CHARLESTON, S.C. -

Bill McIver is the first to admit he’s not very good at this retirement thing. Three years ago, he officially “retired” from GMAC, now known as Ally Bank — where he spent 40 years — but his active-duty status in the remarketing business didn’t exactly end there.

The longtime remarketing executive has kept himself busy, still playing an integral part of the industry. His latest adventure in the auction world has been serving as chief executive officer of the American Auto Auction Group, a position he stepped into this spring after Steve Simon stepped down for health reasons.

A few months into the job, Auto Remarketing caught up with McIver to talk about his goals for his new post and the progress AAAG has made in his tenure.

“Having been in (the position) a couple months now, I’m really enjoying myself and I’m glad to be associated with the AAAG team,” McIver said. "I have spent the last couple of months just getting familiar with what’s going on at AAAG, getting to meet all the key players and getting myself focused on how we can continue the good things that they’ve already started.”

Of course, his latest post hasn’t gone without friends giving McIver some good-natured jesting about being “retired.”

“My buddies, my friends in the business have taken advantage of the opportunity to ask me on more than one occasion, ‘What in the world is an Internet remarketing guy like you doing in the physical auction business?’” he said.

“Like I told Don Fowler at DataScan … he wrote me a note that said, ‘What in the world are you doing? I thought you were retired,’” McIver shared. “I told him, ‘I think I flunked retirement 101. It just didn’t work out for me.’”

However, things are working out fairly well for McIver and AAAG in his new position.

When asked about his goals for AAAG, McIver wasn’t shy about stressing the need for growth, and the company has already made progress.

“Primarily, we’ve got to grow organically and through acquisitions,” McIver said. “When they (Simon and chief operating officer Keith Lelux) had this vision two-and-a-half years ago and launched AAAG … their plan was to grow this into a national platform. And they’ve made a great start.”

“But it just seemed that most of the opportunities that came available were primarily in the Southeast, so one of the things we’ve been busy doing is identifying acquisition opportunities coast-to-coast,” he continued. “And I’m glad to tell you that we’ve been successful at that. It is an interesting market out there as far as independent auctions that are available for sale.”

Read more about what McIver had to say and see the complete story in the the July 1 print issue of Auto Remarketing, where McIver outlines AAAG’s goals and progress in further detail.