Editor’s note: With the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce Agribusiness Committee’s Rural Recognition Banquet honorees being announced this week, The Columbus Telegram will be profiling each of the award winners. This is the second in the series.
When St. Edward-born Ron and Mark Stock graduated high school in 1983 and 1984, respectively, auctioneer school was all the rage for recent graduates.
“The farming economy was so bad every young man and some young ladies were going to auctioneer school because there were 25 auctions every week from people selling out,” Ron said.
Ron, looking for meaningful employment out of high school, wanted in and went to auctioneer school. He said at one point there were one or two press releases in the newspaper every week about someone graduating from auctioneer school. Naturally, by the time they were graduated, there was a lot of competition. The brothers worked mostly with household auctions to start, with their own twist.
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“We differentiated ourselves with service. We got a dumpster, cleaned out the house, left the house pristine, we had two household sales every weekend,” Ron said.
Mark added that the other auctioneers simply wouldn’t do that. Usually, it was up to family, friends and even the owners themselves to do that kind of work. Later, they would apply the same principle to farm equipment sales, setting things up for the auction.
“We realized there was a niche in the market that most auctioneers weren’t doing and that was cleaning everything up, detailing everything, lining it up on behalf of the seller,” Mark said. “They were usually retirement age and friends and neighbors would just set it up.”
In the late 1990s, the pair became acquainted with one Brian Schultz, who was married to their cousin. Schultz suggested they look into using the internet to host auctions, or list items, even offering his expertise on computers.
“I thought that wasn’t feasible because I had dialup. I said ‘that will never work, farmers don’t have internet,’” Mark said. “He said ‘don’t worry, they will, you have to be ahead of the curve.’”
Schultz passed away in 1998, taking the idea he had with him, but his words had left an imprint on Mark, who decided to write to universities and see what they could do with the idea. The University of Nebraska at Omaha responded.
“Tom Clark (worked for the university at the time) called and said ‘hey, I got your letter, we got a grant from the Peter Kiewit Foundation, maybe we can build that for you,’” Mark said. “I spent 14 months driving back and forth to Omaha building what is now called Proxibid.”
While the university developed the Proxibid system for matching buyers to sellers online, Mark attributes BigIron’s success with online auctions to Schultz, because without his idea, Mark wouldn’t have reached out to the university. Due to a change in leadership, the Stocks had to separate from Proxibid. That separation, Mark said, was good for them.
They had their first online sale in 2001 for the Omaha Public Power District using internet bidding. At the time, Mark noted, wired internet was the only real option, so they had to run 1,000 feet of internet cable from an office out the window to the site.
While they were still somewhat tethered, their mobile office attached to a tractor-trailer could take them to auctions anywhere. In 2003, wireless internet cards came about, allowing them to work anywhere with a cell phone signal.
“That was a gamechanger because now we could be on a farmers site in rural America as long as they had a cell tower that wasn’t far away,” Mark said.
After a few years, they decided to change the name Stock Auction and Realty Company to BigIron, which they had to acquire. Mark likes to joke that they wanted to go with “Big Ron” and added the letter I. Ron said it refers to big iron equipment.
“We wanted the name iron in the domain name, found out big iron was available, and it took some finesse to get the name, it’s easy to remember,” Ron said.
In 2008, ethanol hit the market and nearly doubled the price of corn which, in turn, reduced their business as fewer farmers were retiring or selling out.
“The only auctions we were having now were health issue auctions or folks with a death in the family. People were voluntarily retiring prior to that because they were tired of going out there and farming and not making money,” Mark said.
In 2016 they stopped holding outcry auctions with a physical auctioneer and transitioned to online only. Today, BigIron has 540 employees across the lower 48 states and has sold to many countries. Mark said that, while they have worked hard on their business, BigIron would not exist were it not for all the employyes that were involved along the way and their wives Kris and Kristin.
“I’m telling you there’s no way this would have worked if we didn’t have some of the best people the most passionate people who cared about what we were trying to do and cared about our sellers, bidders and our buyers,” Mark said.
The Ag Pioneer award is presented to an innovator or groundbreaker in the industry. Honorees are nominated by members of the community who select them for one of four categories related to agriculture. In the case of BigIron, Ron said, innovation is a routine for them.
“Being a pioneer means finding new and better ways to do things, breaking new ground. We’re pioneers every day because we’re finding ways to hone our skills, hone our business, make a better experience for our customers buying and selling,” Ron said.
Ron added that the award is an honor and they’re humbled to accept it.
“It’s very humbling to be nominated for such an award from people in the Columbus area who watched our business from the start, watched it grow. A lot of them have done business and when you get a nod from people who have done business, it’s tremendously satisfying,” Ron said.
Both Mark and Ron said the best part of what they do is working with people. For Ron, the best part is helping people solve their problems in whatever way he can.
“It’s satisfying helping them achieve their goal, getting people fixed and feeling really good about helping,” Ron said.
For Mark, he does it because he and Ron understand the field and understand farmers. Coming from a farm family, regularly talking to farmers and knowing what their concerns and wants are, Mark said, has been a big part of BigIron’s reputation with the ag community.
“When we drove in on somebody’s place and looked at a planter and we knew if it had a Yetter opener or a Groff opener or if it had liquid insecticide or herbicide kit, we could identify that and the people we were working for felt comfortable because we knew what we were looking at,” Mark said.
BigIron and the other honorees will be presented their awards on March 21 at the American Legion building at 2263 23rd St. during the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce Agribusiness Committee’s 54th Annual Rural Recognition Banquet. Honorees were nominated by members of the community.
