KANSAS CITY, Mo. -

As Carolina Auto Auction was hosting its regular weekly sale on a Wednesday morning in late September, CEO Eric Autenrieth and general manager Vann Humphrey were some 900 miles away in Kansas City, Mo., attending the National Auto Auction Association’s World Remarketing Convention.

No worries —the Williamston, S.C., auction is set up to run like clockwork.

And that’s thanks in part to the teamwork and top-down leadership culture the pair have helped foster at Carolina, where team members empowered and inspired to drive the auction’s success.

The auction is comprised of folks who are “invested in being the best auction we can be,” Humphrey said in an interview on site at the NAAA WRC.

And the industry has taken notice: Carolina Auto Auction is Cherokee Media Group’s 2025 Independent Auto Auction of the Year, an award presented by Kinetic Advantage. It will be recognized during a ceremony at Used Car Week, which takes place Nov. 17-20 at Red Rock in Las Vegas.

‘Starts with culture’

During his leadership tenure with NAAA — where he served as president in 2023 — Autenrieth got the opportunity to see multitudes of other auto auctions and learn from the strategy of their respective owners as well as fellow NAAA executives.

“Whether it be Craig Amelung or Garrison Hudkins,” he said, referring to the NAAA presidents who followed and preceded him, respectively, “you’re gaining insight from them and what they’re doing in their facilities, and they have pretty sizable facilities, and then being able to relay that down to our team … Vann has done a tremendous job of building a really solid team (throughout) the management structure and on down.

“We’re able to both be here. And today’s sale day,” Autenrieth said. “And we’re going to run 1,200-plus cars, and we feel very confident that everything’s in good hands.”

Humphrey added, “It starts with culture for us. That’s the core of our team and what we want to do as an organization. We’ve built a management team that believes in that as our priority.  And as a result, our team knows that’s what we want to do. We have a great culture. We want to have fun. And people are invested. Our team’s invested in being the best auction we can be. And it shows through our growth and through our successes we’ve had so far.”

Nimble, quick & connected

While independently owned, Carolina Auto Auction is also part of ServNet, an alliance/network of 18 independent auctions across the U.S.

For Autenrieth, ServNet has been like a 20 Group, where auctions that are not competitors can exchange ideas and best practices.

Humphrey — who has has been a part of Carolina’s management team since 2018, becoming GM in 2023 — said the auction has found, “strength in numbers.”

An auction group with dozens of locations, he acknowledged, has some built-in advantages from the auctions getting to collaborate.

For an independent like Carolina, “ServNet gives us that,” Humphrey said.

“We can collaborate, we can learn from them, they can learn from us,  and we become stronger as an individual auction but as a group because of ServNet,” he said.

As an independent, Carolina has also benefited from being “one little piece” of a broader automotive ecosystem. When asked how the auction has managed to provide the same level of technology or service capabilities as larger corporate entities, Autenrieth said, “I think some of the larger companies have a cradle-to-grave company. They’re able to handle all (pieces of the vehicle lifecycle). We’re just one little piece of that.

“And we’re able to use all the technologies.  We’re not limited to just one.  We can use any of them that we want to use, and we can use multiple at the same time,” Autenrieth said.

“So, we’re able to kind of pick and choose what works best for us, in our environment, in our setting. And it just enables us to be able to excel at what we do. We’re quick. We’re nimble.”

Growth expectations

Last year, Carolina posted record sales volumes.

“This year, we’re going to top that,” Autenrieth said, estimating that volume will likely climb by 12% to 13% for 2025.

He’s “excited” for what’s in store for Carolina Auto Auction next year, mentioning services like outside-the-gate sales that are on the auction’s radar.

Humphrey added, “We’ve added double blocks in multiple lanes. It allows us to expand our ability to run consignors earlier in the sale without having to add additional four lanes outside and lose parking.  We maintain our parking capacity by adding the double blocks … we have the capacity parking-wise for sale day to grow by about 30% from where we’re at, 40% from where we’re at.

“We have capacity for growth,” Humphrey said. “So that’s our target: It’s to continue to grow and continue to set records like we had last year and we plan to this year.”