Writeoff

A unit I cleaned out had a very expensive piece of machinery in it. I am going to assume the machine is a write off from the company that leased/licensed its use. Is it not my property now since I won the auction? Has anyone experienced this before?

It might be best to contact the facility regarding this and ask, but unless otherwise specified on the auction listing, everything in the unit is now your property.

Hi Spacecase,
If I understand your question correctly you have won an auction containing a piece of machinery that is marked with the original owner’s branding, and is typically rented out? And you are asking if winning this machinery at auction constitutes transfer of ownership. This is definitely unclear, if the original company who owned this machine was renting it out to the customer who abandoned in in their storage facility, then they would still have a claim to it’s ownership, via a lien against the title, or simply by claiming that at this point it is “stolen”. This is all speculative though, and you won’t know the real story until you call that company and ask them. Usually there is a manufacturing stamp on these types of machines that would help the company identify it. Perhaps the company sold the machine after it was decommissioned from their fleet? I know most rental companies only rent equipment for a few years before selling it.
Let us know how it goes, and good luck!

Liens are only good for 3 months tops though. Then companies usually sell the debt to collections agencies. From that point there is a 2 year statute on that debt, rendering the item a write off. Right?

This might depend on local laws, but from my knowledge of Canadian liens, a lien will sit against a title until it is cleared, it won’t just disappear after 2 years. What type of a machine are we talking about here? I don’t see any large machines in your purchase history.

How would one know there was machinery in the unit until they started going through it? Maybe it was covered? How would Bid13 see it in his purchase history if this was the case? This is a good question. We have a Bill of sale that lists “All items in the unit” at our facility, but we dont itemize the units. How could we? I too, have wondered this very thing in the past.