Spring ag equipment online auction based at Expo is ‘the place to go’
Published 8:50 am Sunday, March 16, 2025
J&C Auctions owner JB Dimick, left, and yard manager Michael Lee Jones assess the almost 1,300 pieces of equipment staged at The Expo in Central Point for an annual auction. (Photos by Buffy Pollock)
Tractors sit at The Expo in Central Point as part of the J&C Auctions online auction that wraps up this week. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
Tractors sit at The Expo in Central Point as part of the J&C Auctions online auction that wraps up this week. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
A Mail Tribune article from 2010 featured longtime local ag support Ralph Kerr, who died in October 2023, working to restore a nearly completed destroyed 1926 John Deere “Nickel D.” (File photo)
JB Dimick of J&C Auctions. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
Annual event has global reach, with nearly 1,300 pieces of farm equipment up for grabs through March 20
Nearly two decades since launching J&C Auctions in 2006, Eagle Point resident JB Dimick has managed to strike a successful balance between embracing a global online equipment auction market while retaining his signature small town service approach for which the seeds were planted when he was just a 10-year-old farm kid in a dusty fairgrounds arena.
Walking the northern lot of the Jackson County Expo in Central Point on a recent afternoon, Dimick surveyed some 1,300 pieces of equipment from more than 450 consigners, all neatly entered into his timed online spring auction sale, set to close March 19 and 20.
Dimick and his crew rent the oversized parking lot for two and a half months for the spring sale each year.
“I move the crew in on the 10th of February, and this will all be gone by the first of April,” he told the Rogue Valley Times this week.
Tractors sit at The Expo in Central Point as part of the J&C Auctions online auction that wraps up this week. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
The annual sale is a boost for the local economy — buyers and sellers use local fuel stations, restaurants and hotels — and provides local farmers and ranchers a chance to buy and sell equipment with clients from around the world. Last year’s auction generated $5.76 million via J&C’s website platform.
“I’d guess between $8 and $10 million will change hands by the time we’re done next week,” Dimick said.
Unofficially, Dimick’s fairground auction days began when he helped sell tractor forks, hand tools and old farm trucks for longtime community ag supporter Ron Anderson in the early 1990s.
“We’d do this sale here at the fairgrounds every spring. … It was the live auction format with an in-person auctioneer. Ron has always been — and continues to be — instrumental in Junior Livestock sales here at the fairgrounds,” Dimick said.
“I started working for him when I was probably 10 years old. … I was the kid that would hold up the rusty pitchforks as he would sell ‘em.”
Having done everything from feed sales to working in the lumber industry, Dimick, now 45, kept the unofficial “county expo farm machinery sales” going for a handful of years after Anderson — who remains head auctioneer for the Jackson County Fair — moved on to other things. In 2009, Dimick launched J&C Auctions with longtime friend Curt Crichton.
JB Dimick of J&C Auctions. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
“That first sale in 2009, we grossed $214,000… and we thought we hung the moon,” Dimick recalled this week.
“We kind of had a vision. We didn’t exactly know how to get there, but we put a lot of miles on an old pickup, going from farm to farm, just talking to potential sellers and customers.”
Over the years, he embraced new auction technologies while keeping what already worked.
“We’ve all gotten so accustomed to when you want to buy something, you go on Amazon and it shows up in two days. You don’t have to interface with anybody,” he said. “But that personal connection is important to folks.”
When Crichton retired in 2015, Dimick and his wife Stacy continued growing the company and transitioning from in-person-only auctions to a mix of in-person and online. In 2020, the industry shifted to a mostly online format.
“Now there is no auctioneer. It’s a computer algorithm; you just go in and bid,” Dimick said.
“After 2020, if we hadn’t got on the bandwagon of setting our sales up in a way that we could utilize online video platforms, I don’t think we’d still be in business. … Honestly, I don’t think I could get people to come to a regular (in-person) sale now if I wanted to.”
Dimick’s auctions quickly evolved from being held inside dusty fairground arenas to being shopped by tens of thousands of online buyers around the world. This year’s auction launched Feb. 7 and generated 82,000 page views in under four weeks.
