What Is Dan Dotson Net Worth and Salary?
Dan Dotson is an American auctioneer, reality television personality, and producer who has a net worth of $4.5 million. Dan Dotson is probably most famous for being a cast member on the hit A&E reality television show "Storage Wars," which he began appearing on in 2010. Dan runs the auction firm American Auctioneers with his wife, Laura, and they acquired StorageAuctions.net in 2015. In 2018, Dotson auctioned off a storage unit containing a safe that had $7.5 million in cash inside. Dan executive produced the 2014 film "Fragmented," and he has appeared as himself on the television series "Early Edition" (2000), "Hot in Cleveland" (2012), and "Maron" (2016).
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Storage Wars Salary
Thanks to a 2012 lawsuit filed by Dave Hester, we learned a lot of interesting details about the cast salaries and other controversial allegations.
The most salacious allegation in Hester's lawsuit directly involved Brandi Passante. Hester alleged that the Storage Wars' producers paid for Brandi to get a breast enhancement to… enhance… the show's sex appeal.
Furthermore, he alleged that 100% of the treasures found in the storage units were in-authentically "placed" or "salted" by the producers and that after the scenes are shot, the cast members were actually forced to give the items back to the producers rather than re-sell them as was often portrayed or implied.
Finally, Hester laid out the salary he and other cast members were set to receive. The typical Storage Wars single season compensation was broken down as:
- $25,000 per episode with a guaranteed of 26 episodes, which works out to a minimum salary of $650 thousand per season
- $2,500 per month for travel expenses
- $124,500 expense account
- $25,000 signing bonus
In total, Hester reported that the average cast member earned a bit over $800,000 for a season. His exact earnings were $829,500.
(Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Reality Rocks)
Early Life
Dan Dotson was born on November 23, 1962, in Riverside, California. Dotson's grandfather, Sam Fancher, was a farm and cattle auctioneer in northwest Arkansas, and when Dan was 11 years old, Sam taught him the art of auctioneering. Dotson spent the next four summers working as a auctioneer with his grandfather, and when he was 16, he sometimes skipped school to sell furniture for auctioneer Merl Bernard at an auction in Chino.
Career
In 1983, Dan launched American Auctioneers, which is described as "a cutting-edge auctioneering company that is dedicated to serving and marketing their clients." In the '80s and '90s, Dan ran a Riverside auction house that specialized in items such as furniture, pottery, collectibles, and porcelain dolls. According to the American Auctioneers website, the company specializes in "auctions of storage units, estates, business inventories, and equipment, plus legal/foreclosure auctions, fundraisers, and appraisals."
In late 2010, Dotson and his wife, Laura, began starring on the new A&E reality series "Storage Wars," with Dan usually acting as the auctioneer and Laura acting as the ringman. "Storage Wars" depicts the real life exploits of a group of people who are involved in the world of delinquent storage unit auctions. This is how it works: In California, the law says that once a party has failed to pay rent for three consecutive months on a storage facility, the owner of the facility is free to sell the contents of the storage unit through a public auction. Dotson handles the auctioning of these items, in which potential buyers must make a bid after only being given a five-minute inspection of the storage locker through the open door of the locker. This means that there is no time to sift through the items and that a decision must be made quickly, so there is definitely an element of drama and risk to the proceedings.
As of this writing, "Storage Wars" has aired more than 300 episodes over 14 seasons, and Dan's involvement in the show has resulted in him being featured in articles in several publications, including "USA Today" and "The Washington Post." While filming the 2015 episode "Palm Springs Throwdown," Dan got into a fight with Dave Hester after "Storage Wars" producers told Hester to inform Dotson that he had missed a bid. Dan ignored him, so Dave persisted, and a brawl subsequently broke out, resulting in Laura being knocked to the ground. Hester later went to the hospital to get a tetanus shot because Laura scratched him. Dotson has also served as a consultant on "Storage Wars," and he has appeared on "Let's Make a Deal" (2003), "Fox and Friends" (2012), "Anderson Live" (2012), "Home & Family" (2013), "The Big Scoop with Coop" (2016), and "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" (2020).
(Photo by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images)
Personal Life
Dan met Laura Payton in 1996, and they married on August 26, 2000. Dan and Laura have a son named Garrett, and Dotson also has two sons, Zac and Tom, from a previous marriage. In June 2014, Dan was hospitalized after suffering a double brain aneurysm. Neurologist M. Asif Taqi said that Laura was instrumental in Dan's survival, stating, "At that time when he had a bad headache and he was altered, he was not talking right, she called 911 right away."
In September 2020, 22-year-old Garrett was shot in the chest in Lake Havasu, Arizona, and he was airlifted to a Las Vegas hospital. The bullet fractured Garrett's spine and hit a blood vessel connected to his heart. After the shooting, Dan tweeted, "Thank you to the surgeon that saved my son from bleeding out on the air trip to Vegas Thank you everyone for the prayers & positive thoughts thrown our way. Garrett is out of surgery & is expected to survive #prayerworks #prayerwarriors thank you God for sparing my son Garrett." The shooter was caught soon after, and he was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison.
Real Estate
In July 2004, Dan and Laura paid $629,000 for a lot in Yucaipa, California. They later built a four-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home on the property measuring 3,171 square feet.
