CARY, N.C. -

Jim Jackson, a fan of saltwater fishing when he’s off the clock, found quite the catch career-wise some 30 years ago.

After finishing his service in the U.S. Army, Jackson said he was “fortunate enough” to have “stumbled into” the auto industry, with a job at a salvage auction company later purchased by IAA.

Jackson was hooked. 

“Lucky and blessed. I kind of stumbled into (the remarketing industry), and didn’t know too much about it,” Jackson said in an interview with Auto Remarketing. “This industry is very addictive. I was like, ‘This is what I want to do forever.’”

The fast pace, the day-to-day changes in the market and the macro factors that play a role.

“It’s never dull and has never been dull in my 30 years of remarketing,” he said.

More than half of those three decades have been spent with leading fleet management provider ARI, a company Jackson joined in 2004, moving up through leadership roles to his current position, where he supervises the company’s remarketing efforts throughout North America.

And Jackson adds another title at Used Car Week: the 2021 National Remarketing Executive of the Year, an award presented by the Independent Auction Group.

He will be recognized during a presentation the afternoon of Nov. 17, during the National Remarketing Conference portion of the event that runs Nov. 15-18 at Red Rock in Las Vegas. 

Twelve years after entering the car business, Jackson moved from IAA to ADESA Impact, eventually making his way over to ARI.

Like ARI, Jackson calls the Philadelphia and South Jersey area home — sans his military experience, he has lived in the area his whole life. 

Of his role with ARI, he says “I get the chance to lead our remarketer teams in both Canada and the U.S. And I love it. I just love the interaction with our partners throughout the industry … It’s a very talented, dedicated group of professionals. Every day, I enjoy coming to work and working with our partners, and getting to lead the U.S. remarketer team and the Canadian remarketer team, and how talented those folks are.”

Wholesale volume slows; prices ebb-and-flow 

For a fleet management and remarketing company — and perhaps any consignor type, for that matter — the lack of volume is currently the top challenge in the wholesale market. 

In trickle-down fashion, that’s driven by the chip shortage and OEM supply chain hurdles, among other factors.

That underscores the importance of ARI’s remarketing team constantly monitoring price activity, which has ebbed and flowed like the ocean tides these past 18 months.

“What’s really been interesting is how the prices have skyrocketed. It’s basic supply and demand. There’s not a whole lot of supply, so the demand and the pricing goes forward. We haven’t really changed the way we remarket,” Jackson said. “We really look at the pricing. Again, it goes back to the teams, the remarketer teams, staying on top of how the market has been reacting. 

“We all know how it reacted when COVID first hit, and then in May-June, it started to skyrocket and here we are in 2021 and it’s starting to go back up … the supply doesn’t look like it’s coming back time soon on the new-car side,” he said. 

Just another crest on a market that “tends to yo-yo” during the last year-and-a-half. 

“And we’re just trying to stay on the tip of that wave and get the most money for our clients,” Jackson said. 

Working with fleets, those companies have had some rather unique challenges in this environment. They may want to take advantage of high wholesale prices and sell some of their used inventory, but with the disruption in the new-vehicle supply chain, they would not be able to replace those vehicles in their fleets. 
It presents a double-edged sword.

“With COVID hitting last year, a lot of the clients that we deal with were liquidating surplus units, something that might have not been utilized 100%. So, they kind of liquidated all that stuff last year,” Jackson said. 

“Now, they want to take advantage of the values that they’re getting, but in our business … everybody needs that vehicle. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sales person going from Point A to Point B, or if it’s a cable installer, they need that asset,” he explained. “And they would love to take advantage of the pricing that’s out there now, but how are you going to replace that? What are you going to replace it with?

“That’s the predicament a lot of our clients are in now: we’ve got to hold on until we can get the new vehicle delivered. Which ultimately affects how our typical asset would come back in. So, it’s going to be a model or two model years older with 25,000-30,000 more miles on it,” Jackson said. “They will come in when the supply chain gets corrected.”

At the earliest, Jackson estimates it could be late 2022 when the supply chain gets sorted out, but it’s more likely to be fixed in 2023, he said.

Approach to remarketing

ARI utilizes an auction partner network that spans the U.S. and Canada. And with its consignment typically split evenly between passenger vehicles and work trucks, ARI also leans on specialty auctions and its whole-car auction partners with utility sales. 

“We do remarket in a lot of different specialty areas, as well as some retail consignment,” Jackson said. 

The company’s auction partner work stretches from Alaska to Hawaii, from Puerto Rico to Canada and everywhere in between. 

As far as the channels, ARI looks at the market in a “holistic” way, Jackson said, rather than segmenting some vehicles for online and others for physical auctions.

“We don’t specifically single any types of groups of vehicles to put online or purchase in-lane. We assign those vehicles to our partners,” he said. “They come in, condition reports get done. The remarketers use their expertise to view that condition report, market conditions and put a value on that vehicle.”

The vehicle may first go to a virtual sale, and then if it doesn’t sell there, the listing is removed and the vehicle goes to a physical lane. If it doesn’t sell there, ARI may re-evaluate the price point. 

As far as the utility vehicles, ARI has partners in its network that might have special sales for vehicles with buckets or cranes, for example. 

“The market’s been so robust for our utility vehicles. That’s been the constant. It’s never really faltered. Everybody’s always looking for work trucks, work vans,” he said. 

Particularly following hurricane season, work vehicles see a spike in demand during rebuilds, too. 

One challenge in particular that arises for a company that remarkets fleet vehicles, especially work vehicles, is deidentification of those units when it’s time to sell them wholesale. 

“That can be a challenge. We’ve been seeing the challenge obviously a lot lately with labor shortages. We’ve been pretty constantly in contact with our auction partners to get that done … We never sell a vehicle that has somebody’s logo or branding on it,” Jackson said. “We have to have that removed before we can actually sell that asset.”

That’s all part of a remarketing job with many moving parts (literally) and constant evaluation of pricing, market dynamics and unique considerations for different vehicle types. 

And it’s one in which Jackson finds joy. 

“There’s nothing else I would want to do, that’s for sure.”