In 2007-2008, when the US money exchange wasn’t very good overseas, in most countries, their money was strong. Tat made the market for used equipment more attractive to overseas buyers. Tim embraced that opportunity.


Tim soon learned that selling internationally is not as complex as shipping internationally. All the paperwork, quarantines, cleanliness and legalities must be met precisely— and those rules vary by country. He mastered those processes and for a time was shipping two container loads of equipment to overseas buyers each month. “It isn’t easy,” he says, “For one piece of equipment, we had to get toothbrushes and clean every groove to make it acceptable. We’ve now shipped to Australia, Europe, Israel, Sweden, Mexico, Canada, Iceland, Romania and South Africa. And we’ve shipped nearly everything, from motorcycles to boats, as well as sod equipment.”


Tim Wollesen with an array of the new equipment product lines Sales Midwest distributes. Tim loves selling iron.


Tim continues to receive calls and emails from turfgrass producers within the US and all over the world who are looking for good used equipment. “If we don’t have what they’re asking for, we’ll go looking for it,” he says. “And, in most cases, we’ll find it.”


Becoming an Auctioneer Tim was seeking another way to help sod farmers move the huge number of machines and get a reasonable price for them. “You can’t put ten similar items on a website or classified ad page without hurting the market value,” he says. “In 2010, I became a certified auctioneer and appraiser, not to conduct live auctions, but to ‘auction’ equipment online.”


He started Diversified Asset Solutions/Assetbids.com. Te company, unlike many auction sites, specializes in serving the turf industry. Tim says, “Tere were 3,800 sod producers in the US when we started. We allowed the equipment owner to protect their machine by placing a conservative reserve on it. Tat piece of equipment would not be sold for an amount lower than the number we’d agreed on. If the amount was not bid, the machine was taken of the market for a time and then reposted later as an item for sale.”


When the housing market started coming back, the online auction became less active. While that avenue for sales is still available, Tim currently has the site down to be revamped. He says he’ll bring it back online when he feels the need. For now, he thinks his website (www. salesmidwest.com) is the best avenue to sell used equipment as it gets high traffic, because all of his connections know “sod and landscape equipment is what we do.”


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Love of Flying Tim’s love of flying goes all the way back to his childhood. Te “old school” crop dusters (those applying pesticides to the crops in a field from a small, low-flying airplane) would usually have a kid stationed along the side of the field with a flag or flashing beacon to signal where they should start their next pass. Tim was that kid.


“I was so fascinated by their ability to maneuver that little plane so low and so accurately that I would nearly forget to duck out of the way before they started dusting,” he says. “I really wanted to become a pilot. But everyone told me the only practical way to get insurance and enough hours to qualify was to go into the military. I didn’t see military service as a fit for me, so I dropped the idea.”


About three years after starting Sales Midwest, Tim’s accountant, who knew he had a love of flying, looked at all the time and money he was spending on commercial flights, driving, fuel and hotels, and suggested checking out those expenses as compared to those of getting the


Tim expanded the company’s offerings to include parts from the beginning, because the shelf-life of sod is limited. If a piece of equipment breaks down, the delays could put that sod’s worth in jeopardy.


TPI Turf News May/June 2018


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