Carvana adds 2nd auction-recon center ‘Megasite’
Carvana now has a second auction and reconditioning “Megasite” location.
The online used-car retailer said Monday it is launching inspection and reconditioning center capabilities at its existing ADESA Houston facility, which will continue to run as an auto auction, as well.
This follows Carvana’s first Megasite launch last month at ADESA Kansas City.
“In bringing IRC capabilities to ADESA Houston, Carvana is leveraging the power of our existing infrastructure to enhance our services for both our retail and commercial customers,” Carvana senior vice president of inventory Brian Boyd said in a news release.
“The Megasite transition not only unlocks additional reconditioning capacity and network efficiency for Carvana as a whole, it also specifically benefits the Houston area with faster delivery times for local retail customers, a more robust auction offering for local commercial customers, and new jobs and training opportunities.”
ADESA Houston covers roughly 43 acres and includes more than 5,000 parking spaces, giving it “ample space to accommodate Carvana inspection and reconditioning activities while maintaining all existing online and in-lane wholesale auction operations,” the company said in the release.
Similar to the Kansas City Megasite, the Houston location boosts Carvana’s recon capacity and builds a pool of retail inventory in a new metro area. This is designed to improve the efficiency of Carvana’s recon and fulfillment network and give local retail customers greater access to quickly delivered vehicles.
Shortly after Carvana announced the Kansas City site last month, CEO Ernie Garcia addressed what such Megasites mean for the company during a fireside chat at the Automotive Remarketing Alliance’s Summer Roundtable in Frisco, Texas.
From a functional perspective, Garcia said, “it means that we’re adding our Carvana reconditioning technology and processes to the site, and then we’re trying to have all of those physical processes in the same site.”
Taking a broader view, he said, “cars need to go from their previous owners to the person who’s going to sell it to the ultimate owner, and they need to get reconditioned at some point … the more of those functions you can stack in a single location or a single process, ideally both, I think the more efficient the business can be.”
Building the Kansas City Megasite, he said, “is really valuable” in terms of expanding Carvana’s potential capabilities, Garcia said.
“We can do more partnerships like the partnership we’ve discussed with Hertz that has been a great partnership for us over the last several years, where we can dispose of cars in more creative ways,” he said.
“It makes us a really good buyer of cars because we know we can buy them and recondition them on the spot, and we don’t have extra transport costs that are there,” Garcia said. “So I think it can create a lot of opportunities over time that we’re pretty excited about.”