How to Get a Dealer License for Car Auctions in Georgia

1. Take 4-Hour Dealer License Training Class

2. Building/Office with Lot or Without Lot

3. Obtain Garage Insurance and Bond

4. Apply for Federal Employment Number and GA Sales Tax License

5. File with Georgia Secretary of State

6. Apply for City or County Business License

7. Register for Fingerprints

How to Get a Dealer License for Car Auctions in Georgia

• If you would like to get into Georgia dealer auctions you must obtain a Georgia dealer license. You are not allowed into a Georgia dealers auction unless you hold a Georgia used motor vehicle license. There are 2 types of Georgia dealer licenses, one requires you to have an building or office with a display lot. The other allows you to have a building or office without a display lot. We explain the 2 types of licenses in your Georgia Dealer Pre-License Class.

• The State of Georgia will allow you to have a dealer license at your home but there are some requirements you must be aware of which we will discuss in class as well.

The Automobile Dealer Training Association is approved to provide your Georgia dealer pre-license training with training locations all over Georgia.

• When you obtain your Georgia dealer license you will have access to every car dealer auction in Georgia along with every dealer auction in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and even dealer auctions in other countries.

There are several car dealer auctions in Georgia, some are privately owned but other larger dealer auction companies such as Manheim are owned by Cox Automotive.

Here is a list of every motor vehicle auction in the State of Georgia, most of which only allow licensed motor vehicle dealers:

Georgia – Carolina Auto Auction
Adesa Atlanta
Athens Auto Auction
Manheim Atlanta
Manheim Georgia
Rome Auto Auction
myCentralAuction
Oakwood Arrow Auto Auction
Copart Atlanta East
Copart Atlanta North
Copart Atlanta South
Copart Atlanta West
Copart Savannah
Copart Cartersville
Copart Macon
Copart Tifton
Augusta Auto Auction
Southeastern Auto Auction of Savannah
Highway 515 Auto Auction
Atlanta East Auto Auction
Middle GA Auto Auction
New Calhoun Auto Auction
AutoNation Auto Auction
Atlanta Vemo Auto Auctions
South Georgia Auto Auction
CarMax Auto Auction
Albany Auto Auction
Greater Atlanta Auto Auction

• Once you obtain your Georgia dealer license you can walk into any dealer auction and the employees of that dealer auction will help you apply for what is known as you Auction Access ID.

When you walk into a dealer auction for the first time you will need to bring a copy of your Georgia dealer license, a photograph ID, and many auctions may require you bring a letter from your bank stating that the checks you write are good up to a certain amount.

• Most dealer auctions will assist you with applying for your Auction Access ID card. This is a card that you will use to access all the other car dealer auctions. In the past, your Auction Access ID was free but now it cost $99 a year to have an Auction Access ID. You Auction Access ID looks like a driver’s license, but it is vertical not horizontal like a driver's license.

Once you have your Auction Access ID, you can enter any car dealer auction in North America and the dealer auctions overseas. When you walk in the front door of a dealer auction you will normally see several machines at the entrance that look like vending machine with a screen on the front. You will enter your Auction Access ID card into the vending machine and the machine will print a bidding pass for that day’s auction. They change the colors of the bidding pass every day.

• When you have your bidding pass printed, you will walk to the dealer auction lanes and you must show the security guards the printing pass for that day’s auction. If you do not have the bidding pass for that day’s auction the security guards will not allow you into the dealer auction lanes.

You must be a licensed dealer to enter car auctions in Georgia. You become an employee of someone that has a Georgia dealer license/a> but the vehicles you buy for that dealer must be sold on that dealer’s lot. This is Georgia Law. You could never use someone else's dealer license, buy vehicles at a Georgia car dealer auction and then sell the vehicle away from that dealer’s licensed location. If you do, you and the dealer you are working under are both in violation of the law and can receive substantial fines and penalties.

You will probably be introduced to a salesperson that works at that auction and they will welcome you with open arms. They will congratulate you on obtaining your Georgia dealer license, they will probably offer you some coffee and doughnuts and let you know what type of vehicles will be sold on what days.

