2020 Vehicles On Display, Ready For Utah International Auto Show

SANDY, Utah – Preparations were underway at the Utah International Auto Expo for the auto industry to show off their 2020 vehicles to car lovers in the Beehive State.

The annual show runs from Friday to Monday at the Mountain American Expo Center at 9575 South State Street in Sandy.

The Expo Center was busy all day Thursday, and the show hasn’t even started yet.

Before you can have an auto show, you have to get all those autos inside the building. It started first thing in the morning.

How do you get more than 350 cars, trucks, SUVs and other specialty exhibits onto the Expo Center floor? Very carefully!

You know the Utah Intl Auto Expo is getting closer when the “highway” carpet starts rolling out. Day 1, tomorrow at 11AM.#utahautoexpo pic.twitter.com/70qQ5jSQs4

— Keith McCord (@KeithMcCord) January 16, 2020

“It’s a big, big operation here. Lots of hands. (It’s) labor intensive to get things done, said Craig Bickmore, executive director of the New Care Dealers of Utah.

By 8 a.m., hundreds of workers had already converged on the convention center floor like ants, turning  a huge concrete space into a pristine showroom floor.

The floors were all marked with tape, indicating where each display was located. It’s like a puzzle that they just have to weave and get things inside and make sure everything is coordinated.

If you think negotiating Utah’s highways is challenging at times, try zigging and zagging through some of the tight spaces in here in a pristine new car.

The 2020 Utah international auto expo doesn’t begin until tomorrow, but the brand new cars are rolling in today in Sandy. I’ll have the story later on @KSL5TV pic.twitter.com/0aOGCaxL1P

— Keith McCord (@KeithMcCord) January 16, 2020

Cindy Horton directed traffic to get 31 new Ford vehicles put into place.

“I just make sure we bring the big one’s in the back first, then tell them what to bring in next so we don’t have to move tons of cars and they can’t ding each other,” said Horton. “It’s kind of tight, so I just tell everybody to go really slow.”

After all, thousands of dollars are at stake.

When all the plastic tarps, ladders, electrical cords will have been removed, the place will really shine, as usual.

All the major vehicle manufacturers have brought in their 2020 models from all over the country to put them on display for the thousands of people who will attend this year’s show.

Statistics from previous expos in Utah show that 40 percent of those who attend will buy within a year.

“(When) people come, they bring their families, they browse, they have product specialists here,” said Bickmore. “Then a lot of these vehicles that you see here… will be in show rooms following the show, and people can say, ‘Hey, now I can go buy it.”

The auto expo opens Friday at  11 a.m., and runs through Monday night.