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| I've sold cattle on Superior for 36-37 years now. They are good reputable company; they have always held to contracts and money is good. The whole key is finding a rep you can work with and will market your cattle to prospective buyer list before the upcoming sale you want to sell on. The rep needs to call buyers they deal with and tell them about your cattle. It takes a couple of years to get buyers seeing your name and cattle listed and get a reputation going.
The key things about selling on video sales is yes you are selling pot loads. Most guys are used to selling one weight and taking a slide. However, if you have enough calves you need to mold your calves into weight classes, say a load of lighter steers at 400 wts. Then a load in the 500 wts., same with heifers' loads. That is where you'll receive maximum dollars buy you presorting your cattle before you deliver that day.
So, the problem arises you most likely will end up with leftover calves, usually a mix of heifers and steers. Standard practice for most is to do a spilt load of mix calves and offer heifers a discount on that load. My opinion is you get taken advantage selling split loads. Better to evaluate at that time to take them to sale barn or find a neighbor to comingle like cattle with them and sell together. These calves need to be on same program on vaccinations, weaning etc. They need to be peas in a pod. You would sell under a name like Jones and Smith ranches. Or if you can find this other ranch a comingle all your calves to fill all the loads, that's what we've been doing all these years.
There is a lot more internet pages as well as video sales. A lot of it depends on your area you live in and were your cattle best fit in a market. The key things are you can deliver to local scales or use your ranch scales or rent portables, whatever fits you best. Shrink kills you as a seller, that's why I say presort you calves before sale day. Sort non-conforming cattle off before rep gets there on shipping day. Time is money, and extra time means more shrink. Like VBar says you need to sort all dinks off, because they will be sorted at weigh up. They need to be uniform loads.
As far as commission goes any place around me, I sell in this area charges 2%. Some video outfits charge a little different but pretty close in fees. Superior will also charge a consignment fee of 2 dollars per head. That way if you no sell they get paid. It also allows you to roll cattle to another sale one time if you no sale.
Forward contracting has been the only way for us to stay in business in my area. We have a long way to feed lots, freight differentials kill us and the buyers. I've been an advocate of Superior all these years, at this time we might be going another route because of differences with my rep and CEO of Superior. At this time, we are sitting on the fence with Superior. They have failed to answer to questions we have about marketing for us. However, I will stand behind them for holding to contracts and also enforcement of contracts and resolving disputes. | |
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Selling on superior vs. salebarn
