Alberta Beef Magazine - BeefNews.com

Steve Dorran - the man behind the gavel by Bonnie Warnyca
June, 2010

After living in Airdrie for the past 30 years, Steve Dorran recently packed up all his belongings and headed south. It's a move that makes perfect sense for a man that has, for three decades, kept one boot in both countries. As the preferred auctioneer for more than 120 purebred cattle sales a year almost evenly split between Canada and the U.S., Dorran has carved out an enviable career as one of North America's top purebred cattle marketers.

Yet Dorran grew up a long way outside the cattle industry. As the oldest of four sons of a high school principal and an elementary school teacher, Dorran lived on an acreage outside of Victoria, British Columbia. Although none of his brothers or sister, or parents for that matter, were at all interested in anything remotely connected to the agricultural industry, Dorran had a penchant for horses. "My dad wouldn't let me have a horse," he remembers. "I thought if I joined the local 4-H club he would eventually give in. He relented to let me buy a 4-H steer and after working with my steer I soon forgot all about horses. By the time I was in my mid teens I had three or four 4-H steers and saw myself as a bit of a steer jock."

"I remember after selling my steers at the PNE in Vancouver," he says reminiscing, "I always went back to the auction ring to just listen to the auctioneer. I had it in my mind that it was something I would someday like to do. It seemed to me to be a job that held a lot of excitement."

It would be some time before Dorran pursued his dream of being an auctioneer and traveling around the country. Weekends and summers during high school were spent working on a local dairy farm which was owned by a man by the name of Gordon Rendle. Through Rendle Steve met Doug Blair of Western Breeders (Alta Genetics) out of Alberta. That chance meeting subsequently brought Dorran to Alberta.

After turning 21, Dorran took a job at Western Breeders where he worked his way up over the next eight years to the Beef Program Coordinator and bought bulls and handled the scheduling for custom collection. Little did he realize it, but the job was really preparing him for a profession that would eventually take him to many of the most prestigious farms and ranches in North America.

Dorran was 26 when he registered for auctioneer school in Decateur, Illinois. With only two weeks to learn his profession, he gleaned every minute detail he could during his short stint. "I chose this school because it was owned by many of the prominent auctioneers of the day such as Paul Good and Ray Simms," he explains. "Dennis Erickson and Craig Flewelling had attended the school the year before. I asked my instructor on the first day how they would determine whether I passed or failed the course? He said, 'I can tell you as soon as your cheque clears.' After that comment, I knew I was on my own to perfect my craft."

Dorran says that all auctioneers have their own rhythm and adopt filler words that they are comfortable with. Dorran's favorite "filler word" is now.

"Young auctioneers experiment with their chant using many different rhythms and words until they find what they are comfortable with," he teaches us. "When I first started out, I thought the faster I went the better."

However, he soon learned that chanting faster only confused his audience. "I had just finished selling a Hereford sale at the Jones Hereford Ranch, and famed auctioneer Archie Boyce offered some words of wisdom," he remembers rather sheepishly. "He told me that I needed to improve on my chant and that I was going so fast people couldn't understand what I was saying. If they couldn't understand what I was saying, how the heck can they offer a bid? I was devastated, but took the words to heart."

Up until the past couple of years, Dorran averaged roughly 200 sales per year. Today, he has pared those numbers down to about 120 sales per year between the two countries. He's still on the road 200 days a year.

"It's probably as important to know the people you're selling to as the product your selling," says this seasoned marketer. "I try to visit my customers before their sale to take a look at the offering and get a feel for the customer's expectations. I recognize that it is my job to get the most money for each animal, but in the end the market and the bidders influence the price."

Dorran got his start selling mostly Herefords but over the years that has also become the sales voice for Angus and Simmental sales. He works with dozens of different sales staff and ringmen in a year. One of the more notorious is Ted Serhienko of T Bar C Cattle Co. in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Most everyone in the purebred cattle circuit in North America recognize this gravelly-voiced sage of the industry.

"I'd been auctioneering for about 10 or 12 years before my mother actually heard me sell a sale at the Calgary Stampede," says Dorran prepared to share a humorous bygone moment. "At the end of the sale, she came up to me and said, 'Do people actually pay you to do that? Son, if I were you I would try to find a more dignified way to make a living.' Serhienko was one of the ringmen that day."

Cross border purebred cattle selling is made much easier by the fact that spring cattle sales are over by mid April in Canada and then they run until the first part of June in the U.S. In the fall, the majority of the purebred American sales are done by the middle of October which is when the Canadian sales really get cracking.

Dorran has only missed one sale in his 35-year career. It happened in April of this year when a late snowstorm struck Calgary halting air travel. According to Dorran, the airport authorities had taken the blades off the runway snowploughs and he never made the Texas sale.

Steve has many opinions about the industry which he's garnered from his perch above the sale ring and over many a cold one after thousands of cattle sales. "Industry solving discussions" in the Denver stockyard or in the Agribition swamp are all part of a day's work. Unwilling to burn any cross border bridges, he suggests that Canadian producers need to be more aggressive when it comes to protecting their industry. "Heck," he says, "you can't tell me that if Canada decided not to import oranges from California that the growers wouldn't be holding a massive press conference on the parliamentary steps in Ottawa?"

Dorran's children Ryan (ringman and auctioneer), Jeannie (getting her Masters at the U of A), Dusty (works for a medical supply company in Oklahoma), Robbie (an accountant with Superior Group of Companies in Calgary), Jackie (works for the Alberta Food Processors) are all grown up and on their own.

Steve remarried in January of 2007. The new Mrs. Dorran (Terri Lowe) grew up on a large commercial Angus ranch in Nebraska and brings to the partnership an extensive knowledge of the industry. Terry handles all the bookings and travel arrangements for this busy auctioneer. The couple have just moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, but will continue to maintain a condo in Airdrie. Time off is spent at their home in California, but retirement isn't in the cards anytime soon for the man some call the "Colonel".

Industry Question

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