and part of it is the integration, but the whole package is this. It saves me an incredible amount of time, saves me and my crew labor, that’s huge. In business, that’s huge.

 

LD:

Yes, absolutely. I’m so glad that our product is helping you and improving your business. That’s all we could ask for. So thank you for being a loyal customer, it’s just been an absolute pleasure to talk to you, Bill, and just thank you for your time this morning.

 

BP:

My pleasure. Have a great weekend. Okay?

 

LD:

You too. Bye.

 

BP:

All right. Bye-bye.

We change the game when it comes to running a towing business. You saw how our auction solutions were able to do that for RoadOne San Diego. Contact us to see how we can do the same for you.