Type Public Founded 1924 Area served Worldwide | Industry Publishing Founder Thomas P. Scanlan | |
Headquarters Chicago, Illinois, United States | ||
Surplus Record is the leading independent business directory of surplus, new, and used machine tools, machinery, and industrial equipment in the United States. It was founded in 1924 by Thomas P. Scanlan.
The monthly directory, hundreds of pages long, has been referred to as "the bible of the used and surplus capital equipment industry". Postings were included online in the 1980s and online auctions started in 1999. A year later, in April 2000, FreeMarkets Inc. (Nasdaq: FMKT), a leading B2B eMarketplace, announced that it completed the acquisition of iMark.com Inc. including assets of Surplus Record Inc., as well as SR Auction Inc. The acquisitions were integrated with FreeMarkets' existing asset business to form the FreeMarkets AssetExchange, a leading B2B eMarketplace for buying and selling new and used assets.
The Record's listings have included more than 70,000 industrial assets such as metalworking and fabricating machine tools, chemical and process equipment, cranes, air compressors, pumps, motors, circuit breakers, generators, transformers, turbines. More than 1,000 businesses list with the online Surplus Record.
History
Thomas P. Scanlan (1896-1986), was the founder and publisher of the Chicago-based Surplus Record. Mr. Scanlan was a University of Notre Dame graduate. After World War I, he began Surplus Record, which grew into a national trade publication for the used-machinery business which listed used machine tools and capital equipment. During World War II, Scanlan advised manufacturers on ways of keeping their equipment in production, testified to Congress regarding the price stabilization of machine tools Office of Price Administration, and after the war he helped companies dispose of war surplus property.
Headquartered in the Chicago Civic Opera House building since 1932, it is one of the oldest tenants in the building. The Surplus Record has been available online since 1986., when buyers would use 2400-baud modems to access it. Currently, it is the largest online directory in the world for surplus capital equipment. The company started its own online auctions in 1999, a year before it was acquired.