THE LATEST CC AUCTION NEWS
Country Coach Inc. Asset Auction Set for Feb. 4
RVBUSINESS.COM
Lawyers for Country Coach Inc., its landlord and the government cleared the way Tuesday (Jan. 26) for the defunct RV maker’s assets to be sold at auction next week.
The Junction City, Ore., company is in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, meaning everything it owns — from office furniture to industrial equipment as well as motor coaches — must be sold off to pay creditors, according to The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.
In this case, Wells Fargo Bank is the main secured creditor, meaning it gets paid first when Country Coach’s personal property is sold. If anything is left over, then other creditors would get paid.
Wells Fargo was owed more than $8.4 million when Country Coach filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. The Chapter 7 trustee, Ken Eiler, has estimated the auction will bring in more than $5 million. The auction is scheduled for Feb. 4 at the Country Coach plant.
The bank has agreed to set aside $200,000 to cover costs associated with administering the auction and winding down the company.
Country Coach owes Lane County about $100,000 in property taxes, and Wells Fargo and Lee Joint Venture, which owns much of the property on which the Country Coach plant sits, are working to pay off the tax debt, Eiler said.
Eiler has hired Commercial Industrial Auctions to conduct the auction with help from Hilco Industrial.
Four bus shells built by a third party will be omitted from the auction because of a dispute over who owns them.
Prevost, a Canadian manufacturer of bus chassis, said it provided Country Coach with four of its bus shells, valued at $500,000 each, but has never been paid. Under its business agreement with Prevost, Country Coach normally would take the shells on consignment, convert them into luxury motorcoaches and pay Prevost when it sold the coaches.
Christopher Kayser, a Portland attorney representing Prevost, said Wells Fargo is not entitled to the four bus shells because Country Coach never owned them. Wilson Muhlheim, a Eugene lawyer representing Wells Fargo, said Prevost allowed its security interest in the shells to lapse.
CC AUCTION TO BE WEBCAST!
Country Coach Asset Auction Feb. 4-5 to be Webcast
Email This Post Print This Post January 28, 2010 by RV Business Leave a Comment
Luxury motorcoach manufacturer Country Coach Holdings LLC has employed auction experts Hilco Industrial LLC to offer for sale the inventory, intellectual property, machinery and equipment from its Junction City, Ore., plant.
Hilco will host a worldwide webcast auction Feb. 4-5 at which buyers will have the opportunity to purchase completed 2009 and incomplete 2010 recreational vehicles, among many other items from the complete motorcoach assembly plan, according to a news release.
This auction event will feature 10 2009 new finished Country Coach motorcoaches from the Magna, Inspire, Veranda and Infinity product lines. Eight coaches in various stages of completion, from frames to nearly road-ready, are also available.
The company’s intellectual property will also be offered, including drawings, blueprints, logos, website, customer lists, molds and other intangible assets.
Huge quantities of inventory will be sold, including engines, transmissions, power generators, axle assemblies, chassis, body and interior components.
Machinery and equipment used in the manufacture of the vehicles, such as metal fabrication, woodworking, material handling, and auto assembly equipment, will be offered, along with the company’s fleet vehicles and office furniture and equipment.
The auction will comprise nearly 2000 lots in all, and will attract bidders from many industries both locally and nationally. Buyers will be able to bid using the phone and Internet at www.hilcoind.com, or attend in person and bid on site at the manufacturing facility located in Junction City.
SOME BUS INFOMATION HAS BEEN SOLD-PRE-AUCITON TO BUS OWNERS
-This is information forwarded to us written by Country Coach Club Inc President Ted Wright.-
---Original Message-----
From: tedwright1934 <ted@napf.com>
To: Country-Coach-Owners@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, Jan 31, 2010 12:12 pm
Subject: [Country-Coach-Owners] Country Coach Auction
The following is a rather lengthy letter drafted by two coach owners...one an attorney and the other an engineer. I offer this as information only as to thier extensive research in obtaining records of coaches built over the last 3 decades by Country Coach. The information in the subject files contains minimal information and may not even be as complete as the manuals and information forders provided with each coach. Other records that were stored in computers are virtually non-retrievable due to obsolete programs and lack of specific computer knowledge. I hope this investigation answers those owners who wished to secure these production records.
Respectively, Ted Wright, CCI President L041
COUNTRY COACH WILL BE SOLD AT AUCTION February 4, 2010
Country Coach filed bankruptcy in the Spring of 2009, seeking to reorganize and continue (commonly referred to as a Chapter 11 Reorganization). This can be viewed as an effort by the owners, managers and creditors, under the direction of the Court, to restructure the company in such a way that it can pay off its debts in some fashion and operate profitable in time. Due, in large part to the economy, a plan of reorganization could not be put together. The Country Coach matter was then converted from a reorganization to a liquidation (commonly referred to as a Chapter 7, or Straight bankruptcy) and, as the name implies, all of the assets of the company are sold and the proceeds, after all expenses and fees, are allocated among the creditors. The Country Coach auction is set for February 4, 2010. Country Coach, as we have known it through the manufacture of our coaches and annual homecomings and rallies, will be no more.
