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The trip and what we learned:
Prior to going down to Stockton, I called the DRMO site and spoke with a
clerk who handled sales. She explained it like this: "You can't see anything
now, you have to wait 3 days prior to sale date, which is on Mar 12th."
Despite what I was told by the abrupt gal on the phone, I went to the base to
see if I could just observe any property, even from a distance. I figured
since I was in the area anyway, why not?
My son went with me (Stockton PD). It was his first trip there too. We
arrived around noon on Saturday and were startled at the size of the place.
This was huge! It's on flat ground so you can pretty well sell how it
stretches out... and it was staggering, this was one huge cargo depot! At
least 500 acres of buildings, warehouses, with rail road spurs, nice paved
wide streets and many, many paved over parking lots full of all things
military. It was very impressive as we drove around it, only we had trouble
finding a way in! lol
The place is actually located south of Stockton at French Camp. This is a
rural farm area, with not much more than a post office and a couple of
stores. Anyway, we circled the base looking for the main gate and finally
found it on the 4th and last side (north side). We were told that sometimes
there are guards and sometimes not...(insider info) and the main gate stays
open. This time there were two gate guards and they didn't act real friendly
at first. "You want to come in and look, huh? Want do you want to look
at?... This is an off limits area now!" I could see we were about to get
the bums rush when we both presented police identification and got off to a
better start. We started explaining in a friendly way we were just looking
for some surplus equipment to look over and it was our first time out here.
More or less we just wanted to see the base out of curiosity. Everything
improved at this point, although we could not enter with an escort.
2 minutes later we were happily being escorted by one of our new police
friends inside the base for a private tour. I think we were parked talking
at the main gate for over 7 minutes just B'S'-ing and nobody else showed up
or left. The place looked more like a ghost town than a shipping depot.
Perfect for us, so we lucked out and got a tour from the bored staff!
The officer was really helpful pointing out various places and explained that
most days, except weekends a person can enter the base, get a bid form and
check over property. Along the tour he showed use the auction site, some of
the surplus equipment and where to get the bid forms, which is across the
base from the auction site.. a good thing to know.
Unfortunately the trucks and really good stuff must have been in the
warehouses as we never did see them. I suspected the huge warehouses
adjacent to the open yard area where a lot of misc. construction equipment
was parked was probably holding the items for the Mar 12th sale. The DoD
officer didn't know for sure. He said not all that many people (considering
how big it is) ever showed up for the sales and he was told things went
pretty cheap.. especially duece and a half trucks.
This sounded pretty good to us and we've since agreed to return sometime just
prior to the March sale and look it all over. I will stay down there if the
property looks interesting enough. Then I will place a bid on the sale date
and bring it home same day, if we can. I am going back with a 3/4 ton truck
and 11,000 lb, 23 X 6' 8", hydraulic tilt flat bed trailer, so it's not like
I can't pick up a few things... hehehehe.
I think you can get a list of the property to be sold from DRMO (Sharpes Army
Depot) Stockton, should be on the web at the DRMO site. From there you can
get their phone number and call them to order up a list or get one faxed if
they don't have it published. Let me know if I can be of any assistance and
I will see what I can do. We can get you e-mail the same day as we view
the property. Naturally if I have a flood of people wanting me to check
things I will have to limit it to first come first serve and see what I can
get done.
Keep em rollin,
Jack Lee
Ferret Mk23
SUMB
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 02 2000 - 22:30:32 PST