Why $180 Is a Smart Benchmark for Auction Storage Fees

Dealers are good at modeling the cost of a vehicle: purchase price, recon, transport, floorplan, and more.

But one fee often gets missed, not because it’s hidden, but because it’s scattered across too many systems: auction holding costs.

The invoice comes from the auction. The delay comes from the broker. The pickup status might live in a transport portal. It’s no wonder most dealers don’t include this in their unit economics. And when you’re moving dozens of vehicles a week, that data isn’t all in one place. Recon updates might be in your shop system, and storage fees show up later on a separate auction invoice. Stitching it all together just to see how long a car sat can turn into a spreadsheet project no one has time for.

To help, we’ve built a defensible benchmark: $180.

That’s the average holding fee exposure we recommend you include when modeling auction-to-retail unit profitability, especially when you’re working with brokered transport timelines.

Where the $180 Comes From

We reviewed dozens of real-world auction fee schedules and mapped them against the typical 12-day “dwell time” seen in brokered moves. Here are four representative scenarios:

Across these examples, spanning different pricing models, we consistently land near the $180 mark for a brokered move.

You can see 30+ car auctions and their fee structures here.

Why Auction Fees Get Overlooked

Auction storage fees often live outside the transport conversation. They show up later, from a different source, usually with little explanation and no flag in your original deal margin.

They’re small on a per-day basis, so they feel like rounding errors, until they aren’t. Especially when a delay pushes a car past the grace period and into a $20/day or $45/day penalty window.

If you’ve ever been surprised by a $315 invoice that landed weeks after the car hit recon, you’re not alone.

Why 12 Days Is a Reasonable Assumption

The $180 figure depends on the assumption that a vehicle sits unpicked at the auction for 12 days. That may sound high, but it’s actually a good, conservative estimate when you look at both industry guidance and real-world outcomes.

1. Pickup delays alone often consume 2–5 days

Brokers like American Auto Shipping say it takes 2–5 days on average to assign a carrier and arrange pickup after a customer has booked and declared the car ready.

They note:

“On average, it’ll take anywhere from 2–5 days to get a carrier out to your vehicle for pickup… This is wildly simplifying the process, and there are a lot of factors that will impact the average pickup window.”
— American Auto Shipping

This is the optimistic view. It doesn’t account for cars posted with non competitive rates, broker-side delays in load assignment, or situations where a load sits waiting for days before being visible to a driver.

2. Real-world reports confirm longer delays are common

We’ve seen many public stories from dealers and retail customers alike where pickups take 10, 14, even 16 days:

• “They had my car for 16 days in Atlanta before it ever left.” — ConsumerAffairs
  
  
• “This is literally long past the 5–7 day mark and the vehicle hasn’t left their lot.” — Reddit
  

These aren’t edge cases. They reflect what happens when brokered loads aren’t priced to move, or when the dispatch process drags on because the broker is shopping the load for margin instead of speed.

To be clear: faster pickups do happen. But they’re not reliable enough to build a profit model on.

That’s why 12 days is a fair average to use. It accounts for common dispatch delays without assuming worst-case. And based on the most representative auction fee structures, $180 is what those 12 days usually cost you.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

You wouldn’t model recon or transport without numbers. Storage deserves a line, too.

When you leave it out:

• Your profit-per-unit model looks better than reality
  
  
• You can’t compare brokered and direct transport fairly
  
  
• You may overlook high-fee auctions that silently drain margin
  

Worse, you won’t notice until the invoice arrives—often after the car is sold.

How AHX Changes the Math

For dealers using Auto Hauler Exchange, cars don’t sit for 12 days. They’re typically picked up within 2 days of purchase: 1 day posted on the marketplace, 1 day to pickup.

Let’s run the same auction scenarios:

It’s not just about speed. It’s about shrinking your exposure to the fee no one budgets for.

Want to Get More Precise?

Power users can pull purchase and pickup timestamps from their TMS or ePOD records and compare them to auction grace windows. Some even use conditional logic in their cost model spreadsheets to auto-calculate exposure by VIN.

But if that’s not in reach, $180 is a strong default. It’s simple. It’s supportable. And it gives you a clearer view of your true per-unit cost.

Bottom Line

You don’t need to trace every invoice or dissect every broker delay to account for auction holding fees.

You just need a smart, consistent proxy.

$180 per vehicle is a solid one, and until your operations shrink auction dwell below 7 days, it’s probably closer to your real number than zero.

📊 For a full auction-by-auction breakdown, visit our storage fee reference sheet.

And to see how $180 fits into your overall transport cost structure, check out our article on the real cost of vehicle transportation.