The average government auction is just 6 miles away.

It’s all about distance

Government surplus is sold where it sits. Shipping is usually unavailable, and the winner typically has about ten business days to turn up with a trailer and take it away. So the same truck is worth more to someone twenty minutes away than to someone two states over.

Most of the country is closer than it thinks

Share of the 42,151 US ZIP codes we could place, not share of people. We do not hold population data, so an empty rural ZIP counts the same as a dense urban one, which pushes these numbers down rather than up.

Auction deserts

Access is wildly uneven. The typical ZIP has 481 lots inside a 2 hour drive. The best has 5,244. These have nothing at all.

Lower 48 only. Alaska is worse: several island ZIPs sit more than 400 miles from the nearest lot, which would otherwise be this entire table.

Methodology

• 46,346 live US lots with usable coordinates, from the sources we track, as of 2026-08-27. 298 live lots had no usable coordinate and are excluded.
• Distances and the line on the map are straight lines between ZIP centroids and lot coordinates, not routed drive times. Real driving is longer everywhere, and much longer in mountains, on islands and around bays.
• Everything here is weighted by ZIP code, not by population, so none of these figures should be read as a share of Americans.
• Lots close constantly, so your answer can change hour to hour. The four cards beside the nearest one are picked for variety: a vehicle, a house, something odd, something under $100, whichever of those exist within a 2 hour drive.