In other words, the dealer auction may sell powersports and recreational vehicles on Tuesday, Lease and Rental Returns on Wednesday, and some dealer auctions will are open to the general public when selling government vehicles. This does not happen very often but local, state, and federal governments require auctions to be open to the general public when selling vehicles that are no longer being used by the government. These auctions do not happen very often but when they do, government bodies always require government vehicle auctions to be open to the general public.

In most cases, however, the auction will only be open to Georgia used motor vehicle dealers.. The salesperson will also let you know about floor plans that are offered by the dealer auction. A floor plan is a loan for the vehicles that you are purchasing at the dealer auction. Sometimes the dealer lot is referred to as the “Floor” so a floorplan is a loan for the vehicles on your lot.

The dealer auction may offer their own floorplan, or they will have contacts and application to other out of house floorplan providers.

Always remember that a floorplan is very much like a credit card. You will pay interest on your floorplan. The dealer auction will normally provide you with one or two floorplan packages. If you want to fill out some paperwork on the day you enter your first dealer auction you can probably get approved for a $25,000 or $50,000 floorplan at that time. However, most Georgia dealer auctions will allow you to submit some tax documents that would allow you to obtain a floor plan for $100,000, $250,000, or much more./p>

You need to be very aware that floorplans kill dealers every day.

I have helps thousands of entrepreneurs get their dealer license and many times after I have given a person there mandated training, I will drive by their new Georgia car lot and I will see 50 or 60 vehicles on the lot with balloons flying all over the place, several salespersons waiting on customers, and a lot of activity going on. Then, I will drive by the same location a month later and the lot is empty, and the building has a for lease sign in the window.

There is usually only one thing that leads to this scenario, the dealer was not able to pay the floorplan on those 50 or 60 vehicles they purchased.

You know, I have nothing against dealer auctions that offer newly licensed dealers a substantial floor plan, but think about this, when a dealer auction provides you with a floor plan they have absolutely nothing to lose. If you do not pay on the floor plan for the vehicles you have purchased at a dealer auction, the dealer auction can just repossess the vehicles on your lot, then sell them through their dealer auction next week to the next person that just got their dealer license for the first time. So, if you think about it, the dealer auction has nothing to lose by loaning you’re a very large amount on your floorplan.

If I can give you one recommendation when you are starting in the business keep your debt low. When I started in this business many, many years ago I obtained a $25,000 floor plan from the bank that my wife worked at. I bought five cars for my lot. I started selling those vehicles immediately and built up my credibility with the bank and shortly thereafter upped my floorplan to $50,000 and then I left it at that. I decided that was the most debt that I would incur for my new business. I then was able to pay the floor plan off within about 3 months and decided to no longer have debt in my vehicles. I then held what is known as a “Cash Inventory”. I no longer owed any money on my vehicles ever again which allowed me to make more money with my dealer’s license since I was not paying floorplan debt.

I am not recommending you never use a floorplan; I am recommending if you do use a floorplan keep your debt low. Maybe you should start with at $25,000 floorplan, buy 5 vehicles for your lot like I did, pay your debt down and have a goal of maintaining a cash inventory.

I know dealers in Georgia that have maintained a cash inventory for years and they build more and more inventory over the lifetime of holding a dealer license. And when you acquire more and more inventory over the years you could own hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars’ worth of inventory.

When you have built an empire of over a million dollars in vehicle inventory there may be a day when you want to retire. Think about this, when you want to retire, you just sell all your vehicles, then you have a million dollars or more to retire down at Tybee Island, or wherever you want to retire.

This is a really cool business with lots of opportunities for a person like you that is willing to think outside the box.

I am a person that believes the State of Georgia is issuing you a dealer license to make as much money as you can, as long as you follow just a few simple sets of rules and guidelines.

The State of Georgia does require that you take a 4-hour dealer pre-licensing course to obtain your dealer license so you can access dealer auctions in Georgia and everywhere else as well.

When you become a licensed dealer in the State of Georgia you will be able to buy cars at wholesale then mark them up to retail on your lot, or if you are a broker you can sell these vehicles from your office if you are a broker, or from your home if your zoning allows it and you have a building that is separate from your residence.

So how much money can you make with a Georgia dealers license?

I want to let you know what pricing method worked for me.

