Mecum plows forward with strong Gone Farmin’ sale

B. Mitchell Carlson reporting

DAVENPORT, Iowa _ Sometimes it pays to get going early. I made the drive to Davenport on the day before the start of the fall Gone Farmin’ auction held Nov. 19-21, instead of going Thursday, the day of the auction’s truck segment. With 62 trucks on the docket, that would be a one-day task based on the timing of Mecum’s June auction. However, being a five-hour drive, a hotel stay would inevitably be part of the mix, so I figured I would attend the preview on Wednesday, report on the Thursday auction and then head home.

When I arrived early on Wednesday afternoon, the Mecum staff briefed me that they had just received notice from the Iowa governor’s office that greater restrictions on gatherings were enacted in an attempt to reduce the COVID-19 spread. Namely, Mecum was barred from having a live auction with public attendance. As such, Mecum quickly converted the auction to an online-only sale, and since the state mandated that only 30 people could be on the whole site (of far than 40 acres and over a dozen buildings), only Mecum staff (some of whom were sent home or to its Kansas City sale later in the weekend) would be allowed at the site on the auction days. Buyers and consignors who made appointments to remove the consignments after the online auction were allowed on the premises, however. As such, I had to quickly inspect and photograph as many trucks as possible for the rest of the afternoon, listening to the livestream feed while driving home on Thursday. Not my ideal plan, but after being at 13 live and online auctions since the start of the pandemic, I’ve learned to roll with the punches to get