Liquidation truckloads can consist of unsold products which includes overstock, open box, and box damage.  Liquidation truckloads can also consist of sold products which is generally referred to as customer returns.   Many truckloads consist of a combination of sold and unsold products.  The characteristics of sold and unsold items can be quite different.

 

Unsold Products

The biggest advantage of these loads are that most of the items will be in good sellable condition.  Overstock and shelf pulls are primarily in like new condition with good packaging.  Open box assumes the box was opened but the item is still in near new condition.  Box damage assumes the packaging is damaged but not the item itself.  The downside to truck loads of unsold items is lack of variety.  Many liquidation truckloads consisting of primarily unsold items will have many repeats.  Sometimes there can be hundreds of the same item in a load.  Some loads with over 4,000 items could still have only 20 or 30 different items.

 

Returns or Sold Products

There are many reasons people return merchandise.  Changed their mind, did not fit their needs, wrong color, wrong style, and more.  Let’s call these remorse returns that were sold and returned but not used.  There is always a percentage of returns that are damaged.  That can vary greatly by the retailer.  Online returns are generally cleaner than store returns but there are some stores that consistently turn out nice clean returns loads.  Many customer returns truckloads contain a wide variety of items.

Salvage

The word salvage gets thrown around a lot in the liquidation industry. It means an item is supposed to still have some use but many times the only use is for parts. Don’t expect to get many items to sell individually with salvage items. The parts do have value in many product categories like appliances.

What loads are best for you.

Single stores or stores with only a few locations will be better off with customer returns truckloads in many instances.  A good variety of merchandise on each truckload is important.  There will be some loss due to damage but there are certain online and store customer returns truckloads that are consistently clean with minimal damage.

Regional stores and stores with numerous locations can do well with unsold general merchandise truckloads.  They are best equipped to deal with all the repeats.  The majority of the items should be in good sellable condition.