Although I dabbled in many different types of vehicles over the years, my best money-making model was selling lease returns. /p>

Most Georgia dealer auctions have dedicated lanes to lease returns. So, one lane might be Ford Credit, where all the two- and three-year-old Ford lease returns are coming through that lane. Then you might have the GM Financial Lane with all the 2- and 3-year-old GMC and Chevy vehicles. Then you might have Nissan Finance Lane with all the Nissan finance lanes. Then you have the Toyota Financial Lane with all the Toyotas that are coming off lease.

So, I got into the habit of standing in the Honda and Toyota lease return lanes, since at that time my lot was selling mainly imports. And by the way, I have never been good turning a wrench, so I bought a lot or Toyotas and Hondas over the years because they tend to be very dependable and rarely would a customer come back the next day with mechanical problems. So, this is the niche that I concentrated on.

The lease returns that I was purchasing were selling for around nine to ten thousand dollars wholesale. And by the way on a side note, I always paid 70 to 80 dollars on most of my auction’s bids for what is known as a post-sale inspection. Most dealer auctions will allow you to pay a small fee, and the auction mechanics will run diagnostics on that vehicle and if it needs major mechanical repairs, you may be able to back out of the purchase.

Many years ago, I purchased a vehicle at a dealer auction, and I thought I had kicked the tires pretty good before the sale and purchased the vehicle thinking it was in good mechanical condition. Well, when I got the vehicle back to my lot, I noticed a couple of days later there was a quiet ticking noise coming from the engine. Then the ticking noise got louder and louder. So, I took it to a mechanic that I know, and the engine had a bearing that went out and the repair cost me $2200. If I had just paid for the post auction inspection, the dealer auction mechanic would have been able to identify the problem in advance and I would have been able to back out of the buy.

After this experience I always invested and extra 70 to 80 dollars for the post auction inspection whenever I was purchasing a vehicle that was more that 5 or 6 thousand dollars. I highly recommend you consider the post auction inspection; most dealer auctions provide this service on any vehicle that has less than 100,000 miles.

On the day my local dealer auction had the Honda and Toyota lease returns coming through the lanes, I would replenish my dealer lot inventory and normally bought 5 to 7 vehicles each week on the nine-to-ten-thousand-dollar wholesale price range.

For example, if I bought a car for $10,000 on the day of the auction, I would always mark the vehicle up three to four thousand dollars and be prepared to negotiate the price down. If I bought a car for $10,000, I might mark it up to $13,999. Always use nines in pricing your vehicles because using nines in a vehicle price has a psychological l effect of a lower price. If you take your Georgia dealer license course from us, I will provide a link to a video that goes in depth into vehicle pricing and negotiation strategies.

So, for example if I purchased the vehicle for $10,000 at the auction, I might mark it up to $13999 and then be willing to negotiate down. However, you would be surprised at the number of persons that walked on my car lot and paid full price for the vehicles that I was selling without even attempting to negotiate the price down. That is not the normal dealership selling scenario, but it does happen.

More than likely the customer will offer a lower price. I would normally be willing to drop the price to the mid 12’s or even down to the 11’s. I rarely made less than a $1,000 profit on a vehicle that I had purchase for $10,000. Although it did happen sometimes. In fact, there may be the rare scenario when you purchase a vehicle at a dealer auction, and you cannot sell it and might even end up selling the vehicle back at the dealer auction. In this case you might perhaps consider donating that vehicle to a legitimate charity for a substantial tax deduction. If you take our training class to obtain your Georgia Dealer license, I will give you a link to a video that shows you how to donate vehicles to legitimate charities for a huge tax write off.

That is how you get into car dealer auctions in Georgia, you must obtain a Georgia dealer license.

My name is Delus Johnson, I am the Lead Instructor of the Automobile Dealer Training Association. We are approved by the Georgia Board of Used Motor Vehicle dealers to provide your State mandated Georgia 4-hour dealer license education class. If you have further questions on how to obtain your Georgia dealer license, just click on the Get Licensed link at the top of the website or just click on the Class Schedule link at the top of the website to find a Georgia dealer license training class near you, then just click the blue Enroll button to sign up for your dealer training class. I look forward to meeting you in your Georgia dealer license training class and I want to wish you the very best of luck with your new business.

How to Get a Dealer License for Car Auctions in Georgia!