According to a press release by KAR Holdings the parent company of ADESA

KAR Holdings, Inc., a leading provider of wholesale used vehicle and salvage auction services in North America, announced today that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. The Company intends to apply to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange.

ADESA CEO Tom Caruso

KAR Holdings, Inc.  announced in a press release yesterday that Tom Caruso, ADESA, Inc.’s Chief Operating Officer, will assume his new role as Chief Executive Officer and President of ADESA effective immediately.

Tom Caruso commented, “I look forward to the new challenges as CEO and President of ADESA. In my new role, I will focus on providing leadership to all of the employees of ADESA while ensuring we provide exceptional service to all of our customers.”

A man was arrested Wednesday for allegedly threatening a co-worker with a knife, according to witnesses and the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s deputies say Saul Garcia, 35, told a younger co-worker that he would seriously hurt him and send him to the hospital.

A driver for west-of-Tracy car auctioneers Adesa Golden Gate, Garcia is charged with assault with a deadly weapon and was booked at San Joaquin County Jail in French Camp.

Garcia’s manager Gary Mobley said that a woman employee told a 21-year-old co-worker that Garcia had said something offensive about her.

The younger employee decided to defend her and picked a fight with Garcia, Mobley said.

“It started with an argument between two employees inside of a van,” Mobley said. “And one guy decided to stick up for his female co-worker.”

Garcia pushed the other man out of the van and they rushed into the personnel office, where supervisors separated them and called the police.

Employees told sheriff’s deputies that the fight started while the employees were being shuttled to different parts of the car auction compound so they could drive cars to their buyers.

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According th their press release:

“Don Gottwald has been named AFC’s new president and CEO, effective immediately. Gottwald will report directly to KAR Holdings, Inc.’s Chairman and CEO, Brian Clingen.”

According to a press release from the auto channel:

CARMEL, Ind. November 13, 2008: AR Holdings, Inc. today reported its third quarter financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2008. For the third quarter of 2008, the company reported revenue of $444.6 million as compared with third quarter 2007 revenue of $394.3 million, an increase of 12.8%. Adjusted EBITDA, excluding pro forma adjustments for recent acquisitions and cost savings as defined in the company’s senior credit facility dated April 20, 2007, increased 4.2% to $101.8 million in the third quarter of 2008, as compared with third quarter 2007 adjusted EBITDA of $97.7 million.

The official statement off of their site:

Carmel, IN, September 9, 2008 – KAR Holdings, Inc. announced today the completion of the sale and leaseback of land at seven used vehicle auctions located in the states of California, Florida, Texas and Washington. The company received net cash proceeds of approximately $73.1 million from the sale of the land. The transaction includes lease agreements with initial terms of 20 years each, plus multiple renewal options. The properties will continue to house ADESA’s used vehicle auctions. KAR Holdings, Inc. will utilize 50% of the net proceeds to repay debt in accordance with terms of its Senior Credit Agreement.

Market watch has a much more detailed report that includes a plan to spend $12.5 million of those proceeds on improvements to the San Diego location.

Truck stolen from Adesa Auction

This is off of Business Wire

ADESA, Inc. today announced that it plans to acquire Live Global Bid, Inc. (“LGB”), a leading provider of Internet-based auction software and services, on June 30, 2008. The LGB technology allows auction houses to broadcast their auctions through simultaneous audio and video feeds to all participating Internet users from any location.

As we see our market change with the influence of technology it affects the transporters because right now a dealer can buy a few cars at every sale instead of traveling to the sale twice a month so your average cars per stop is lowered. Of course adding stops to your route lowers profits as well. If we see this trend continue, (and I think we will), then the next logical step will be to sell the cars on the internet without actually shipping them to the auction facility. It seems efficient to skip the extra shipping, but with the logistics nightmare it creates I think using the auction lot as the hub, in what basically becomes a hub and spoke distribution system, makes more sense to me.

I drove down to their facility today to see first-hand how the MyDealerLot™ system worked in an auto auction evironment. This is one of the auctions where the auto transporters pull inside of the secure area to load. They have worked out procedures to make sure the RFID tags are removed before loading so they don’t lose tags. At the auctions where the cars are checked out of an exit gate before being loaded in the transport lot it will be a lot easier to control. When they lay out the new facility with the locator system in mind it will be a lot easier to put in all of the transmitters and exciters. In this installation they made extensive use of solar powered units to keep from needing to dig up the lot for power. Where they were mounting on buildings with power they used conventional units like this one

I had an opportunity over lunch to hear George Cresto explain not only about this current system but also some of their research into gps based systems. They have a transmitter that can last up to a year on one battery charge and are studying the feasability of being able to track vehicles anywhere. I think this could work well for vehicle transport brokers. The cost will be higher than the RFID tracking tags so it will probably not be a viable alternative for auctions that need to track several thousand vehicles at one time but for a broker that has maybe a 100 vehicles moving at any given time it would allow them to locate the vehicle anytime during the move. Since he is looking at this working on the same web-based design it will be very easy to let the consumer track his own vehicle as well.