“I would venture to say that 70% of what you see in this parking lot right here will go east of the Rockies or to different countries,” Dimick said Monday.
Rob Wallace, who owns Del Rio Vineyards with wife Jolee, said Dimick’s spring sale is a valuable business tool.
“What JB brings to the table is not only his unique level of service but he’s tied in with AuctionTime. … This gives the locals an opportunity to put their equipment, not just in front of the other locals but, in front of buyers all over the world,” Wallace said.
Dimick said he’s grateful for customers who live down the road and beyond. He credits his company’s success to a hard-working crew, proximity to Interstate 5 — to help with drop-off and shipping — detailed auction listings and knowledgeable service.
“This sale here has become known on the West Coast as the place to go for ag equipment. We have guys who haul equipment up from California and they’ll drive past six different auction companies to come down here to little old Central Point, Oregon,” he said.
“It’s not necessarily because we’re marketing geniuses or anything like that, but if you have a New Holland combine, for example, you want to sell your combine where they know how to sell combines. … We’re farmers that just happen to own an auction company.”
Noble Dairy operations manager Travis Noble said the local sale was something local ag businesses look forward to each year. “We’re down in this little island for agriculture, and yet this is probably the biggest sale that happens in the state of Oregon every year,” said Noble.
“We’ve done business with JB for a long time, back when he was a feed salesman and his dad even hauled cows for us. Being able to sell our equipment to a competitive market, with J&C Auctions outreach, it’s pretty impressive. JB gets in contact in the fall and helps you create a plan for what your equipment needs are going to be.”
Dimick said his focus, however much the auction industry continues to change, will remain “having that personal touch,” whether he’s picking buyers up at the airport or helping farmers troubleshoot equipment issues.
“We’ve operated with a mindset of customer service first. … Our goal is to work the hardest we can for every customer,” he said. “We always try to make sure that we operate in a fair and honest and ethical way… and I think that’s really the key” Dimick said.
A Mail Tribune article from 2010 featured longtime local ag support Ralph Kerr, who died in October 2023, working to restore a nearly completed destroyed 1926 John Deere “Nickel D.” (File photo)
Regionally famous vintage tractor collection heads to auction
An added element to this year’s spring auction, hosted at the Expo by J&C Auctions, is longtime local ag supporter Ralph Kerr’s collection of vintage tractors, which will be auctioned off. Kerr’s collection of tractors and farm equipment — over 150 pieces — date back more than a century.
Kerr, who died Oct. 29, 2023, was known for his ardent support of local youth in 4H and FFA and for spearheading community events benefiting local agriculture. Carol Kerr said her husband of 40 years began collecting tractors in the late 1990s. Tractors restored by Kerr, a self-proclaimed “Farmall (tractor) man,” were featured in Pear Blossom Festival parades for a quarter-century.
One of Kerr’s favorites, a 1926 John Deere “Nickel D,” was featured in a 2010 Mail Tribune article. The tractor, listed online, required total restoration. His prized possession, a 1952 International Super M, with a rare after-market V8, also is listed online,
J&C Auctions owner JB Dimick said it’s never easy to auction off equipment owned by longtime friends. Kerr, he noted, was the “fella you called when you had a problem with your tractor that nobody else could get figured out.”
“Ralph was a real community icon and a community supporter,” Dimick said. “I get kind of choked up whenever I think about helping sell off anyone’s equipment. The people we sell for aren’t just a number. We know them all by name. Ralph was a close friend, so we’re honored that his family chose us to do this for them.”
Carol Kerr said it was hard to say goodbye to her husband’s prized tractors, but she hoped they’d bring joy to other collectors. Her late husband, she said, rarely met a tractor he wasn’t willing to salvage; he did his own mechanics, welding, painting and more, she said.
“He accumulated tractors from everywhere. People would call him up and say their grampa had died and left one in a field that wouldn’t run,”she said.
“They’d ask if he wanted to come haul it off… and he would always go look at it.”
Dimick said liquidations from two regionally well-known families would be in this week’s auction. In addition to the Kerr collection, the sale will feature equipment from the estate of the Don-Lo Ranch family, of McDoel, Cali.
Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 458-488-2029 or bpollock@rv-times.com. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal.
