Erik Tivin describes himself as the Fred Sanford of surplus medical equipment, surrounded by all the cast-offs he can scrounge.
Each month, Centurion Service Group buys more than 5,000 pieces of used equipment from hospitals and resells the inventory through live, online auctions to healthcare facilities worldwide.
“Hospitals aren’t purchasing lots of capital equipment because credit is tight now, so they’re hanging on to what they have,” says Tivin, Centurion’s president. “But what we’ve lost in surplus equipment, we’ve made up in selling manufacturer overstock and equipment from hospital closures.”
Seventy percent of Centurion’s buyers are outside the United States, in countries where demand for secondhand medical equipment remains high. The company picks up equipment from hospitals, stores it in warehouses in Melrose Park, Ill.; Las Vegas; and Berlin, Germany, and sells everything on consignment.
Photo by Centurion Service Group.