Ritchie Bros. closes auction house in Caseyville

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers in Caseyville has closed after about seven years of selling heavy equipment and trucks in auctions on the 67-acre site off Interstate 64.

Four full-time employees were affected by the closure and, where possible, they have been offered other positions with the company, said Kieran Holm, a senior vice president for Ritchie Bros.

Caseyville Mayor G.W. Scott Sr. said Friday he was sorry to hear that the auction house at 2436 Old Country Inn Drive had closed as of Dec. 31, but he believes it is an attractive site on the interstate that possibly could be filled by another business.

“We will definitely be in contact with some other developers ... to try to get some other people to take a look at that site,” Scott said.

Holm said in an email that all sales representatives for the St. Louis area will continue to help customers in the region and that Ritchie Bros. recently hired a new sales manager for the area.

Two trends caused Ritchie Bros. to close the Caseyville site and other sites, Holm said. The first one is that more customers want to shop online, and the second one is that an increasing number of customers want “to take advantage of larger onsite events, as they draw more sizable crowds.”

“Because of these trends we closed five of our smaller auction sites at the end of 2017 (effective Dec. 31) to focus on building bigger, more exciting events and increase our online presence,” Holm said. “All the closed sites are located relatively close to other, larger Ritchie Bros. locations, and in most cases, have been sending a lot of equipment to these sites for the past several years.”

The larger sites near Caseyville are in the Chicago and Kansas City areas.

Ritchie Bros. is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and its U.S. office is based in Lincoln, Nebraska. The firm employs more than 2,000 people and has more than 40 auction sites in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

This story was originally published January 12, 2018 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Ritchie Bros. closes auction house in Caseyville."