Once or twice a month, Wangi Mugeni parks his used pickup truck at the city's surplus warehouse in the Sodor neighborhood, where the city sells various junk items, looking for his next big deal.
The cavernous space is mostly filled with chairs, desks, filing cabinets, and other bureaucratic jetsam. But Mugenyi knows that sometimes there are items of greater value, such as a retired Parks Department lawn mower or a worn-out Seattle Public Works compressor. The truck driver and self-taught mechanic is able to repair and resell the cars in his home country of Uganda. .
“People want things made in America, I tell you,” said the clean-cut, affable man in his 60s who works out of his garage in Linwood.
Mugenyi is a reseller, one of a small community of entrepreneurs who scour the Seattle metropolitan area for used items that can be repaired, disassembled, and sold overseas for a profit.
Resellers often buy from private sellers, but the surplus goods regularly unloaded by public entities, from federal agencies to cities and school districts, are the gold standard in the used goods world.
Resellers love government surplus not only for the price (which is usually a fraction of the price taxpayers originally bought it for), but also for the quality and transparency.
For example, government surplus vehicles, of which Mugeni owns several, often come with maintenance history and, in some cases, spare parts.
As for private sellers, “I don't know what they're throwing at them there,” said Mugeni, who believes government surpluses account for more than 60% of the inventory. “That's my best source of information.”
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Surplus companies like Mugenyi are nothing new. After World War II, the federal government formalized a system for releasing surplus inventory to other government agencies and the general public.
Exact numbers are hard to come by, but a 2005 Congressional report estimated that at the time the federal government alone was spending $20 billion a year on everything from office equipment to complete weapons systems.
State and city governments, school districts, libraries, public universities, and other government agencies have their own surplus systems. Most of this is done according to a combination of budget cycles, maintenance and depreciation schedules, accounting rules, and simple obsolescence.
Some of that surplus is sold by private surplus retailers. However, many are sold directly to the public with the help of intermediaries such as GovDeals.com.
The end result is something like a massive, taxpayer-subsidized garage sale, mostly online, with a size comparable to that of most commercial retailers, and a mid-century It has the variety and sheer weirdness of a curio shop.
For example, let's say you placed a bid on a 17-foot fiberglass canoe (starting at $20) earlier this month. The Navy's Northwest Regional Facility in Silverdale, Kitsap County, has dozens of surplus items, including a towable 6-foot climbing wall ($2,500) and four racks of bowling balls of various sizes ($200). there were.
At the state's Enterprise Services Surplus Operations retail store in Tumwater, Thurston County, bargain hunters could choose from items confiscated by airport security, including knives, corkscrews and pool cues.
And for those finicky people on your vacation list, the UW Surplus Store on Northeast 25th Street, just east of the University of Washington, offers used dorm furniture, spare graduation robes, hospital beds, and labs. glass products, and even medical equipment.
The latter category caught the attention of Seattle-area neurologist Eric Almitano. He recently purchased a used portable EKG machine for his new clinic in Mountlake Terrace. He says the $170 he paid is about one-tenth the price the device would sell for “out of the box.” Considering all the costs of starting a new medical business, UW's surplus “really helped,” Almitano added.
In fact, government surplus is a goldmine for all the quirky one-off items that end up going viral, like school buses, high school football scoreboards, and 120-foot-tall city water towers (no delivery). There is a possibility that
Since 2019, bargain hunters have purchased nearly 8,000 surplus vehicles from Washington state for an average of $5,600 each.
Startups and non-profits are using City of Seattle's surplus to furnish entire offices for next to nothing, with 24-inch computer monitors available for $25, filing cabinets $10 per drawer, and swivel chairs. can be purchased starting from $5. Compared to retail, “it's just cents on the dollar,” said Mike Wong, who manages the city's surplus operations.
Government surplus often allows nonprofits, schools, and other government agencies to shop for free or at a reduced price. They also prioritize their colleagues. For example, much of what is in city warehouses ends up back in other city departments. One of his biggest customers for the UW Surplus Store is the university itself.
