The title should be “I accomplished the ugliest Toro Workman auction flip on the planet”, but that’s how you get the good deals. It’s amazing how far a can of spray paint can go. The uglier the item, the cheaper it sells for, and in this case it sold cheap! The best part, I won this online so the time I put into it was just to go pick it up, trailer it home, fix a few things and paint it. All in, I’d say I maybe put a total of 5 hours into this purchase and sale.
I didn’t bother going to the auction preview, so this was won completely sight unseen. This didn’t really matter, because with that low of a price even if I got there and it had no engine I could have still sold the shell for $700 give or take. This was being sold by one of the local school districts. I pulled up with my trailer and winch ready to load up only to be welcomed by 3 of the nicest maintenance crew guys with the Toro Workman on the forks of their forklift. We chatted for a bit, and they told me they were pretty sure the item ran it just needed a new battery and maybe a little work, but other than the worn seats and ugly paint it was a great unit.
PUTTING IN THE WORK
After getting it home I connected a battery and crossed my fingers that it would start…. Nothing. So now it was time to try and figure out what was going on. I sprayed a little starting fluid in the carb, and used a wrench to jump the starter relay… started right up. So I went to the local auto parts store and bought an $11 starter relay, install and that fixed it. The unit ran and drove like a champ!
The next thing that had to go were the seats, after looking online I found a new set for only $180. Money well spent, I put new seats on just about everything I win, few things add more resale value than a new seat.
If you're not mechanically inclined don't worry. Sure you make more money if you know how to fix these things up, but you don't have to. Just checkout my blog post "Flipping a Broken $300 Golf Cart for $700" this was a similar auction where I just purchased a broken golf cart at auction and flipped it with nothing fixed at all.
NEW PAINT JOB
Part of the issue with the old paint job was it was peeling and uneven, I knew I’d never be able to make it look flat and even, so I decided to go with a camo style paint job. This was surprisingly easy to do. I purchased 3 cans of camo paint colors at Lowes. I started with an olive base color, then using some sticks and pieces of tall grass I sprayed over them like stencils all over the body with flat black and sand colors. I was SHOCKED with how nice it came out. I’ll be sure to do this again.
PRICING IT ALL UP
TORO with buyer premium - $603
Spray Paint - $14
Seats - $180
Starter relay - $11
Battery - $35
All together my total cost for the TORO Workman auction flip was $843 for a total profit of $1,357. The sale was also very easy, I list just about everything on Facebook Marketplace. A gentleman came from about 45 mins away with a trailer. He drove the cart around a bit, we negotiated and drove it right onto his trailer. I only owned the old Toro Workman for maybe 10 days, during this time I used to do some work around my property then sold it for a healthy profit. Not a bad auction flip at all.
