Warehouse Auction Frenzy: How We Move Loads Fast With Live Auctions, Whatnot, and HiBid
Warehouse Auction Frenzy: How We Move Loads Fast With Live Auctions, Whatnot, and HiBid
They’re telling us we’ve got another load coming in.
We’ve got four people calling me right now.
Guys… we’ve got 130,000 sq ft of warehouse, we carved out 20,000 sq ft for an auction house, and we’re doing $10,000 one Saturday and $8,000 the next. That’s not theory. That’s real.
So yeah… it’s a frenzy.
And if you’re in this business, you better learn how to ride the frenzy without getting buried by it.
Step One: Clear the Middle. No Excuses.
Here’s what I told the crew:
We have all these Amazon e-scrap mediums.
I want the whole middle cleaned out.
Cut the medium boxes down. Open them. See what’s in them.
If it’s something super expensive? Set it aside until I get back.
But if I see a ceiling fan? Auction room. Auction room.
Just put everything in the auction room.
Then everything we stacked on the side? Slide it underneath the shelves. There’s a ton of room under there.
Then sweep it again.
Ready to rock and roll.
This is what most people don’t understand:
Your warehouse is either a machine… or a junk drawer.
And junk drawers don’t make money.
Bread & Butter: Subcontracts (FC Is Still King)
Let me tell you what keeps my lights on:
I don’t have a contract… I’ve got a subcontract.
That means I bought out a facility, so I get every load from that facility.
Some weeks I get one. Some weeks I get three.
And I still can’t get enough.
Customers come from all over the state to pick up FC. And I can’t supply everybody as much as they want.
So I need more subcontracts.
If you know somebody sitting on a contract and they want someone to buy it out—tell them to reach out.
Because inventory is flowing… and it’s selling too fast.
Look at the dock. Empty.
That’s a good problem—until it becomes the worst problem.
Because the whole game is:
fill your freaking bins.
Not “when you feel like it.”
Not “when a deal pops up.”
Consistently.
That’s how you avoid the scramble game.
The Shipping Punch to the Face
Here’s the part that sucks for a lot of you:
When you try to buy in your area, it’s never available.
So what happens?
You buy from New Jersey… Pennsylvania… Indiana…
And now you add $2,000–$3,000 in shipping just to get it to Florida.
That shipping will eat you alive if you don’t have a plan to MOVE.
You can’t “hold” inventory in liquidation. Not like retail.
You move it:
bin stores
flea markets
auctions
online
pallets
mystery boxes
Volume over value. Every time.
Garbage Will Bankrupt You (If You Let It)
Here’s another warehouse truth nobody wants to talk about:
Not everything is sellable.
Some of that e-content gets tested and it’s bad. That’s giveaway, throwaway, trash. Get rid of it.
And if you’re paying $600 every time you unload a dumpster… and you’re doing it twice a week?
That’s a problem.
Sometimes we were renting a U-Haul for $200 and taking two or three loads out ourselves.
And guess what?
We stayed on top of it back then… because we couldn’t let it pile up.
Guys, trash piles up fast.
And trash piles kill momentum.
Save your damn money.
The Weird Stuff That Makes This Business Fun
In the middle of the chaos… you find gems.
Statues from the 70s from Welcome Back, Kotter.
Original Simpsons dolls from 1990—35 years old—guy sells me the whole family for $30.
Boom. Straight to the museum.
And that’s the funniest part about liquidation:
You can be knee-deep in pallets and garbage one minute…
…and the next minute you’re holding something that belongs behind glass.
Breaking Down E-Scrap Medium Pallets: Flat Rate Roulette
Now let’s talk e-scrap.
When these pallets come in, they’re black wrapped, solid wrapped, and you have no idea what’s in them.
But we buy them on a flat rate.
So you break them down and sometimes it’s “meh”… and sometimes it’s a home run.
Example pallet?
30 condenser motors for air conditioners (maybe $100 each… maybe)
multi-functional EV chargers
an LED scooter
ceiling fans
a pool
about 10 sump pumps (retail around $100)
dressers (why are dressers in e-scrap? don’t ask me)
and then… at the bottom… a mountain of USB-C to USB-C charging cables. Like a thousand of them.
And you know what?
Those cables alone—selling in packs for like $5—can be $300–$400 in revenue.
Sometimes the cables pay for the pallet.
Everything else is upside.