Even though resellers are often the most loyal customers of government surpluses, they do not receive special treatment or discounts. Wong said the city regularly has 10 to 20 resellers at its warehouse. Wisconsin stores have about a half-dozen items, said Becky Reiser, surplus retail supervisor for the state.
“Whether it's office furniture, vintage furniture, retail fixtures or anything like that, every manufacturer has their own specialty,” Reiser said. “Sometimes I buy one thing, sometimes I buy 20 things.”
Mugenyi, a regular at both stores, has flexible interests. He said he started shipping surplus goods to Uganda just before the pandemic, filling a 40-foot cargo container he shares with his partner with everything from bicycles to disassembled bulldozers.
His current areas of expertise are generators, lawn mowers, compressors, and almost any other power equipment that has a motor. “As long as it's a machine, there's a market for me,” said Mugeni, who came to the United States in the early 1990s.
There's another reason why resellers prefer city and UC stores. It's face-to-face shopping. Especially since the pandemic, many government surpluses are now only sold online or by appointment. But bargain hunters can indulge in retail at the city's warehouses on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and at the University of California on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Wisconsin store also has a digital storefront. Wong said the city sells surplus vehicles only online, and warehouse items are “strictly cash-to-carry.”
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The government's profitable business has been uneven lately. According to state statistics, sales of state surplus vehicles last year exceeded $10 million, an increase of 74% from 2019, while sales of municipal vehicles during the same period decreased by about 24% to $1.4 million. Warehouse sales also fell by about the same amount.
Some of this decline reflects pandemic closures. Staffing shortages slowed the processing of excess inventory coming into the city, including hundreds of computers whose hard drives needed to be digitally erased before they could be resold.
Perhaps due to the current economic uncertainty, the number of startups that once bought large quantities of the city's hand-me-down office furniture at the warehouse has also decreased. “There aren't that many businesses opening,” Wong said.
Still, the city's surplus wealth could turn around.
So far this year, total surplus revenue is on track to surpass 2019. Sales could jump even further in June, when more of the city's surplus computer inventory (currently more than 500) hits stores. Laptops will cost between $50 and $150 and will initially be limited to two devices per customer per day.
The city could also see more business from resellers like Mugenyi, who said demand has soared over the past three years.
Customers in Uganda are asking for more tools and equipment, such as lathes and water pumps. Motors such as his 8-horsepower engine, which Mugenyi removed from a recently purchased urban leaf blower, are also in demand.
We are also seeing an increase in requests for large equipment such as tractors and construction vehicles, especially older models that are easier to repair.
“Now they want bigger things from me, like bulldozers, backhoes and sorting machines,” said Mugenyi, who will donate a portion of the proceeds to a vocational school they are building a few hours away from Uganda. The capital of Kampala, he added.
Mugenyi said the main barrier to this burgeoning trade is finding the funds to buy such big-ticket items, especially since the costs have to be covered months before salaries are paid. It is said that He hopes to eventually gain that kind of production capacity, but for now he's stuck with smaller, easier-to-handle surplus items while making ends meet with a part-time job at a commercial warehouse. “We are growing, but at a slow pace.”
Mugenyi is not just a Seattle-area reseller with global ambitions. Although the city doesn't formally track its buyers, many of the warehouse's regular customers appear to be from overseas, Wong said.
“It may be 'surplus' here, but some of this stuff is still quite valuable when distributed to developing countries,” Wong added. “The network they're building for something like this is really amazing.”
Meanwhile, Mugeni appreciates the zero-waste philosophy found in many government surplus projects, which contrasts with much of America's throwaway culture but resonates deeply in places like Uganda. ing.
“In most developing countries, they don't throw anything away,” Mugenyi says. “We recycle.”
On a recent Thursday, Mugeni was putting that theory into practice at a city warehouse. The bundle of fire hoses he had just purchased were worn out to the point where they couldn't withstand the high pressure of water, he said. But it will be more than enough to irrigate Uganda's farms.
“It might leak from somewhere, but we're used to it,” Mugenyi said. “You can apply the patch.”
