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I want to talk to you about buying a government surplus vehicle. There’s a company online called Gov Planet and they also have a sister company called Iron Planet. And what they do is. They take in government surplus vehicles put them up for auction and people like you can bid on them. Now what qualifies as a government surplus vehicle it’s pretty much anything that the government no longer needs and is no longer going to go to any of smaller outlying government facilities.
So it could be like an old golf cart, it could be this work truck. That’s full of a bunch of lawn equipment, a big old Deuce and a half two and a half ton truck Humvees. They have tons and tons of Humvees, because they’re getting demilitarized and they’re selling them off to the public. All the way up to giant tank hauling trucks go planet.com. They you basically have to go on you sign up. You get a number and then you watch the auctions.
They have different auctions coming up throughout the year and everything that you could imagine. The government has ever used they’re probably selling now. I’m pretty sure stuff like real tanks and jets and weapons you cannot buy through gov planet. It’s all kind of like the the more useful work trucks the Humvees. You’re not going to get one with a machine gun on the top and you can get a full variety of Humvees and all these trucks. Some of them are really beat-up because if you think about it. A lot of the guys in the military like their young kids.
Sometimes they’re a little rough on equipment and some of the vehicles are actually really really well maintained. I’ve seen vehicles with hardly any miles hardly any hours on them all the way up to stuff that is just destroyed, but that’s the cool thing about Gulf planet. You go there it has a full description somebody has inspected every one if the thing. Doesn’t run it says it right there. If it says it runs and drives, that is also there in the description. So you can get a chance to kind of look over all these vehicles and it’s not just vehicles. Here in Barstow, California, where we’re at it’s vehicle all over the country factories, all over the world. I’ve seen Unimogs in Guam and I’ve seen big tank haulers in Pennsylvania and tractors in Illinois and Texas and Wisconsin. They have so many auctions going on simultaneously.
All over the world that there’s probably something near you. Plus if you’re interested in it there’s companies, that will ship the vehicle to you. So you’re kind of buying these things semi sight unseen. It’s not completely a blind auction, because they have a lot of photos. It’s not just one blurry shot. There’s photos of the interior, the exterior under the hood and there’s a good description on every vehicle that you’d be purchasing. We are taking home this Humvee for an upcoming episode of dirt. Every day now the Humvees are really cool, because it’s got a diesel engine.
Iit’s got an automatic transmission, full independent suspension, portal axles. So they have a really wide stance. They’re really kind of low to the ground, but they have a lot of ground clearance and it’s kind of neat, because I’ve never driven a Humvee before. I’ve never really gotten to wheel one really hard and so in this upcoming episode of dirt. Every day which you can find on our motor journal or YouTube. We are going to build this thing and we’re going to take it out rock crawling and really see what type of abuse it can take.