That’s how you survive the “good with the bad.”
The Auction Machine: Whatnot + HiBid + Live Saturdays
Now we’re moving inventory with three lanes:
Whatnot (daily)
HiBid (bigger stuff once a week — ends Friday)
Live in-person warehouse auctions every Saturday at noon
First Saturday? About $10K.
Second Saturday? About $8K.
And we had 100–150 people coming in.
Here’s what’s wild:
Live auctions make no sense… until they make perfect sense.
Some stuff goes super cheap.
Then you get two people who need something, and they bid it up to a number you never would’ve gotten in normal retail.
It’s not logic.
It’s momentum.
And momentum is money.
How To Source E-Scrap Without Begging Like a Rookie
People ask me nonstop:
“How do I get e-scrap?”
Guys… there are e-scrap recyclers all over the country.
Go find them.
Go talk to them.
Say:
“When you get a load, call me.”
“When you get something weird, call me.”
“If you can’t move it, let me broker it.”
Solve their pain point.
Because they don’t want 50 pallets of something taking up their warehouse either.
They need space to bring in their regular supply.
So open up Google and type:
“e-scrap recyclers near me”
Then go shake hands and start building relationships.
You never know what they pick up:
schools dumping tech
pallets of printer cartridges worth a fortune
monitors, computers, random Amazon overflow
Find the recycler that touches Amazon stuff and you can hit a home run.
The Auction Room Setup (And Why Space Matters)
We turned a retail room into an auction room.
This building used to be a church. It already had a stage.
So we built it out.
And yes—at one point I went and got my auctioneer license. Took me about 3 weeks, six hours a night, learning the chatter.
Now we’ve got tables loaded with:
vacuum cleaners
fans
sprinklers
humidifiers
carpets
tools
We’ve even got a whole Lowe’s tool wall.
Because it’s easy to buy in this industry.
The hard part is figuring out how to move it.
That’s what the auction is for.
Mystery Boxes: How to Know It’s Real Amazon
Here’s a big rule if you’re buying mystery box pallets:
Look at the tape.
Amazon uses a specific paper glue tape. It’s not vinyl.
Only Amazon factories use that tape. Nobody else does.
A standard Amazon mystery box pallet usually has 30 boxes.
And one box can have anywhere from $50 worth of stuff to $600 worth of stuff.
We opened one:
wedding hangers
racing goggles (could be $100)
stainless steel veggie cutter (20 bucks)
slippers (20 bucks)
phone cases, iPad cases
Otter boxes
Nike shorts
razor blade scrapers (10 bucks each)
One box was already $150–$200 on average.
That’s why mystery boxes work… if they’re legit.
Ops Rules: How Not to Get Screwed
Warehouse Rules (So You Don’t Drown)
Clear a middle lane every day. No lane = no movement. No movement = no money.
Triage fast: expensive aside, everything else goes straight to the auction room.
Use under-shelf storage instead of stacking piles like amateurs.
Secure sold items immediately. Once it sells, it gets locked and labeled.
Vendor Rules (So You Don’t Buy Garbage)
Ask for:
real photos (if they don’t have photos, walk)
confirmation it’s not processed / touched
what % is tested bad / scrap
what % food & drink (example loads can be 20% food/drink—know that up front)
what’s the packing style (black wrap, solid wrap, mixed, etc.)
tape check on mystery boxes (paper glue tape = good sign)
Pricing + Rotation (So Your Cash Doesn’t Stall)
Don’t get cute. Move it.
Run three lanes: online quick-turn, weekly big-item auction, in-person Saturday crowd.
Use auctions to clear bulky inventory that kills your floor space.
Keep restock consistent so you avoid the scramble game.
Where To Find the Auction
If you’re local, it’s in Lake Wales.
Every Saturday at noon.
Go to LiquidationMotivation.com or hit the YouTube. Just Google Liquidation Motivation—something will come up.
And if you’re buying loads and you’re not sure?
Send it to us first. Pictures, details, the whole thing.
We’ll give you our honest opinion. For free.
Because too many of my friends and followers are getting burnt out by processed trash.
Don’t be one of them.
Guys… inventory is easy to buy.
Moving it is the skill.
Build the machine:
clean lanes
fast sorting
multi-channel selling
real auctions
real organization
Fill your freaking bins.
Save your damn money.
Avoid the scramble game.
Now go out there and make some money.
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