Last Updated on April 11, 2024
Since the company’s inception in 2006, Municibid has become an invaluable marketplace for both municipalities and citizens alike. As we move towards two decades of service, we continue to be the place where government surplus turns into someone else’s fortune, whether for jumpstarting a small business, reselling, or just at-home recreational use.
Municibid allows users to purchase a variety of items from city dump trucks and street sweepers, to lawn mowers and repossessed cars. And with a variety of items sold, come a variety of stories that people share about their experiences.
Last year we decided to highlight some of those stories with our “Share Your Story 2021 Contest Winners”. We continue the trend with those who found success in 2022. We present our “Share Your Story 2022 Contest Winners.”
1st Place Winner: Eric Lahti
Eric Lahti converted an ambulance into a tailgating party masterpiece!
“I am the owner of a midsize construction company. We build pharmaceutical plants for the big pharmaceutical companies. Pfizer, Takeda, that kind of stuff.”
“So, I won the ambulance from a local town in Massachusetts, way out in Western Massachusetts. And there’s an ambulance I’ve been looking for probably six months and finally found one that was local.”
“I’ve never bought an ambulance before. I’ve ridden in one a couple of times.”
“So, I’m a big Patriots fan. ‘Boohoo,’ everybody says, but whatever. I’ve been a season ticket holder for 39 years, and I was looking for a bus originally. My wife told me, ‘Absolutely not. We’re not putting a bus in our driveway.’ But she saw an ambulance on some tailgating show or football game, and figured we can do that. She gave me the okay to go buy an ambulance. So, that’s how I got it.”
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“There’s not a lot of information out there on how to make a tailgate vehicle out of an ambulance. I kind of just winged it!”
2nd Place Winner: Rob Kelsey
Rob Kelsey, who, along with his spouse, found success on Municibid through a number of products that made running their feline-only boarding facility much easier. Not only that, but he found a way to share movies with the local kiddos.
“We’ve used Municibid quite a few times for projects that we needed to do around our office. One of the big ones that we got was a large glass partition wall that we use as kind of like a viewing area so that the cats can see out, humans can see in. And we made that into a playroom space, so that the cats can get out and stretch their legs.”
“Then we just recently got a bid for a bunch of hand railing and spindles, for an expansion project that we’re working on right now. We’ve been doing our little home business for about seven years. And I’ve been playing with Municibid a bit for probably three or four years.”
“But then, when I thought about starting up the business, I was like, you know, there could be stuff on there that we can use. And then, honestly, the first thing that we bought was projectors. We bought some projectors to connect to your computer so you can display your movies on the wall.”
With some set-up by the canal, Rob put on a successful, free, and community-wide movie event where they watched The Peanuts Movie.
3rd Place: Sky Fogal
Our next contest winner is Sky Fogal, the president and one of the owners of a few companies: Skirmish Paintball, Pocono Whitewater Rafting, and Pocono Biking. He’s bid with Municibid for all three businesses, but has sought the marketplace mostly for paintball.
“Skirmish Paintball is the world’s largest paintball facility with over 750 acres of paintball maps. We’ve put everything on these maps from old-style wooden forts, we made a replica of the Alamo, castles, towns, cities, villages, to giant cargo containers. If you can play it in a video game, my goal is to let you be able to play it in real-life.”
“We’ve won quite a few things at Municibid over the years. I’ve been a member of this site from…I actually don’t even know how long.”
“Everything on my desk from the phone I’m using, to the switches that control my computer, to a bunch of our paintball bunkers, most of our trash cans on property, lots of stuff like that. It’s hard to pick a favorite one.”
“We use Municibid to put a lot of the different props on the field. Some are playable, and some are just for show. We were able to buy used street signs at one auction. They were great. They really made the streetscapes we designed to play on look realistic.”
Finalist: Daniel Oliver
Dan Oliver is a family man who joined the traffic industry as a teenager working for a line-painting company. To this day, he remains in the field, now with his own equipment and small business.
“It was just a summer job, but I ended up liking it, and did it through my adult years to where I ended up working for the town of Mansfield, which was a municipality, for almost 20 years. And then I left there to do traffic circles for a private company.”
After one look at Municibid, Dan saw a product he wanted, a line-painting machine. He bid, and won!
“And my daughter’s like, ‘Why don’t we do some weekend stuff?’ So, we started doing that and had some friends in the business that did coating. We did parking lots. They invited us to do the line-painting and it took off from there. It was a weekend thing to spend time with her, doing over the summer, and we still do it to this day.”
Finalist: Tony Powell
Tony Powell’s ever-present interest in the automotive only grew after he discovered Municibid through a local news outlet. The story was that a fire truck in his area was going up for auction, courtesy of the Burton Fire Department.
“The truck that I bought on [Municibid] was my first classic car. Kind of got into them. I like working on vehicles and so forth.”
After some slight consideration and planning, he bid on, and won the vehicle. He even met the fire chief in the process!
“Didn’t know I was gonna get it so I didn’t plan on anything until after I bought it. But it was kind of neat. I’ve been to a few car shows and so forth. And you know, I didn’t want to devalue it and I was looking at, I think it was Craigslist, and there was somebody that had one real similar, it was a suburban, and it would end up being an ambulance.”
“Same years, low miles, all that kind of stuff. And I got talking with them. I said, ‘Hey if anybody wants a package deal, you know, I’ll possibly sell this one.'”
And resell, Tony did, making some profit in the process!
Congratulations to our Share Your Story 2022 Contest winners! We loved hearing your stories! You could be next. Browse online government auctions today.