Rubin: Municibid has deals on lamps, hockey rinks, more. Just don't bid on my fire truck.

I've been thinking for awhile of buying an ambulance, but now I'm leaning more toward a fire engine.

While I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention that to my wife, she'll probably figure it out quickly if I park a 29-foot-long red 1975 Hahn Cummins 5-Speed in our driveway.

Technically, I would not be buying. I'd be bidding online at Municibid.com, where government agencies, schools and public utilities offload things like vehicles, computer accessories, school desks, random farm equipment and a 33-pound glass ceiling lamp shaped like an artichoke. All come with descriptions and a few from the past, like a hovercraft and a two-seat Cessna, have come with warnings.

The artichoke remains available through Aug. 14. Designed in Denmark, 1 yard in diameter, it's been hanging in the public library in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where a renovation has rendered it unnecessary. The only bid through Wednesday afternoon was $3,000, and there's no reserve.

You and I missed out Monday on a fine 2009 Chevrolet Express ambulance, gaveled off at $7,300 for Paradise Township after it put a new rig in service in southern Grand Traverse County. No worries, though; ambulances come along as dependably as, well, ambulances.

Municibid Marketing Director Sophie Eden tells me that some people convert the used rigs into campers, a potential selling point at my house except that as I ponder it, no one in our family camps.

As for a fire engine, it's mostly good for putting out fires. But I suppose I could use it to tow the boat we don't own to the spot where we're not camping.

Petty details. What's important is that the high bid on the Hahn Cummins on Wednesday was only $1,000, and let's be logical: Would you rather own a fire engine, or waste that money on something frivolous like groceries?

Where ingenuity meets availability

Municibid has replaced baseball-reference.com lately as the place I go wandering when I'm supposed to be writing.

Former school buses roll on as RVs, she says. Bidders compete for fire hoses and turn them into wallets or dog toys. Some EMS units become work trucks, with plenty of compartments for tools. One New England football fan turned an ambulance into a perpetual tailgate party, having scaled down from a bus at the insistence of his wife.

While I'm intrigued with what's there — dump trucks, an outdoor hockey rink (ice not included), 71 Victorian-style street lamps — Eden likes to find out what's next.

“He did a full Patriots wrap, with beer on tap inside,” Eden says. “It came with a stretcher, and he mounted a grill on it. There's a pizza oven. It’s really incredible. … Stuff that could otherwise have been thrown away sees a second life.”

The festival of creative consumption began in 2006, when Greg Berry was a 25-year-old city council member in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

Entrepreneurial by nature, he had founded an IT company the day after he graduated from high school. On the council, he was appalled to see surplus Crown Victoria police cars offloaded in sealed-bid auctions for a tenth of their value.

A sealed bid auction is what it sounds like. Assuming you even know it's happening, you write down your best offer and stuff it in an envelope. On a given day, the envelopes are opened. No transparency, no competition, no publicity, no use of this handy tool called the internet.

The first civic customer for Berry's auction site had hoped to reap $100 for a riding mower and sold it for $500, he said. The second was just hoping to get rid of a Crown Vic with a blown engine, and the winning bidder showed up with a flatbed truck and $2,800.

There's no charge to sellers. Buyers pay a 9% fee, and, at 43, Berry spends a lot of time in Europe.

On the block in Michigan

Auction items are listed by both category and state.

The current Michigan offerings include a 4,000-watt Honda gas generator and a 21-inch exhaust fan from the Grand Blanc Fire Department, a 2009 Pontiac Vibe with only 53,943 miles on the odometer and a 2013 Dodge Charger with a small engine knock from the Hampton Township Public Safety Department in Essexville, a 1993 leaf collection trailer from the Village of Athens and a 2004 Chevrolet Silverado 4x4 from Fenton Township.

In suburban Flint, the online gavel just fell on a retired Burton police car, a 2019 Dodge Charger with all-wheel drive, 111,823 miles and a cracked windshield. It went for $8,400, well less than the Kelley Blue Book estimate for a similar rear-wheel drive model.

Burton purchasing manager Julie Griffith said the city mostly uses Municibid for vehicles. Shortly before the Dodge, it sold two dump trucks for $6,300 and $6,000.

She didn’t have details on the buyers: “Just people who wanted a dump truck," she surmised. Usually, she said, that means the owner of a small construction company.

It should be noted that a Michigan-centric government auction site operates at MiBid.bidcorp.com, and that several times in the past, it has sold hulking buckets of metal salvaged from renovations on the Mackinac Bridge.

Current items include a pair of police motorcycles, a Chevy Traverse that won't get off the lot without a jump start, and two school buses.

No fire engines, though.

Municibid practically has a fleet of them, including a sweet 110-foot ladder truck in Norristown, Pennsylvania, that's still awaiting an opening bid at $15,000.

It'll get pricey by the time the check gets written, and if you buy a ladder truck, the neighbors will keep asking you to rescue their cats. So my eye is still on the '75 Hahn Cummins, also parked in Pennsylvania.

It might not be the most practical purchase, and my insurance broker says that Auto-Owners would have to call a meeting to decide whether to insure it. But this is August, with one major temptation lurking in two short words:

Dream Cruise.

Any thought Neal Rubin might be harboring about actually buying a fire truck should be hammered out of him as soon as his friends and family read today's Free Press, but it's an entertaining daydream. Reach him at NARubin@freepress.com, or on Twitter or X or whatever it's called at @nealrubin_fp.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Municibid auction website offers deals on government surplus