A week on a small lot

Open. Battery dead on the wagon in space three — it has sat eleven days and only moved twice. On the charger. This happens to every car that doesn't sell, and it is the first small cost of a slow car nobody counts.

Call a lienholder for a payoff on a trade taken in last week. Hold music, transferred once, forty-one minutes. Nothing about this is difficult and all of it is unavoidable, and the customer whose title depends on it has no idea it is happening.

Swept the lot. Pulled a flyer off two windshields. Somebody's landscaping truck left a pile of clippings against the fence again.

Phone: “What's your best price on the silver one?” The best price is the price on the windshield, which is also the price on the website. There is a pause after you say that, every time, because the caller was expecting a negotiation and now has to decide what the conversation is for.

Repriced the sedan in space five. Day 46. It was right when we bought it and it stopped being right somewhere around day 30, and defending it for two more weeks was a decision we made out of pride. Dropped it. That is a public number changing on a public page, which is exactly as pleasant as it sounds.

Closed. Sold: nothing.

Out the door for the sale. Coffee, gas, an hour on the road.

Walking rows. Twenty-two cars on the short list from the run list last night; got to nineteen of them properly. Two were gone before we reached them. Paint gauge on every one. Three came off the list standing in the row — one with a quarter panel reading almost double the door, one with a transmission that hunted between two gears backing out of the space, one with mismatched tires and a smell in the cabin that would outlive us both.

Bid on four. Bought one — a crossover, four years old, unremarkable in the way you want. Two went past our number in the last ten seconds to an online bidder we will never meet. One went “if”; the seller countered at a number we didn't want and we let it go.

Back at the lot. Arranged transport for the crossover. The rest of the afternoon is paperwork from the morning, which is the part of auction day nobody pictures.

Crossover delivered. Straight onto the lift. The inspection is not a formality performed after we decide to sell it — it is how the deciding gets done, and until it is finished the car does not have a price.

Rear pads thin, one tire down to the wear bars, cabin filter gray, serpentine belt cracked on the ribs. All ordinary and all assumed when we bid. A small oil weep at the pan rail — not dripping, but on the sheet either way, because a thing you can see is a thing the buyer gets to see.

Parts store. Wrong bracket. Parts store again.

A 2 o'clock appointment doesn't show and doesn't call. Standard. We stopped being annoyed by this years ago; people's days fall apart and a car lot is the easiest thing to drop.

Sold: nothing. Two days in a row is normal on six cars and still makes the evening quiet.

Crossover done, washed, photographed against the back fence because the light is better there and because a photo taken in a hurry is a promise you didn't mean to make. Inspection sheet typed up and published whole — all 168 points, including the oil weep and the belt we replaced and the small scuff on the rear bumper we did not.

A customer from July calls: check engine light. Told him to come by. It is an evaporative system code and the gas cap is not sealing — a part that costs less than lunch. No charge. We are not being generous; a car we sold with a light on it is our problem in every sense that matters.

Funding confirmation lands for last week's financed deal. Money moves from the lender several business days after the customer drives away, which means the week you sell a car and the week you get paid for it are rarely the same week.

Sold: one, the wagon from space three. To somebody who had been on the website for a month and knew more about the car than we expected.

Delivery paperwork on the wagon. Two hours, most of it the state's: title assignment, odometer statement, sales tax, registration, temporary tag. The bill of sale and the out-the-door sheet take ten minutes because the number was settled before anybody sat down.

Appraised a trade we are not the right buyer for — a big truck with a plow mount and 190,000 miles. Said so plainly: we'd have to price the risk of a vehicle we don't know how to sell, and our number would be poor for a reason that isn't about the truck. Better sold privately, or to someone who moves work trucks. Making a bad offer to look busy is worse than saying no.

A tow truck parks across the entrance for twenty minutes recovering a car from the shop next door. Nobody can get in. Nothing to be done about it.

Lienholder payoff sent on Monday's trade. The title will come when it comes.

The day that matters. Roughly half the foot traffic of the whole week arrives between ten and two.

A couple measures the trunk of the crossover with a tape measure, then goes back to their car for the stroller and measures again with the stroller in it. This is, genuinely, the most useful thing anyone did on the lot all week.

One test drive. The route we suggest has a rough stretch of county road, a highway on-ramp and a hill, because a loop around the block tests nothing.

Somebody reads the published inspection on a phone next to the car, finds the line about the scuff on the rear bumper, walks around and looks at it, then asks a specific question about the brake measurement. Four groups through today.

Sold: nothing. Saturdays produce Tuesdays; the sale and the day it was decided are almost never the same day, which takes a long time to stop feeling like failure.

Closed. Somebody walks the lot anyway, reads the windshields, leaves. We like that; it is most of the argument for posting the price.

The week's arithmetic. One car in, one car out, five still here. Interest accrued on all of them, every day, including today. The sedan we repriced on Monday is at day 52 and is now the most important object on the property. Next week's run lists go up tonight and the whole thing starts again on Tuesday at 5:40.