During the reorganization proceedings, we as Country Coach owners, could only wait and hope that the company would restructure and continue in business. However, when the proceeding was converted to a Chapter 7 and all of the assets were going to be sold at auction, several coach owners began to express concern, principally along the lines of servicing, maintaining and repairing our sizeable investment. More specifically, it narrowed to the question of parts lists, vendor sources, Build Sheets on each and every coach etc, etc. Unlike automobiles, coach's do not all have the same parts, and are not built alike. The question was raised as to how can one obtain this very important information on ones coach for future service, maintenance and repair.
During the last few weeks, we began to look for answers. We turned to the Court records (which are voluminous). We entered into discussions with the Bankruptcy Court Trustee appointed to conduct the auction, Mr. Kenneth Eisler. We reviewed the public information on the sale which listed the assets, one of which was designated as Intellectual Property. Unlike the hard assets of Country Coach such as molds, carpentry tools, (even several coaches in various stages of being built), the Technical Manuals, Build Sheets, engineering drawings, parts lists, vendor lists; everything you might want to know about your coach, all fell as an asset of the company within the category of Intellectual Property. Interestingly, that includes the name "Country Coach" and the various trademarks any patents.
Focusing on this asset we endeavored to determine specifically what was included in the Intellectual Property asset that would be of greatest value to coach owners and in what format. Gary Obermeier, former Senior Vice President of Operations, and a 30 year employee of Country Coach was most helpful and accommodating in this regard. He identified 17 pallets containing boxes of paper all sealed in shrink wrap. Although voluminous he described these records as raw data, largely unorganized, certainly nothing that would provide anything of real value to a coach owner. It was his judgment that the kinds of data that would be both complete and organized were stored electronically. This data would include, for each coach, the drawings, parts numbers, vendor of parts etc. The impossible task was to secure the hardware and software and the knowledge of former CC employees who could still pull from this data. The program no longer exists for extracting the data except as is presently on site in the company's computer room.
It was only last week that we had a full understanding of the nature of information which we thought would be helpful to coach owners and most importantly, its format. Faced with this description of the Intellectual Property, the 17 pallets were deemed to be of no value. Turning to the electronic data base it should be noted that the Trustee, in his responsibility to sell assets, did not maintain a staff that might download electronically stored information. We would have had to hire several key former employees of the company for this work.
A few Prevost owners took it upon themselves to send a person to Eugene for an on-site look. Over the years Country Coach had manufactured maybe 300 buses while manufacturing thousands of fiberglass coaches. Thus the paper on pallets and the electronic data on Country Coach Prevost was minute compared to the Intellectual Property pertaining to fiberglass coaches. They identified some Technical Manuals and engaged a computer person to pull some of the electronic data. The Trustee can accept a pre auction bid for assets. He agreed to selling whatever data the Prevost owners wanted for $5,000 (subject to an upset bid at the auction). The Trustee extended the same offer to fiberglass owners as well. Gary Obermeier estimated that the Prevost data identified for purchase included maybe 10,000 drawings. Since each coach may have roughly 4000 drawings, multiplying this by 300 Prevost and you have some idea of how massive the data base is and how little 10,000 drawings represent in the universe of the data base. The same calculation, based on 30 years and several thousand fiberglass coaches, gives you some idea of how difficult it would have been to try and secure, organize and distribute the kinds of data each coach owner would like to have on his coach.
The forgoing represented our best efforts to see if, as part of the liquidation of Country Coach, we could acquire, for Country Coach owners, the kinds of data they would like to have on each of their coaches in anticipation of service, maintenance and repair in a future when, the Country Coach we had all relied upon, no longer existed. The Trustee, the Prevost people, certainly Gary Obermeier, all did everything they could to facilitate the evaluation and purchase of this asset for coach owners. Given the shortness of time take action and the inability to have any assurance that useful data could be obtained, preserved and made available for individual coach units, it was our judgment to let the asset go to auction.
It is our understanding that several potential bidders have expressed an interest in the Intellectual Property asset. They may be interested in acquiring the company name, the trademarks, any patents etc. Bidders may fully intend to amass the data which owners want and go to the expense and effort to organize it and make it available for purchase. We will know more after the February 4, 2010 sale on that score.
We would like to thank those noted herein plus those Country Coach Texans that assisted us with their ideas and strategy, they are Ted Wright, Nick Caruso, Sonny Broome, Jerry McMennamy, Ron Rang and Dave Miller – President of Texas Custom Coach.
Regards,
Stu Entz & Mike Carnes
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