Mission Statement
To provide premier online auction services and lead the storage auction industry while maintaining the highest level of customer service, integrity, trust and honesty.
Our History
Our roots started in 1990 when we were asked by an auctioneer to assist his company with auctions, Soon after this encounter J. Michael`s purchased part of that auctioneer`s business consisting of approximately 25 facilities and moved into an office space in Brea, CA. Michael Joyce was appointed President and remains in that position today. The years after the purchase showed a hugh increase in our growth.
J. Michael`s diversified his services to include Lock cutting, video taping the inventories, in-house California DMV Lien services and Vehicle Verification services. This provided the turn-key services valued by our customers. The added convenience of a central office where all our customers could contact us for information just provided another innovation not offered by any other auctioneer. J. Michael`s provided not just an auctioneer service but a full service turnkey Auction Company.
Steven Hoffman was hired to run our Northern California operations. Mr. Hoffman added additional facilities to our company and his dedication grew another 175+ storage facilities in the next two years. This increased the total number of facilities to 500+. Steve is still the one person who built our Northern California operationsthat made J. Michael's the largest self storage auction company in California.. Don Potter replaced Steve Hoffman and managed the operations until Don moved on to be a popular radio show host.
We hired several other people over those years including Cheril Joyce, Bruce Reich, and Laura Simeral, Steven Straubel, Nick Burris & Chris Holsomback (Auction Ready) amoung others. Cheril managed our office and California DMV Liens. Laura was our assistant office manager and has been with us for many years. Most of our employees worked with us for over 10 years.
J. Michael`s Auction was incorporated in May of 2000. The growth of the company became substantial. In the year 2000 we had over 200 facilities. Our customers were so pleased with our innovation, honesty, integrity and customer service they offered us more growth. We were soon doing auctions in several other States
Steven Wilson is the first hired employee for J.Michael's. Steven's dedication and hard work allowed J. Michael's to expand and grow at a very fast pace. His passion and work ethics helped increase our business by over a hundred facilities. Steven left the company to pursue his ambition to be a commercial airline pilot. He succeeded and his dream to be an international airline pilot for United Air Lines was realized. He was laid off from United because of the pandemic in 2020 and is now works at an airline that transports freight internationally flying 747's. He is the reason J.Michael's Auction, Inc. succeeded with such tremendous growth in Southern California. Steven is still associated with our company and is now dubbed our "company pilot".
Claudia Polanski, in Sacramento, was our steadfast coordinator and office manager for our Northern California facilities, which we closed in 2016. Her and Bill Polanski worked for the company for over 10 years and continue to stay in contact with us to this day.
Ron Ballard was contracted as an auctioneer to satisfy growing schedule requirements. Ron stepped down due to medical problems in 2014. Nancy Rocha, with "Auctions On The Go", carried on the auctions with integrity and honesty until the Northern California office was closed.
In 2013 we contracted Convergine Corp. in Toronto, Canada to develop an on-line storage auction web site. After many months of design and development the JMAuctionOnline.com web site was released in 2014.
Today JM Auction Service provides online auctions for all self storage facilities and moving and storage companies.
We associated our Company with Storage Auction Experts in Central California. John Cardoza is the owner of Storage Auction Experts and is the only person J. Michaels trusted to be associated with because of Mr. Cardoza's high integrity and unquestionable honesty.
J. Michael`s continues to set the standards for the industry by implementing our innovative and forward-looking ideas and goals with our online service.
In the year 2020 the pandemic hit the world and in April 2020 all auctions stopped due to questionable government mandates. J. Michael's was forced to lay off all employees and ultimately closed their doors in July 2020. The live auction business was sold to Storage Auction Experts.
The online auction website is still managed by Michael and Cheril and is popular with both Sellers and Buyers. J. Michael's Auction, Inc. was dissolved and re-branded as JM Auction Service. Michael and Cheril still run this popular website and are planning to expand to Arizona and Texas.