Tucked away in a historic building on upper campus is the U’s Surplus and Salvage Center, where students and U personnel can find old campus equipment and supplies for bargain prices.
When departments on campus are replacing old equipment or can’t use something any longer, they call up the surplus center to collect and sell it.
“We don’t make a profit,” said surplus manager Clifton Grindstaff. “Most of the money gets returned to the departments.”
Last year, the surplus center picked up 36,000 pieces of equipment from sources on campus and returned about $547,000 to campus departments. The equipment includes computer monitors, desks, chairs, office supplies and projectors. The center also receives all the lost and found objects owners never claim at the U.
“We have a lot of bikes every year. Most are from student apartments,” Grindstaff said. “The students leave their bikes if they’re broken after the semester ends, although some of them are lost.”
The center holds the bikes for 90 days before making them available for sale.
If an item hasn’t sold for a month, the center docks its price by 20 percent. The center will drop prices 80 percent in some cases. Prices are set based on quotes from the website usedprice.com.
“We had a group of kids from the dorms come in here one time to buy a projector for their room,” Grindstaff said. “It was a really good price, and they even tested it out first to make sure it worked.”
The center’s three floors also have Sharp and other brand-name copy machines that can’t be fixed because the supplies are out-dated after seven years, Grindstaff said. When departments can’t fix a machine, they give it to the surplus center to try to sell.
Although the center is a non-profit organization, money for items that sell for less than $100 stays with the center to pay for trucks, gasoline and workers.
“We have to break even at least to pay for ourselves,” Grindstaff said.
Bill Jones, who works for the U’s Department of Information Technology Services, said his department gives a lot of equipment to the center to sell.
“They come every Thursday to pick stuff up unless it’s a holiday,” he said.
ITS supplies the center with computer monitors that are broken, out of date or have been replaced by newer equipment. There are a lot of students from the residence halls who come to the center to get used equipment, said Jane Lloyd, a sophomore in marketing who works at the center.
“It’s really interesting,” she said. “You get to meet a lot of characters. There’s this old guy who comes in — his name is Walt — who finds little things to buy every Thursday.”
The center also sells 40 to 50 campus vehicles that the U no longer needs every year. Although the center has been on campus since 1972, it has been housed at the old Fort Douglas building since 2002. The center used to be located where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Institute building is now.
“When we moved in, the building was abandoned,” Grindstaff said. “There was no sewer, no heat, and the electricity was switched off.”
The center is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more information, visit http://web.utah.edu/surplus/index.html.